These deck chairs, those deck chairs
A fairly popular (and apt) metaphor in public education is to be rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. (Incidentally, if you type “rearranging” into Google with suggestions on, as of tonight, this precise phrase pops up as the 6th suggestion, with nearly 70,000 results.) There is usually no sympathy in it; it is just to say, This ship is sinking, and look at what the idiots are doing. But I think there is a more sympathetic understanding, too: here there is a desperation, or a sense that problems are severe, even dire, and that something must be done; but it is not at all clear what can be done; maybe the problems are in fact so profound and so fundamental that as individuals we are impotent against them. So we pick something, maybe somewhat arbitrarily, and we project importance onto it out of proportion with its real significance. It becomes a superstition. We say, This ship is sinking goddammit! For chrissake will nobody help me move this lounger? It might not always be about idiocy so much as impotent, foolish heroics.
As a school teacher in Mississippi, I heard in every room, in every hallway, a hundred times every day: Shirt-tails, shirt-tails, tuck in your shirt-tails, we will send you home, we will suspend you, shirt-tails.
Now that I’m a student most of the time, and a part-time tutor in a public high school in Santa Fe, every day it’s: IDs, ID badges, IDs out, get your IDs out, we will send you home, get your IDs out.
If they were lyrics, they’d be sung to the same tune.
At Last
In 2005 — and several times again over the next years — I wrote Barack Obama’s name on the board in my classroom, first in Sardis, Mississippi, and later in Jackson, when one or another of my students declared that there would never be a black president. In the three years I lived in Mississippi I had something like 500 students (just one of them was not black) and many expressed something like this sentiment at some time or other — at least one in almost every class, probably.
The first time I saw Barack Obama — the first time I heard his name, I think — was when he addressed the Democratic National Convention in 2004. And I liked Kerry more than a lot of Democrats did, but I wished then that Obama was running in his place, and I believed then that he would one day be the President of the United States.
I have followed his career these last four years. I was excited for my students when, in June of last year, we got word that he was quietly coming to Jackson for a fundraising event, and several of them got to shake his hand. I spent hours in line last March waiting for his appearance at Jackson State University. I have have been excited about his candidacy since it was first announced, and since it was called unlikely.
During the 2004 election I lived in Buenos Aires, and everywhere I went, whenever anyone heard I was an American, I was attentively cast as a representative of my country; and after that election, everyone, it seemed, was upset at the result, and everyone was asking me to explain it. As I struggled in awkward Spanish to explain American politics to late-night taxi drivers, and as I read the baffled and the angry editorials, I felt alienated from my country and I wished I knew it better. (And I decided, then, to go teach in Mississippi rather than following other opportunities.)
In 2005 I thought he probably wouldn’t run in 2008, that he would defer to our collective expectations of a Hillary Clinton candidacy, that he would finish a term in the Senate. I put his name on the board and I told my students not to forget it; I told them that, if Clinton wins in 2008, she will be up for re-election in 2012 and Obama will run in 2016; that if she loses in 2008, he will run in 2012; and that in either case, there will be a black president, and soon.
Tonight I am happy to have been partially wrong, and I am proud, and I am excited for my country, and I wish our new President-elect good luck in the very difficult tasks he has before him.
Starting the Mahābhārata
The sticky notes of things to write about (including The Wire) are growing fuller and multiplying, and my time seems only to do the former, not quite the latter.
I’m not sixty pages into the Mahābhārata, I’ve so far had one conversation about it, and there’s already an inexhaustible amount to say. Mr. Venkatesh told us that his advice to those just setting out with this book is to take a flashlight, a sleeping bag, and plenty of water; because you’ll get lost and have to stay the night.
For now, a contextless paragraph:
Thereupon the man said to him, “I am pleased with this your song of praise. What favor can I do for you?” He said to him, “The Snakes shall be in my power!” The man replied, “Blow into this horse’s arse.” He blew the horse in the arse, whereupon from the blown-up horse smoking flames billowed out from all the orifices. With them he smoked out the world of the Snakes. Frenzied, desperately afraid of the hot power of the fire, Takṣaka seized the earrings, fled at once from his dwelling, and said to Utanka, “Sir, take back these earrings!”
Mahābhārata, 1(3) Pauṣya, 155 (Trans: J.A.B. van Buitenen)
Han Fei Tzu
It is obvious that, under normal conditions, water will overcome fire. But if a kettle comes between them, the water will bubble and boil itself completely dry on top, while the fire goes on burning merrily away underneath, the water having been deprived of the means by which it customarily overcomes fire. It is just as obvious that government should be able to put an end to evil in the same way as water overcomes fire. But if the officials whose duty it is to uphold the law instead play the part of the kettle, then the laws will be clear only in the mind of the ruler alone, and he will have been deprived of the means by which to prohibit evil.
Judging from the tales handed down from high antiquity and the incidents recorded in the Spring and Autumn Annals, those men who violated the laws, committed treason, and carried out major acts of evil always worked through some eminent and highly placed minister. And yet the laws and regulations are customarily designed to prevent evil among the humble and lowly people, and it is upon them alone that penalties and punishments fall. Hence the common people lose hope and are left with no place to air their grievances.
(Translated from the Chinese by Burton Watson.)
The brahmin and the goat
There is in the forest a brahmin. And once, he gets a goat in the village. So he puts the goat on his shoulder and walks on the road. Now, on the road three thieves see the brahmin, but the brahmin doesn’t see the thieves. And the thieves because of greed want the goat. So they say: “How do we steal the goat from the brahmin? We make a plan.” So the thieves think up a plan. First, one thief asks the brahmin: “O brahmin! Why, sir, do you carry a dog on your shoulder?” Then the brahmin says: “Sir, what are you saying? It’s just a goat. I never touch dogs.” So the brahmin again walks on the road. Later, the second thief asks the brahmin: “Why does your honor carry a dog on the shoulder?” So the brahmin puts the goat on the ground and examines it. And the brahmin thinks: “Why does he speak so? Surely it is just a goat.” So the brahmin puts the goat on his shoulder and walks on the road. Later, the third thief asks: “Sir, are you a hunter?” So the brahmin says: “No. I am a brahmin.” The thief says: “Then why does a dog remain on a brahmin’s shoulder?” So the brahmin from foolishness thinks: “Because people say so, surely it is a dog.” So he leaves the goat on the ground and goes again toward home. And because brahmin never touch dogs, he bathes. Thus the thieves by means of a plan get the brahmin’s goat.
–Adapted from Pañcatantra and Hitopadeśa (Killingley: Lesson 16, page 117)