Poem XXXVI
Here dead lie we because we did not choose
To live and shame the land from which we sprung.
Life, to be sure, is nothing much to lose;
But young men think it is, and we were young.
-A.E. Housman
Friday, December 12, 2008
Friday, December 5, 2008
Creativity, Innovation, Leadership
When in Oberlin, I always find myself thinking about the Oberlin experience. Every time I return, after anxiously wandering the 5 square blocks wondering whether anyone remembers me still, I encounter some intangible, magical experience so unique and so full of an insuppressible momentous excitement that I am forced to reaffirm that this truly is one of the best places in the world. Ironically, you would have been hard-pressed to get this affirmation out of me while I was a student here. Yet as a visitor, looking around, I see this acknowledgment, this satisfaction with what Oberlin is living and producing, in the smiling eyes of everyone else who has happened upon the moment, who has surreptitiously discovered this intersection of whatever they were doing before and the uncontrollable energy and creativity that is constantly channeled into these undefinable things.
On the board we talk about improving three things: the value of an Oberlin education, the perceived value of an Oberlin education, and the sustainability of our commitment to educational access. These are sometimes hard for current students to understand. They spend so much time in these wonderful, undefinable moments that these moments are just everyday life to them. Instead, they look for the value of an Oberlin education elsewhere. Does it lie in the books they've mastered for an assignment or the connections they're making through ongoing conversations with peers and professors? Immediately afterwards, does it lie in their first job title or the ranking of the graduate schools to which they're admitted?
In these challenging times, when the world faces a trying economic situation and a constant threat of terror and a growing environmental challenge, we sometimes miss the point. Seeking normalcy or perceived promise or hope, we cling to metrics and measures, things that we can define and evaluate. But what if the most intangible elements of us are those with the most value? What if the value of an Oberlin education lies not in the fact that x number of people are impacting x number of industries, but in the ethical and intellectual caliber of its lifelong community members and in the spontaneity of true creative production in which these members engage daily?
It goes without saying that Obies are fierce. We are dedicated and fascinated (and often fascinating); we plunge powerfully forward into solving the problems that we identify as meaningful; we pick battles not just because they impact our own lives but because we see them impacting the lives of our neighbors, both in our own towns and cities and in our global society. Perhaps most importantly, we think critically and thoughtfully, carrying with us ethical standards and expectations that we have labored over defining and maintaining, demanding equality in access and opportunity, expecting a level playing field and, when not finding one, creating one. We are innovators and dreamers; we take the facts and methods that we have learned and sync them in new ways; we look for connections that haven't been tried yet; we build bonds that had never before been imagined.
--------------
THIS IS THE HUGE DREAM OF US / THAT WE ARE HEROES THAT THERE IS COURAGE/ in our blood! That we are live! / That we do not perpetrate the lie of vision / forced upon ourselves / by ourselves. That we have made the nets of vision real!
-Michael McClure, The Flowers of Politics (I)
Free of politics / Liberty and pride guide you / You pass from ancestral myths to myth of self / And make the giant bright stroke like that madman Van Gogh.
-Michael McClure, The Flowers of Politics (II)
On the board we talk about improving three things: the value of an Oberlin education, the perceived value of an Oberlin education, and the sustainability of our commitment to educational access. These are sometimes hard for current students to understand. They spend so much time in these wonderful, undefinable moments that these moments are just everyday life to them. Instead, they look for the value of an Oberlin education elsewhere. Does it lie in the books they've mastered for an assignment or the connections they're making through ongoing conversations with peers and professors? Immediately afterwards, does it lie in their first job title or the ranking of the graduate schools to which they're admitted?
In these challenging times, when the world faces a trying economic situation and a constant threat of terror and a growing environmental challenge, we sometimes miss the point. Seeking normalcy or perceived promise or hope, we cling to metrics and measures, things that we can define and evaluate. But what if the most intangible elements of us are those with the most value? What if the value of an Oberlin education lies not in the fact that x number of people are impacting x number of industries, but in the ethical and intellectual caliber of its lifelong community members and in the spontaneity of true creative production in which these members engage daily?
It goes without saying that Obies are fierce. We are dedicated and fascinated (and often fascinating); we plunge powerfully forward into solving the problems that we identify as meaningful; we pick battles not just because they impact our own lives but because we see them impacting the lives of our neighbors, both in our own towns and cities and in our global society. Perhaps most importantly, we think critically and thoughtfully, carrying with us ethical standards and expectations that we have labored over defining and maintaining, demanding equality in access and opportunity, expecting a level playing field and, when not finding one, creating one. We are innovators and dreamers; we take the facts and methods that we have learned and sync them in new ways; we look for connections that haven't been tried yet; we build bonds that had never before been imagined.
--------------
THIS IS THE HUGE DREAM OF US / THAT WE ARE HEROES THAT THERE IS COURAGE/ in our blood! That we are live! / That we do not perpetrate the lie of vision / forced upon ourselves / by ourselves. That we have made the nets of vision real!
-Michael McClure, The Flowers of Politics (I)
Free of politics / Liberty and pride guide you / You pass from ancestral myths to myth of self / And make the giant bright stroke like that madman Van Gogh.
-Michael McClure, The Flowers of Politics (II)
Sunday, November 30, 2008
You Never Seem to Recognize My Face
preoccupation (n.): The state of being preoccupied; absorption of the attention or intellect.
preoccupy (v.):
1. To absorb or engross to the exclusion of other things.
2. To occupy beforehand or before others.
Many words have multiple definitions, but preoccupation and its root, preoccupy, have been on my mind for a while now. If a thought or a subject has completely preoccupied you, has consumed you completely, are you occupying that thought pattern before anyone else? Have you claimed that preoccupation as your own? Does it belong to you? Or, is it just the opposite? Does preoccupation own you by preventing you from owning whatever the preoccupation is?
Usually, the verb "preoccupy" is modified by the preposition "by." In effect, this means that whatever follows the "by" is what's doing the action of "preoccupying." The actual subject of the sentence then becomes that which is being preoccupied rather than the preoccupying agent.
When I am preoccupied by something, I feel helpless, unwillingly transformed from the agent to the recipient of some other action. I know I don't want to think about this thought or subject anymore but, try as I might, I cannot get myself to think about anything else. Preoccupying me wholly, it takes over my sensibility and, like an unavoidable demon, forces my attention on something undeserving.
"She was preoccupied."
Maybe what all of us are looking for is the less common form. "She preoccupied him." "The fate of the world preoccupied them." Maybe this switch of the agency is all that we need to feel meaningful rather than powerless: to occupy beforehand or before others, rather than to be occupied at the exclusion of all other things.
preoccupy (v.):
1. To absorb or engross to the exclusion of other things.
2. To occupy beforehand or before others.
Many words have multiple definitions, but preoccupation and its root, preoccupy, have been on my mind for a while now. If a thought or a subject has completely preoccupied you, has consumed you completely, are you occupying that thought pattern before anyone else? Have you claimed that preoccupation as your own? Does it belong to you? Or, is it just the opposite? Does preoccupation own you by preventing you from owning whatever the preoccupation is?
Usually, the verb "preoccupy" is modified by the preposition "by." In effect, this means that whatever follows the "by" is what's doing the action of "preoccupying." The actual subject of the sentence then becomes that which is being preoccupied rather than the preoccupying agent.
When I am preoccupied by something, I feel helpless, unwillingly transformed from the agent to the recipient of some other action. I know I don't want to think about this thought or subject anymore but, try as I might, I cannot get myself to think about anything else. Preoccupying me wholly, it takes over my sensibility and, like an unavoidable demon, forces my attention on something undeserving.
"She was preoccupied."
Maybe what all of us are looking for is the less common form. "She preoccupied him." "The fate of the world preoccupied them." Maybe this switch of the agency is all that we need to feel meaningful rather than powerless: to occupy beforehand or before others, rather than to be occupied at the exclusion of all other things.
Friday, November 28, 2008
This One's for Mumbai
In August 2006, I started an entry with this: "As has been said one thousand times before, we live in a world of terror." Almost five years after September 11, we were still living in fear that someone out there would turn anger into mass destruction at the cost of people's lives. Now, two years after I wrote about the terror in Lebanon and seven years after my own city saw this grief, the world is mourning and fearing on a large scale once again.
Terrorism is not a new term; it's not a concept that has been introduced and defined in the last twenty or thirty years, like the internet or fiber-optics or in-vitro fertilization. In the last few American political administrations, though, the term has taken on a significant political weight. It has become a method for perpetuating an "us" vs. "them" rhetoric and, as a result, has become something we think about on a regular basis in evaluating how we behave versus how other people behave. It's important to look beyond the way we are taught to think about terrorism, though, and understand what it really means absent of our own political and social interpretation of it. In 2004, the United Nations Security Council defined terrorism as any act "intended to cause death or serious bodily harm to civilians or non-combatants with the purpose of intimidating a population or compelling a government or an international organization to do or abstain from doing any act." In short, terrorism means trying to promote a political agenda by seriously harming regular people.
There are two facets of terrorism that I find most disturbing. The first is the idea that physical force against innocent people is a useful mechanism for instigating political change. This has nothing to do with our group versus that other group and everything to do with the perception, held even by a small group, that violence against civilians is a constructive method for change. This is something that sociologists, criminologists, psychologists, and political scientists are all studying, but once we know the cause, will we then know how to change it? Since this discovery seems unlikely, we must operate with terrorism as a reality, as skewed as it may be, and learn how to live with it rather than against it.
This brings me to the second element of terrorism that disturbs me. Terrorism, in the most unfortunate of ways, takes precedent over all other things because of its unpredictability. In my normal, day-to-day life, I am training to be an educator. I believe that schools make a difference in our society, and my goal is to make American schools training grounds for capable and engaged citizens. Yet when tourists and businesspeople are trapped in a Mumbai hotel under siege, having spent one minute sipping a cocktail in the hotel bar and the next being ushered by men in masks into a hostage situation, the mission of education seems quaint, like a topic for cocktail party discussion or some sort of idealist, hippy-dippy dream distracting from the "real" issue. Terrorism does more than inflict pain on individuals and their families and pressure governments to change political stances. An act of terrorism commands the attention of the world. It pushes all other matters to the wayside and, like a child doing something unfathomable just because he hasn't received enough attention, momentarily shocks us into abandoning our long-term missions and day-to-day activities.
Fear is debilitating, and terror, according to Merriam-Webster, is "a state of intense fear." Our challenge, as global citizens, is to recognize terrorism as a misguided agent of change and continue onwards in building the kinds of agents and mechanisms that will instigate change appropriately and civilly. Though thinking of terrorism through an "us" vs. "them" lens, in which we are able to victimize ourselves and feel helpless against psychologically disturbed and violent rouge groups, is easy given the constant rhetoric of our political leaders, we must look beyond this self-victimization to work towards the world we want to see rather than fearing action in the world in which we currently live. Fear is all-consuming, and loss even more so; but the greatest thing we have to fear is leaving a terror-drenched world for our children and grandchildren. If we instigate positive change in our domestic social systems (like education) and our international interactions, we could reshape this world and slowly begin to see the change we need. Facing forward through challenge and potential loss, prioritizing the power of the future over the immediacy of grief and fright, we must remember what FDR said in his 1933 inaugural address: "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself--nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance."
Terrorism is not a new term; it's not a concept that has been introduced and defined in the last twenty or thirty years, like the internet or fiber-optics or in-vitro fertilization. In the last few American political administrations, though, the term has taken on a significant political weight. It has become a method for perpetuating an "us" vs. "them" rhetoric and, as a result, has become something we think about on a regular basis in evaluating how we behave versus how other people behave. It's important to look beyond the way we are taught to think about terrorism, though, and understand what it really means absent of our own political and social interpretation of it. In 2004, the United Nations Security Council defined terrorism as any act "intended to cause death or serious bodily harm to civilians or non-combatants with the purpose of intimidating a population or compelling a government or an international organization to do or abstain from doing any act." In short, terrorism means trying to promote a political agenda by seriously harming regular people.
There are two facets of terrorism that I find most disturbing. The first is the idea that physical force against innocent people is a useful mechanism for instigating political change. This has nothing to do with our group versus that other group and everything to do with the perception, held even by a small group, that violence against civilians is a constructive method for change. This is something that sociologists, criminologists, psychologists, and political scientists are all studying, but once we know the cause, will we then know how to change it? Since this discovery seems unlikely, we must operate with terrorism as a reality, as skewed as it may be, and learn how to live with it rather than against it.
This brings me to the second element of terrorism that disturbs me. Terrorism, in the most unfortunate of ways, takes precedent over all other things because of its unpredictability. In my normal, day-to-day life, I am training to be an educator. I believe that schools make a difference in our society, and my goal is to make American schools training grounds for capable and engaged citizens. Yet when tourists and businesspeople are trapped in a Mumbai hotel under siege, having spent one minute sipping a cocktail in the hotel bar and the next being ushered by men in masks into a hostage situation, the mission of education seems quaint, like a topic for cocktail party discussion or some sort of idealist, hippy-dippy dream distracting from the "real" issue. Terrorism does more than inflict pain on individuals and their families and pressure governments to change political stances. An act of terrorism commands the attention of the world. It pushes all other matters to the wayside and, like a child doing something unfathomable just because he hasn't received enough attention, momentarily shocks us into abandoning our long-term missions and day-to-day activities.
Fear is debilitating, and terror, according to Merriam-Webster, is "a state of intense fear." Our challenge, as global citizens, is to recognize terrorism as a misguided agent of change and continue onwards in building the kinds of agents and mechanisms that will instigate change appropriately and civilly. Though thinking of terrorism through an "us" vs. "them" lens, in which we are able to victimize ourselves and feel helpless against psychologically disturbed and violent rouge groups, is easy given the constant rhetoric of our political leaders, we must look beyond this self-victimization to work towards the world we want to see rather than fearing action in the world in which we currently live. Fear is all-consuming, and loss even more so; but the greatest thing we have to fear is leaving a terror-drenched world for our children and grandchildren. If we instigate positive change in our domestic social systems (like education) and our international interactions, we could reshape this world and slowly begin to see the change we need. Facing forward through challenge and potential loss, prioritizing the power of the future over the immediacy of grief and fright, we must remember what FDR said in his 1933 inaugural address: "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself--nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance."
Monday, November 3, 2008
Ushering in the Next Era
I have never been one to write about politics. During the 2004 election, my parents told me to write about my experience in Ohio so I wouldn’t forget; they said it would be an experience for the books, a time unlike any other that was mine to document. Here we are, four years later, singing a reprise of that blazing chorus of hope and fear, and though I let it all seep over me before, maybe the time to write about it is now.
In fall 2004, Lorain County, Ohio saw an influx of visitors from across the nation pile out of vans to “get out the vote.” Celebrities made appearances, rallies were held, blue and red signs dotted front yards for miles. On Election Day, we watched the outcomes in other states come in from lines at our own polling places. During the six and a half hours that I spent waiting to vote, I was fed and entertained by fellow students and townspeople afraid that the long wait would send tired would-be voters home. I enjoyed Chinese food from a local restaurant, brought to my spot in line with a choice of sauces, listened to some of Oberlin’s best musicians perform violin concertos and organ pieces, avoided local media covering the “unexpected voter turnout,” did some schoolwork. Every so often, I’d chat with the others in line; we’d say we couldn’t believe how few voting machines there were, would our votes make it in on time, avoiding the real subject of why we were there: to change the nation. In 2004, unprecedented numbers of college students exercised their voting rights in Ohio. Home states like New York and Massachusetts and California seemed undeserving of our votes. Instead, we imposed ourselves on our temporary state, Ohio, not to impact life there but to impact the nation for which we stand, no matter which state we stand for it in.
In the end, our votes in Lorain County weren’t counted. Kerry indicated intentions to cede long before many of us even made it inside a polling booth. For weeks, it felt as though we had lost six and a half hours of our lives for the basic, unrealized premise that, in a democratic nation, every vote counts, when really ours didn’t even matter.
Like a dream deferred, the hope for change became focused on four years down the road, November 4, 2008, a date that seemed too many days of poor leadership away. We watched the American image abroad decline substantially through intifadas in Israel, invasions in Iraq and Afghanistan, and a slew of other questionable foreign relations decisions. Outside our own front doors, we sent children and teachers into underfunded failing schools, invested our money in an increasingly unstable economy, struggled to afford healthcare, and further perpetuated the view that Americans are greedy, uneducated consumers of the world’s products and resources who think about nobody other than themselves. Having by majority elected monkeys in suits to take vacations from a big white house on the American dime instead of improving our lives, we were held responsible for this action, in a sense, by getting what we deserved.
Now, on November 3, 2008, we brace for another day of reckoning. Most of us think we are ready for change, or at least know we desperately need it. Many of us think we see an opportunity for this in one of the candidates, though quite a few of us think we won’t see the change we need in either of our options. In the 2004 election, voters had the choice of the incumbent; they saw the familiar face of a man who didn’t seem to totally mess up our lives, compared to a stranger who said he would do great things but hadn’t had the opportunity to show that he really would. In 2008, the starting ground is flatter. Though both candidates have track records, neither has been the chief executive. Neither has had that unfair advantage of not totally messing things up, an advantage that sadly instills trust rather than disapproval in this country. As a result, we can hope that the man who wins tomorrow will be the one elected by the majority to show us what a fresh face in the White House can do for our nation.
On November 4, 2008, we exercise our right to elect the leaders of our government. We cast our votes for the person who most represents the values that we adhere to and the future we see for our country. All that we know now is that the Bush era is over; we can only hope that after tomorrow, we will not spend another four years waiting on a dream of strong, competent leadership deferred, but instead move full-force forward into four years of re-evaluation, reconstruction, and re-determination to make America a place where we want and deserve to live.
In fall 2004, Lorain County, Ohio saw an influx of visitors from across the nation pile out of vans to “get out the vote.” Celebrities made appearances, rallies were held, blue and red signs dotted front yards for miles. On Election Day, we watched the outcomes in other states come in from lines at our own polling places. During the six and a half hours that I spent waiting to vote, I was fed and entertained by fellow students and townspeople afraid that the long wait would send tired would-be voters home. I enjoyed Chinese food from a local restaurant, brought to my spot in line with a choice of sauces, listened to some of Oberlin’s best musicians perform violin concertos and organ pieces, avoided local media covering the “unexpected voter turnout,” did some schoolwork. Every so often, I’d chat with the others in line; we’d say we couldn’t believe how few voting machines there were, would our votes make it in on time, avoiding the real subject of why we were there: to change the nation. In 2004, unprecedented numbers of college students exercised their voting rights in Ohio. Home states like New York and Massachusetts and California seemed undeserving of our votes. Instead, we imposed ourselves on our temporary state, Ohio, not to impact life there but to impact the nation for which we stand, no matter which state we stand for it in.
In the end, our votes in Lorain County weren’t counted. Kerry indicated intentions to cede long before many of us even made it inside a polling booth. For weeks, it felt as though we had lost six and a half hours of our lives for the basic, unrealized premise that, in a democratic nation, every vote counts, when really ours didn’t even matter.
Like a dream deferred, the hope for change became focused on four years down the road, November 4, 2008, a date that seemed too many days of poor leadership away. We watched the American image abroad decline substantially through intifadas in Israel, invasions in Iraq and Afghanistan, and a slew of other questionable foreign relations decisions. Outside our own front doors, we sent children and teachers into underfunded failing schools, invested our money in an increasingly unstable economy, struggled to afford healthcare, and further perpetuated the view that Americans are greedy, uneducated consumers of the world’s products and resources who think about nobody other than themselves. Having by majority elected monkeys in suits to take vacations from a big white house on the American dime instead of improving our lives, we were held responsible for this action, in a sense, by getting what we deserved.
Now, on November 3, 2008, we brace for another day of reckoning. Most of us think we are ready for change, or at least know we desperately need it. Many of us think we see an opportunity for this in one of the candidates, though quite a few of us think we won’t see the change we need in either of our options. In the 2004 election, voters had the choice of the incumbent; they saw the familiar face of a man who didn’t seem to totally mess up our lives, compared to a stranger who said he would do great things but hadn’t had the opportunity to show that he really would. In 2008, the starting ground is flatter. Though both candidates have track records, neither has been the chief executive. Neither has had that unfair advantage of not totally messing things up, an advantage that sadly instills trust rather than disapproval in this country. As a result, we can hope that the man who wins tomorrow will be the one elected by the majority to show us what a fresh face in the White House can do for our nation.
On November 4, 2008, we exercise our right to elect the leaders of our government. We cast our votes for the person who most represents the values that we adhere to and the future we see for our country. All that we know now is that the Bush era is over; we can only hope that after tomorrow, we will not spend another four years waiting on a dream of strong, competent leadership deferred, but instead move full-force forward into four years of re-evaluation, reconstruction, and re-determination to make America a place where we want and deserve to live.
Monday, October 6, 2008
We Were Never Nightmare Hooligans, But Seekers of the Blond Nose for Truth
Ben Jones asked the trustees of Oberlin to write about their fearlessness for the launch of the new Oberlin.edu site. I hesitatingly agreed but have regretted it ever since. My main problem with this task is that, as fearless Obies go, I am certainly not one of them. I have not overcome some insurmountable barrier, defied a social institution or stood up for a cause that no one else has dared to stand up for. I can tell you about the fearless people with whom I surrounded myself while at Oberlin, like Nivan, who boldly bounds boulders and now teaches 2nd grade in North Carolina, or Krista, who is serving as a Peace Corps volunteer in Togo, or David, who moved to a small city without a single friend around, 3000 miles away from his family, to commit himself to his passion for photography. There are many of that fearless breed of Obies running around the world, fearlessly and passionately pursuing noble causes and/or their ultimate truths. Then there are the rest of us. Like this other breed of Obies, for whom "fearless" has caused a personal self-doubt and overwhelming apprehension, the debut of this aggressive neon branding deeming Oberlin as a training ground for fearless leaders has left me asking a question I never imagined I'd ask: do I deserve to be an Obie?
As psychologically disturbing as this question might be (now that it's after-the-fact, and I've been granted a diploma and even a spot on the board of trustees), I'm going to write about it anyway, for two reasons: 1) because I am not afraid to (fearless?) and 2) because, like every other Obie, I believe I have something meaningful to say. In this case, my meaningful contribution will be to let you know that you do not need to ask yourself this question because Ben Jones, in requesting that I do this exercise, has convinced me that all Obies have a fearlessness within them, no matter how latent this trait may seem when our peers and classmates, youthful and bold, are speeding swiftly ahead of us to change the world before we even get there. Here goes.
On a recent visit to Oberlin (the same visit on which Ben Jones inflicted this time-consuming thought process on me), I climbed the stairs to the 3rd floor of Rice and saw familiar faces nose-deep in Kierkegaard. To no surprise of mine, David Kamitsuka, a professor of religion, sat in brow-furrowed conversation with three students who were impressively awake and engaged for the Saturday morning hour. This is not a sight seen often at my current academic institution. It is this very moment of engagement that defines Oberlin and, by power of association, makes all those involved fearless whether they know it or not.
Education is the most powerful mechanism of our society, and as Obies we have made a commitment to educating ourselves. This is the most fearless act that we have engaged in collectively. By joining a small academic community, each of us as individuals has affirmed that there is knowledge out there to be gained and we do not yet possess it. Each of us has committed to taking whatever risks are necessary to gain even just a piece of this knowledge. We will sacrifice time and money, the proximity of family and friends, the comforting reality of ignorance as bliss, and we will put our worldview (literally, the way we know and organize the world; this is no small concept) on the line and open our minds wide open. This all for the sake of learning, an eight-letter word that encompasses that unencompassable, insurmountable task of knowledge acquisition.
Then, after saying "yes" to this petrifying sacrifice of all things we think we know for certain, we enter a constant flurry of discourse that is uncontainable. It finds us in our dorm rooms, in the hallways of King or the Science Center, even in the cities we inhabit after we leave Oberlin--it asks us questions, finds a way to make itself applicable to our daily actions, and hardly ever leaves us alone.
Every Oberlin student knows that head-in-hands moment, when you cannot hide from that sinking, awful, anxious feeling of reaching and reaching and reaching for the answer that you painfully know might not even be there. Every alum, whether or not they can tie it to a particular paper or course or year in school, remembers the gut-wrenching, exhilarating (in retrospect) sensation of not quite getting the point. This is something each of us willingly subjects ourselves to. Reflecting on it now, can you believe it?
If allowing oneself to get to this point of utter submission to the universe of knowledge isn't fearless, then I don't know what is. Every individual who has made that affirmation, who has said "yes" to questioning what we know and seeking to know more, is deserving of every positive trait associated with being an Obie. No matter where you are now or where you end up, your Oberlin experience is a part of you wholly and deeply. Obies don't just change the world--they constantly grasp for the absolute ends of it, bravely, entrepreneurially, infinitely, and fearlessly.
As psychologically disturbing as this question might be (now that it's after-the-fact, and I've been granted a diploma and even a spot on the board of trustees), I'm going to write about it anyway, for two reasons: 1) because I am not afraid to (fearless?) and 2) because, like every other Obie, I believe I have something meaningful to say. In this case, my meaningful contribution will be to let you know that you do not need to ask yourself this question because Ben Jones, in requesting that I do this exercise, has convinced me that all Obies have a fearlessness within them, no matter how latent this trait may seem when our peers and classmates, youthful and bold, are speeding swiftly ahead of us to change the world before we even get there. Here goes.
On a recent visit to Oberlin (the same visit on which Ben Jones inflicted this time-consuming thought process on me), I climbed the stairs to the 3rd floor of Rice and saw familiar faces nose-deep in Kierkegaard. To no surprise of mine, David Kamitsuka, a professor of religion, sat in brow-furrowed conversation with three students who were impressively awake and engaged for the Saturday morning hour. This is not a sight seen often at my current academic institution. It is this very moment of engagement that defines Oberlin and, by power of association, makes all those involved fearless whether they know it or not.
Education is the most powerful mechanism of our society, and as Obies we have made a commitment to educating ourselves. This is the most fearless act that we have engaged in collectively. By joining a small academic community, each of us as individuals has affirmed that there is knowledge out there to be gained and we do not yet possess it. Each of us has committed to taking whatever risks are necessary to gain even just a piece of this knowledge. We will sacrifice time and money, the proximity of family and friends, the comforting reality of ignorance as bliss, and we will put our worldview (literally, the way we know and organize the world; this is no small concept) on the line and open our minds wide open. This all for the sake of learning, an eight-letter word that encompasses that unencompassable, insurmountable task of knowledge acquisition.
Then, after saying "yes" to this petrifying sacrifice of all things we think we know for certain, we enter a constant flurry of discourse that is uncontainable. It finds us in our dorm rooms, in the hallways of King or the Science Center, even in the cities we inhabit after we leave Oberlin--it asks us questions, finds a way to make itself applicable to our daily actions, and hardly ever leaves us alone.
Every Oberlin student knows that head-in-hands moment, when you cannot hide from that sinking, awful, anxious feeling of reaching and reaching and reaching for the answer that you painfully know might not even be there. Every alum, whether or not they can tie it to a particular paper or course or year in school, remembers the gut-wrenching, exhilarating (in retrospect) sensation of not quite getting the point. This is something each of us willingly subjects ourselves to. Reflecting on it now, can you believe it?
If allowing oneself to get to this point of utter submission to the universe of knowledge isn't fearless, then I don't know what is. Every individual who has made that affirmation, who has said "yes" to questioning what we know and seeking to know more, is deserving of every positive trait associated with being an Obie. No matter where you are now or where you end up, your Oberlin experience is a part of you wholly and deeply. Obies don't just change the world--they constantly grasp for the absolute ends of it, bravely, entrepreneurially, infinitely, and fearlessly.
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
Careful, This is About Vouchers
I attended a private Episcopal school where the student body was about 65% Jewish. What were they all doing there? Were there no decent Jewish schools around? Was this school better than the secular schools in the area? Is it possible that some parents figured that some value-based or faith-based education was better for their children than whatever the state or some other private entity deemed most critical for an "educated citizenry"?
Surprisingly, these are the kinds of questions people ask when they talk about voucher programs. The legal precedent allowing states to establish or ban voucher programs stems from average citizens filing suit against the administrators of voucher programs and other incentive programs with the argument that these programs unconstitutionally provide extensive and exclusive benefits to religious schools (see Lemon v. Kurtzman, Agostini v. Felton, Mueller v. Allen, Zelman v. Simmons Harris). As a result, the difference between having a problem with government endorsement or facilitation of religious schooling and having a problem with the government enabling a pervasive opt-out of public schooling is frequently blurred. Which is the issue that the American populace really cares about? As a nation, which are we more afraid of: the domination of religious education or the continued decay of public education?
I think the most alarming issue here is that no one's vocalizing the distinction between these two concerns. Secondly, even when we do parse out the issues, we're focusing on the wrong one. The fact is, if a religious school is the best school around, many parents will opt for it regardless of religious affiliation. The religious school isn't forcing these children into religious education; the parents are weighing their options and deciding what they think is "best" for their children. If these parents have a problem with the religious component of the school, they'll teach their children something different at home; the overall gain of the education the children will receive is greater than the losses associated with this particular curricular or social component. On the other hand, if a religious school is the "best" school in an area and enough parents think that religious education is not the way to go, then why isn't there increased demand in these areas for "separate but equal" educational accommodations in the secular sphere? Why are the cases and battles about benefits to religious schools when they should really be about turning those funds into creating a competitive public schooling system that rivals the private school product?
Surprisingly, these are the kinds of questions people ask when they talk about voucher programs. The legal precedent allowing states to establish or ban voucher programs stems from average citizens filing suit against the administrators of voucher programs and other incentive programs with the argument that these programs unconstitutionally provide extensive and exclusive benefits to religious schools (see Lemon v. Kurtzman, Agostini v. Felton, Mueller v. Allen, Zelman v. Simmons Harris). As a result, the difference between having a problem with government endorsement or facilitation of religious schooling and having a problem with the government enabling a pervasive opt-out of public schooling is frequently blurred. Which is the issue that the American populace really cares about? As a nation, which are we more afraid of: the domination of religious education or the continued decay of public education?
I think the most alarming issue here is that no one's vocalizing the distinction between these two concerns. Secondly, even when we do parse out the issues, we're focusing on the wrong one. The fact is, if a religious school is the best school around, many parents will opt for it regardless of religious affiliation. The religious school isn't forcing these children into religious education; the parents are weighing their options and deciding what they think is "best" for their children. If these parents have a problem with the religious component of the school, they'll teach their children something different at home; the overall gain of the education the children will receive is greater than the losses associated with this particular curricular or social component. On the other hand, if a religious school is the "best" school in an area and enough parents think that religious education is not the way to go, then why isn't there increased demand in these areas for "separate but equal" educational accommodations in the secular sphere? Why are the cases and battles about benefits to religious schools when they should really be about turning those funds into creating a competitive public schooling system that rivals the private school product?
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