Teach and Learn

I may have mentioned before that I am about to start graduate school this fall, to get an MA in English literature. I'm still not entirely certain what my academic focus is going to be (since I have an array of disjointed interests like postmodernism, madness, theater, work and identity), but my game plan for what to do with that degree is to teach English at the high school level, preferably in a private school or prep school. With that goal in mind, I've been thinking about how to approach teaching; true, I need to re-learn how to be a student this semester, but I think it's best to consider the two in conjunction, teaching and learning. My goal is to be both a teacher and a learner.

One of my enduring interests in literature is the construction of identity through narrative, and I think that this is one of the most important things that I have to teach adolescents; they are responsible for constructing their own identities, and facility with language is essential in doing that effectively and resisting the narratives that others will attempt to impose on them. I want to start the school year with a creative nonfiction writing exercise in which the students think of themselves as narrators and characters. There are undoubtedly dangers and limitations in viewing one's own life in terms of narrative, but this exercise of actually constructing a narrative is one way to open the discussion about those limitations, the inability to capture reality and the self in words. I want my students to realize that narratives are everywhere, and to be thoughtful and critical of every narrative they encounter.

I don't think that it's unreasonable to introduce high schoolers to literary theory; many of the theories are rather easily explained, like Marxist criticism or feminist theory, for one thing. But more important is that I want to approach my students in the same way as Zarathustra regarded the Higher Men in the second half of the book: with an expectation that they are self-sufficient and capable.

A few weeks ago, I read an article on Zarathustra and Socrates as teachers of virtue; both initially made the same mistake of assuming a position of privilege and descending to their students. In Nietzsche's reading of the Apology, Socrates chose death because he realized the inherent failure of his work and was committed to the idea of being the fool who would be taken seriously. The teacher of virtue must certainly take his work seriously, because virtue is of the utmost importance, but not himself; he must maintain a sense of irony about himself, and Socrates would not do that, so he chose death. Initially, Zarathustra insisted on being taken seriously as well, and he also failed to reach his students when he descended to them from a point of privilege. Zarathustra, however, succeeds as a teacher when he chooses to be a squanderer and a fisher of men from a mountain top:

"What to sacrifice! I squander what is given me, a squanderer with a thousand hands: how could I call that-- sacrificing? And when I desired honey I only desired bait, and sweet mucus and mucilage, for which even the mouths of growling bears, and strange, sulky, evil birds, water:
-The best bait, as huntsmen and fishermen require it. For if the world be as a gloomy forest of animals, and a pleasure-ground for all wild huntsmen, it seems to me rather--and preferably-- a fathomless, rich sea;
--A sea of many-hued fishes and crabs, for which even the gods might long, and might be tempted to become fishers in it, and casters of nets, --so rich is the world in wonderful things, great and small!
Especially the human world, the human sea: --towards it do I now throw out my golden angle-rod and say: Open up, thou human abyss!"

Zarathustra approaches teaching as an overflowing of his own joy and wisdom, and the way to attract students is to throw out that excessive happiness, to lure them up to his height instead of him descending down to them. I want to teach in a similar manner, by imploring my students to "climb mountains" with me. I should not view them as deficient, but as capable and striving. I should challenge them to raise themselves, and show them how to do that by challenging myself constantly; I will also be a learner and model the life of a learner and striver for them. This is one way of avoiding the stagnation and complacency that has made me wary of teaching in the past; I have a responsibility to constantly improve myself, for myself and for my students too.

I want my students to view themselves as self-sufficient and to foster their independence. I know that they will not all love literature, and I might fail in reaching any of the goals I set for them, but it's important that I do it anyway.

New Year

Happy 2010, everyone! It doesn't really feel like a new year; the same snow is covering the frozen earth and we're all back to business as usual for the most part after weeks of festive holiday cheer. April 1st probably was a better choice for the start of the new year; spring evokes that feeling of rebirth and renewal that we usually seek when the new year begins.

Anyway.

I've been reading "The Kreutzer Sonata" by Leo Tolstoy in the last week or so. It's a novella about two men conversing on a train, mainly about marriage and family life. The twist is, one of these men, Posdnicheff, recently murdered his wife.

Although "The Kreutzer Sonata" is horribly misogynistic (Posdnicheff is of the opinion that a woman's greatest virtue is remaining a virgin and that, because of women's education, the only control on their coquettish behavior is pregnancy and nursing children), it does raise some interesting questions about male-female relationships. None of the characters have happy, successful relationships; an old man at the beginning of the story claims that married people are doomed to misery because wives have lost their sense of fear of their husbands and husbands no longer fear God, so they commit all sorts of debaucheries. Posdnicheff, meanwhile, struggles with what really attracted him to his wife in the first place, and he concludes that he only decided to marry her because he admired her physically and wanted sexual contact. He convinced himself that this feeling was love, he heaped all of these impossible ideals upon her and then found himself disgusted by her once they consummated their marriage and she gave up her only virtue, her virginity.

Obviously, this guy has a major Madonna-Whore complex, but I think the story is still relevant in that question of human relationships. How do they develop? How much of love is actually idealization divorced from the reality of human flaws, and how do you cope when the other person departs from your idealizations?

Tolstoy wrote this story at a time when marriage was undergoing a significant transformation in Russia; arranged marriages were beginning to fall out of social acceptability, in favor of love marriages. But the interactions between the sexes were still constrained to superficial venues like ballrooms and the theater, and guided by very scripted conversations that included the same behavioral tropes: calculated charm, excessive enthusiasm for certain subjects that one does not really care about but feigns interest to become more intriguing to the prospective mate.

Is it all that different today? Male-female interactions are much less constrained in contemporary America, but there's a disturbing parallel to Posdnicheff's description of dances; he says that the women all put themselves on display, and the men peruse the options and choose to dance with whichever woman strikes him as most attractive and desireable. This reminded me of internet dating; you search through profiles and although there is personality information, it's all a calculated image designed specifically to attract. It's not necessarily the entire truth, but a particular version of a person that s/he uses to attract as many people as possible. Even in the "real world," there's still that element of superficiality, of calculations to figure out what will best attract a desireable mate.

But it doesn't have to be that way. One problem that I've noticed with a lot of young women my age, is that they are constantly trying to figure out "guys." They complain on Facebook that "guys are so dumb" or that they "just don't get guys," and they search as though there is some formula, some mathematical calculation that will solve all of their relationship problems.

The problem lies in that generalization, in the assumption that there is something universal about "guys" that will suddenly clarify and guide all interactions once that something is discovered. It's a version of Posdnicheff's problem, obscuring the individual with these abstract ideals and notions of behavior. When we relate to individuals as individuals, rather than a representative of a gender or as a manifestation of ideals that we privately hold, only then is love possible.