For the Teachers

Tomorrow our son gets up, slings his new backpack onto his shoulders, and returns to school.

His teachers, of course, have already gone to work and begun making their classrooms welcoming, prepared lesson plans, and sat through the inevitable meetings. At the university where my wife and I teach we will follow suit next week.

This seems like a good time to reflect upon just what it means to teach.

There a lot of popular ideas on this subject these days. One of them is "outcomes assessment"-based learning. The way I see it, the idea—when separated from its academic jargon—comes down to something like this.

The classroom is a sort of factory and the teacher is earnestly pressing a mold over each student. By the time the teacher is done, one should be able to come in and measure the newly molded students and make sure they fit within the parameters and tolerances that have been mandated by experts in advance.

If the data (which must be collected frequently and presented in numerical form) shows the teacher achieving desired "outcomes," then students are taken off the assembly line and passed to the next level.

Long ago a fictional character who (along with Huck Finn)  is surely in the running for the title of "World's Worst Student" imagined an ideal classroom in which the students themselves were in charge of the educational factory.

I speak, of course, of the famous Pippi Longstocking and her fantasy about the best schools in the world.

We're not supposed to take Pippi's amusing fantasy seriously. After all, this is a recipe for education as anarchy, the inmates running the asylum. But there's something that gives me pause. It's what Pippi says about the role of the teacher.

There's no molding followed by measuring going on here. The teacher does one thing and does it well.

She (or he) unwraps the candy, throwing away the distracting tin foil and paper that's getting in the way, and tries to help the students eat as much sweet stuff as possible.

Hmm. What if we were to think of that metaphorically? What if a classroom's candy amounted to a ridiculously large, delicious storehouse of the world's knowledge, including all the history, archaeology, math, science, culture, art, language, literature, and other discoveries humans have made over time?

What if the teacher realized that knowledge presented in the correct way is nothing like force-feeding bran or sawdust or cardboard to students in order to inflate them to a predetermined size and weight, but rather a matter of distributing the tastiest thing in the world and letting it work its magic?

I know. Most students don't think of school as sweet at all. It's hard, it's necessary, it's compulsory. It's something to ultimately escape. And these students never fall in love with the full-range of learning. Which is not the same as saying they never learn.

It seems like the most human trait one might single out is how both he dullest and brightest of us keep on learning something. Eventually every person finds something that is so much fun—a video game, a sport, tuning an engine, fashion, talking about Twilight—that they forget that they are learning.

The teacher's job is to get students to broaden their menu.

Maybe it's time for them to try something other than the usual cheap milk chocolates and caramels readily available on the popular culture market.

Belgium dark chocolate? Silky semi-sweet?

And, if I'm a good enough teacher, I may even get my students involved in challenging jawbreakers or licorice sticks of knowledge.

Calculus perhaps? Organic chemistry? Moby Dick?

But first I have to convince them that it's all candy.

This is why I teach with a persona that may resemble at times a man on a sugar high. I'm unwrapping the candy and saying, "You've got to hear this!" and "What do you think about that?" and "Isn't this amazing?" and "Let's all take the next half hour and try it out for ourselves!"

I can't help it. All forms of knowledge are candy to me and I'm eager to get it out there where people can taste it.

At the same time I have to admit that the majority of my teachers, especially from junior high on through college, came across as rather dry and unenthused. On their worst days they unwrapped the candy as if it were a fillet of week-old fish enshrined in newspapers. No wonder we doodled in the margins of our notebooks, yawned, looked out the window.

Years and years of this go on and what does a new teacher face? The prospect of trying to wake the dead.



Here's a teacher who knows how to unwrap the candy.


Enter Dead Poet's Society. It's an easy movie to understand in the context of the problems I've just described. Then Mr. Manic himself, Robin Williams, walks in as the  teacher. Yes! It almost takes an excess bordering on craziness to really get turned-off students' attention, especially if they're signed up for a subject they have already decided is intrinsically dull.

The solution? Unwrap the candy as if there is a famine in the land and you've just shattered a giant pinata. I don't care what subject the teacher is assigned to teach, if he or she acts like a mad person and stands on the desk or whatever may be out of the ordinary, it can't help making students interested in the things the teacher is personally passionate about.

I know. Some critics call this edu-tainment. They say teachers are being drawn down to the level of a TV show or other entertainment. I disagree. Humans from the beginning of time have paid attention best, remembered best, and ultimately learned when there's drama involved. Take a look at Sophocles and Euripides.

A teacher without some degree of enticing delivery may have all the information in the world and every fact lined up correctly, which is perfect for the "quality control" people who stand ready to measure; however, if there's not a memorable experience of learning provided, we teachers may very well fail along with some of our students. - V.W.

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Experiencing the Big "O" (opera that is...)

Herr Wagner

As I noted in my last post, our son wanted to go to the movie theater recently where a live performance of the Metropolitan Opera was being broadcast in High Definition.

The opera was the second in Richard Wagner's Ring Cycle which tells the story of the struggles between the gods and their relations with humans and the decline of the celestial order.

Die Walkure.

This opera is 330 minutes long, which includes two 30-minute intermissions. For the math challenged (sometimes me), that works out to five and one-half hours.


This sign is above Theater No. 5.
They must showing the opera here...

As I walked into the movie theater, I noted approximately 40 other brave souls. I noted too that the average age of these long-distance opera patrons was around 70. This was a big day for the senior discount! Maybe by the time you're retired you have nothing else to do with an entire afternoon of your life?

I reminded myself that my main goal wasn't to ponder the demographics and extrapolate the future of opera, but to make it through the entire performance. I had no expectation of anything other than a notable level of physical pain and psychic discomfort.

Such grim expectations appeared to be met as time passed and the big screen continued showing slides with info about upcoming opera productions. The big deal live feed for which we were paying $22 each brought us only the sounds of  the orchestra tuning up. No Maestro James Levine. No opera stars. No million dollar innovative set. No images live from New York City.

Then.

Oh no! What could this mean? It meant that we would sit where we were and be regaled with repeats of the previews and trivia about the Met's opera stars while we worked our way through a tub of buttered popcorn. Yes, eventually the curtain would open on Die Walkure.

Forty minutes late.

A thought flashed through my mind: "The opera should be halfway through Act One. But here I sit. Three hundred and thirty minutes left to go. I'm going to die..."

The Gods' Entrance into Opera
I'm not going to write a review of this production of Die Walkure. I'm sure those exist in many places and some of them are written by knowledgable critics and opera buffs. I only want to report on two things and then conclude with a flury of impressions.

1 - We made it all the way to the end! We had gone into the theater at 11 a.m. We walked out blinking into the sunlight at 5 p.m.

2 - We liked the opera! Crazy thing. My son and I are thinking about going back in November for the high-def screening of the third Ring installment, Siegried.


Impressions

Twaddle Time?
I wouldn't even consider attending a long opera sung in a foreign language if they were not subtitles. But early on, as the German coming out of the characters' mouths was converted efficiently into English, the words I was reading at the bottom of the screen gave me some cause for alarm.

Only after our hero gets his coveted drink of water
do things start to become interesting...

Our noble buff looking hero Siegmund collapses on the hearth at the home of the fair Sieglinde. The latter is stuck in a forced, loveless marriage.

We know from the first chaste but flirtateous glance what's going to occur. These two are going to get together.

Except there's no cut to the chase. Instead, for 15 minutes the would-be lovers sing to each other something like this while there's much pouring of liquids into vessels and into mouths.

Siegmund: I am faint! I am thirsty!

Sieglinde: You look exhausted. You have been pursued!

Siegmund: I've been pursued. Bring me water!

Sieglinde: I'll get you water! I'll pour it in your mouth!

Siegmund: Ah, the water is good!

Sieglinde, my sweet, the mead is awesome!
You're my sister, so let's get married!

Sieglinde: I can get you some mead! The mead will give you strength.

Siegmund: Ah, mead is good! I will feel strong!

Sieglinde: The mead I'm pouring from the horn into your mouth is like oil funneled into a 12-cyclinder engine. It is reviving you and your handsome body!

Siegmund: I'm feeling better now! It must be the mead!

Fortunately, the libretto's dwelling on minituae is temporary. The twaddle ceases as these two lock gazes (and soon limbs) and they move on to more important matters.

Through further vigorous singing exchanges Siegmund and Sieglinde discover that they are twins, separated in their youth when their mother was killed and their father had to flee. Now guess what? They really feel a kinship. So much so that Siegmund concludes that since Sieglinde hates her husband there's a perfect solution. They'll get married.

Instant incest!

Of course, this is Wagner and the "Sieg" twins are offspring of the god Wotan. Different conjugal rules perhaps apply?

Seriously, Folks...
The foregoing is the only part of Die Walkure I can make fun of. I found the rest of it riveting. There are only five main characters which means we get to experience them more in depth than  if they were being interrupted by singing choruses of happy townspeople and milk maids.

Wotan is a god who agonizes and is reluctant
to use his terrible power.

It is in this respect that viewing this opera in the theater is perhaps superior to actually being in the audience at the Met. The camera is able to bring us close-ups and different angles on the characters.

I felt like I got to know them.

I watched nuances of emotion flicker across their faces. Bryn Terfel's Wotan is nearly as conflicted as Hamlet when he is forced to apply the letter of the law to his beloved Valkyrie daughter, Brunnhilde.

And in a great high definition moment, Jonas Kaufmann as Siegmund drooled a long string of spit during his song immediately prior to his battle and death. He just kept on singing, spit and all, and I knew this singer making his Wagner debut was already a pro.

Brunnhilde the Valkyrie rocks!

But the real standout for me was Deborah Voigt as Brunnhilde. She's a wild woman. A crazy red head. She's hot to trot onto the battlefield and do her Valkyrie job of inspiring warriors and, when they fall, she'll carry them to Vahalla where they will spend eternity serving the gods at their banquet table.
This daughter of a god has spirit, spunk, fire and mirth in her eyes.

When Brunnhilde is condemned by Wotan to become a mortal, nay, not just a mortal, but a mediocre woman who will have to serve as a doormat to an earthly husband, we can tell that she would prefer death. She then begins the greatest campaign in history to change a god's mind, even outdoing Lot's bargaining with Yahweh (Genesis 18).

Technology is Handmaiden to the Gods?
The final star of the show has to be designer Robert LePage's hydraulic moving, morphing, computer controlled set. Those involved with it call it "Le Machine." It is a series of planks mounted on an horizontal axis. As the planks spin into position and assume various shapes, projectors light them with computer generated images to give them the texture of tree bark, stone, animated fire, or whatever is needed.

Le Machine surrounds Brunnhilde with a flaming barrier
atop the mountain at the end of Die Walkure.

Le Machine is a big deal. Literally. It weighs so much that steel reinforcing beams had to be placed beneath the Met's stage. A space in the basement had to be created for the engine. It takes nearly 20 stage hands to run the beast.

Turns out Le Machine is a bit of a diva. It has malfunctioned and left the gods hoofing it off stage rather than climbing a stairway to Vahalla (Das Rheingold). It has tripped Brunnehilde (premiere of Die Walkure). It was Le Machine's fault that we waited 40 minutes for the show to begin.

Even as a technological skeptic, I was all right with Le Machine. There was a sort of cubism elan to it and, in the last act, a decided Salvador Dali-esque atmosphere. These different evocations of non-realistic art helped me slip into this surreal world of Northern gods in crisis. I also appreciated that the technology had been humbled; it wasn't perfect which made it, dare I say, almost human? Like a clanking R2D2. What's not to love?

As I see it, Wagner is all about excess. Excessive music, singing, costuming, and story-telling. So why not a gigantic, ultra-expensive Le Machine in the mix? It is all of a piece. The Ring operas are about the gods and the gods have created a gianormous mess with their philandering, quarreling and war making. Not unlike what we humans do, eh?

So the operas are a life study but it's not undertaken by staring into a puddle and counting paramecium. It's a plunge into a stormy ocean teeming with leviathans of drama and emotion.

If you're willing to get wet, I recommend it. - V.W.

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The Big Lebowski and the Whole Brevity Thing Cont.

I was feeling good that I had tentatively decided to model myself after one of the ancient Spartans and resolve to become more laconic in my speech and writing in the new year. (See: The Whole Brevity Thing)

But soon I hit a bump in the road. I had so much to communicate about brevity that I couldn't be brief in my written disquisition upon the subject.

It was all part of an ongoing situation. As much I wished for it, I never seemed able to write a short post for The Van Winkle Project.

This puts me at odds with our overall culture.

Aren't we people who desire these days to keep everything as short and condensed as possible?

A sound bite, not a speech? A song, not a whole album of songs? A tweet in place of a tome?

Befuddled, flummoxed, and metaphorically bloodied by my failure, I did what any reasonable 21st Century person might do.

I sat down and watched The Big Lebowski. Again.

Enter the Dude

Long ago the Coen Brothers' film The Big Lebowski (1998) reached cult film status. A cult film is, of course, one that you watch repeatedly like a monkey eating another banana and soon you start to memorize all the funny lines. Which can come in handy as you start to plug them into everyday speech and thus amuse your friends who are on a lifelong quest for the Kingdom of Mirth.

So the film is rolling (or spinning in the age of DVD and Blu-ray) and I am still trying to figure out if and how I can be a sterling example of brevity and scale back these Van Winkle Project posts.

I'm into the first half hour of the movie when the Dude (Jeff Bridges) suddenly speaks to me. Actually he speaks to the Big Lebowski which is not the same as the Lebowski who is the Dude because the Big Lebowski is a millionaire in a wheelchair whereas the other Lebowski is the Dude...

If you haven't seen the movie, it's a tad complicated.

But the point is that the way the Dude seemed to offer something special just to me, a guy sitting in a room watching a movie about him 12 years after the film was committed to celluloid, is not unusual or startling. This is what the Dude does. This is just one example of how "the Dude abides."

So here's what the Dude said that threw sudden halogen headlights on my dilemma concerning brevity.

Let me explain something to you. Um, I am not "Mr. Lebowski". You're Mr. Lebowski. I'm the Dude. So that's what you call me. You know, that or, uh, His Dudeness, or uh, Duder, or El Duderino if you're not into the whole brevity thing.

The Dude discourses on nomenclature

You only have to watch the first minute of the film and see the Dude in bathrobe and shorts slopping along ,sniffing his way down the dairy aisle of a Ralph's grocery store and then writing a check for .69 cents at the checkout to know that, personally, he is a major fan of brevity.

You can also see this predilection for brevity in how the Dude seeks the least complicated solution to his problems in contrast to his ever elaborating, scheming, heat-packing friend Walter (John Goodman).

 But, more than that, the Dude's a fan of whatever works. Be brief if you want, his life illustrates for us, but if you'd like to tack on a few more syllables he's cool with that, too. It's the same flexibility he shows when at Maude's house he finds no half and half to add to Kahlua to create his signature White Russian, so he uses Coffeemate.



The 69-cent check. Financial brevity a la Dude


Thrilling Conclusion
The Spartans' cultivation of the laconic phrase serves as an example to me that brevity can be a beautiful thing. If what I want to say in conversation can be condensed and said with the fewest possible words, it can have more impact than an over-garnished torrent of language. And it leaves me more time to listen to the other person.

The year 2011 seems to be beckoning me to do this sort of thing in my verbal communications.

I wish to speak less and listen more.

As for writing, it is the Dude who has given me permission to go the other way. To not necessarily always be into the whole brevity thing. Here's why.

Certain human thoughts, insights and passions seem to deserve more respect than what can be offered by a string of words that are short enough to fit on a bumper sticker or the screen of a mobile device. They require more than two intakes of breath and a sign off on a blog post to do them justice. What they need is elaboration, meditation, and extensive relocation of one's mind to a mental space where one can dwell with them.


Meet the Culture Bandit

As slam poet Vanessa Hidary says in her classic Def Poetry Jam Season 1 performance of  "The Culture Bandit":

"Some people think more is less. I say more is more. Less is less!"

The hard truth is that as much as we extol its virtues, brevity at some point offers diminishing returns. Eventually what wishes to pass for brevity begins to approach vacuity. You get what you pay for.

Make no mistake. I hear the outcry of those who say no one has time to read anything l-o-n-g anymore. Perhaps this is so, but I'm reminded of an old phrase used by customers of honest butchers or other tradesmen who sold their goods by using a scale to acquire the size  portion the customer wished to buy. The customers said, "He (or she) gives good weight."

Writing that is brief, and seems to offer content but leaves the reader with a minute or so of eyeball movement, nothing they'll even remember an hour later, and then the reader moves on, is the modern equivalent of the writer putting his or her thumb on the scale. See right here? It's ten pounds of real mental sustenance (wink, wink).

It's not giving good weight.

It's a promise of sixty-nine cents inscribed on the piece of paper, a promise that ought to be for much more or why go to all the trouble to use ink and write a check in the first place? Instead, put down the pen; just lay your handful of coins on the counter and go.

I believe I'd rather say something at a bit greater length and not have anyone read it, than write down-sized, lightweight fluff and be one more soul around the globe stuffing the Great Internet Fortune Cookie with slivers of what passes for human thought and feeling.

So, El Duderino, thanks for showing me. That I'm not really into the whole brevity thing.

Brief in speech, but not always brief in words. That will be the Van Winkle resolution for 2011. - V.W.


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