Open Question Details

While reading Fredric Jameson, I came across this quote by Chrystia Freeman (Sale of the Century, 2000): "Yet, at least for the intelligentsia, life in the fin de siecle USSR had its compensations. No one had very much money, but no one had to do very much work, either. The result was a whole society that acted as if it had never left college: intense, emotional, time-consuming friendships; endless hours spent drinking tea or vodka and discussing the meaning of life; the avid pursuit of esoteric spiritual or creative interests. If middle-class Russians sometimes seem perversely nostalgic for the Soviet Union, one reason is that the collapse of communism forced them horribly and abruptly to grow up" (p. 114). Feel free to problematize the related notions of "growth" and "intellectual" and "college life" at will.

Kairos

Kairos is a sense of time that is separate from chronos or chronological time. Ralph Ellison has a great paragraph or two about Kairos in the prologue to Invisible Man: "Once I saw a prizefighter boxing a yokel. The fighter was swift and amazingly scientific. His body was one violent flow of rapid rhythmic action. He hit the yokel a hundred times while the yokel held up his arms in stunned surprise. But suddenly the yokel, rolling about in the gale of boxing gloves, struck one blow and knocked science, speed and footwork as cold as a well-digger's posterior. The smart money hit the canvas. The long shot got the nod. The yokel had simply stepped inside of his opponent's sense of time.

Great rhetors always think outside of chronology - they are often described as, for example, a few seconds ahead of their opponents or bringing ideas before their audiences at exactly the correct moment. Occasionally we may experience physical moments that are outside of time. I recommend these. Yesterday I moved around a speedway at over 160mph. Scientifically, "mph" means movement through time but when the human soul moves at that speed with gravitational forces tugging hard and a cement wall looming feet or inches away, science is knocked cold. So rhetoric is like boxing and driving a race car ... who'd a' thunk it? Whatever rhetoric is, it is not science!

High Broderism

Definer discovered a new word today and he loves it! It's "high broderism," a reference to Washington Post columnist David Broder. Broder is the most infuriating of all Main Stream Media (i.e. "MSM") personalities. The frustration with Broder is not that he is unable to call a spade a spade (judging by his writing he must be smart enough to do this), but instead because he won't call a spade a spade under the misimpression that outing spades is a politically partisan activity. Broder, for example, hid behind a legal facade when he wrote about how Clinton allegedly lied (December 21, 1998). Clinton did not allegedly lie, he did lie when he proclaimed that he had not had sexual relations with "that woman." I suspect that had Broder and his MSM followers told the truth that Clinton had lied, the right wingnuts (another great neologism) would not have reacted as vehemently as they did . . . against the press. Now Broder's dogged and stupid desire to be "non-partisan" has cost him the support of the left as he refuses to acknowledge that the president falsely led a nation into war for political reasons (cherry picking evidence, creating new offices of yes-men to re-analyze intelligence in order to get the right result, firing contradictory voices, destroying the lives of critics . . .). Instead, Broder holds the the "non-partisan" fallacy that both sides have legitimate arguments. It may be either that the democrats are right or that the republicans are right, Broder has always argued - that's "high broderism." But when one abandons the truth in favor of either/or arguments, one loses both legs to stand on.

Better yet, "high broderism," is a subtle dig at the stodginess of Broder's home newspaper, the Washington Post which has lost the ethics, the commitment to truth, and all relations with both community and reality. Instead, Broder and the Post have become High Brow and as such, increasingly irrelevant. Where once the Post and its columnists got ahead of stories, now they are far behind. One example: as the country has turned solidly (as in 70% of the population) against George Bush's War, the Post has not rescinded the support it was only too happy to give in 2003. Applying high broderism, I would argue that either the public is right, or George Bush and the Washington Post are right. Abandoning high broderism, I choose the public.

The MSM Can't Recognize Truth, Critics Assert

Michael Gordon and Jim Rutenberg headline today's New York Times with the title "Bush Distorts Qaeda Links, Critics Assert." Why the Hell do they add "critics assert" to the end of a headline that is true without the clause? The weaselly-snivelly main stream press has been credited for finally getting a backbone long after most Americans figured out that the Bush administration is 100% spin and 0% reality. Supposedly, the press has become critical of the administration. Yet the MSM still can't call a spade a spade.

And it's not just about the administration. Bible-thumper, family values advocate, and Senator David Vitter (R-State of Hypocrisy) admitted to having sinned when challenged about his contacts with the DC madam, and yet the press can only describe him as allegedly having an encounter with a prostitute. The encounter is not alleged (though the prostitute may be - that's in court). Correctly stated, Vitter had an affair with an alleged prostitute. And try this dozy. When Kurt Waldheim died recently, the MSM reported that he "associated with Nazis." While it's true that Waldheim associated with Nazis, it would be more accurate to report that he was a Nazi.

And this goes beyond words.

The students I teach are desperate for strait talk. Indeed, Americans are desperate for straight talk. It is why John McCain's 2000 campaign took off until Karl Rove got out his sledgehammer of misinformation. It is why Vermonters happily elected a socialist to the U.S. Senate. And it is why the MSM is dieing.

Peeling Back the Wizzard of Oz's Curtain

Television is not known for subtlety. However, CNN has quietly begun to peel back the curtain from the current Wizard of Oz, also known as the President of the United States. Though it is well known in political circles that president's staffs regularly dictate how every public moment is to be staged and impose a language that all presidential subordinates must use (not unlike the commie-speak of the Soviet Union), I wonder how much about this the American public knows.

About three weeks ago, CNN has broadcast a story about how Laura Bush's events are staged to the point where every action and word are set up in advance - particularly for events that are supposed to look natural as when Laura travelled to Africa to bring attention to the AIDS crisis. Of course she didn't just show up in a truck that regularly passed out food to starving Africans. For security reasons, some of the staging can be forgiven. But there is much more. Typically, the press is told in advance exactly where the public official will stand (complete with marks on the ground for actor and cameras), what she will do/say and how long it will take. Normally, the press doesn't report on this. Rather they simply broadcast the images. This time, CNN took a hand held camera to the "advance" (the "advance team" sets up events in advance - and many of them have B.A.s in communication) and filmed the advance-woman indicating what would happen. And low-and-behold, it happened. Ah, truth. But of course, the story has now disappeared from CNN's webpage. The story wasn't good for the president, and was not good for CNN.

Last night, CNN broadcast a brief clip from a response that Richard Carmona, the former surgeon general, provided to the House Government Oversight committee (the transcript of the Q & A has not yet been posted to the web). Carmona revealed that political appointees of the Bush administration required him to use Bush's name at least three times per page in all speeches. Those of us who have worked in Washington are familiar with this kind of requirement - repeating a person's name has a powerful effect on audiences. But I wonder what other kinds of rules this administration's officials must abide by when they speak. Must they use the phrase "democrat party" rather than "democratic party?" We know from Jon Stewart that they are remarkably good at staying on message, but just how detailed are those messages?

Mostly, I wonder just how much Americans realize the rules of staging and speaking in Washington, DC. I don't wonder why the main stream media does not report on this more often - this kind of knowledge would turn Americans off to news that is not.

Can Critical Thinking be Taught?

Can Critical Thinking be Taught? So reads the catchy cover page of American Educator’s most recent issue. I answered the question: "Of course!" But inside, the focus article’s subtitle read, “Why Is It So Hard to Teach?” Huh?

Relying on lots of statistical studies that indicate the nation’s students are not learning critical thinking skills, the author, a professor of cognitive psychology, argues that cognitive thinking is hard to do and harder to teach. But of course! Otherwise, why else would the nation’s schools be failing? The article reminded me of a back-and-forth at an American Historical Association conference a few years ago. Panelists complained that high schools were increasingly scaling back courses in history to which an audience member said, “I’m glad my students aren’t taught history in high school.” That history professor and many others believe that high school history classes do a disservice to the discipline of history, to the humanities in general, and to the students. High schools are failing to adequately teach high school students the humanities where critical thinking is best learned, but not because critical thinking is hard. Rather high school teachers are failing.

Teaching critical thinking is easy. Actually it might be the easiest skill of all to teach. But first I'll try to explain why I think students aren’t learning critical thinking: 1) teachers spoon-feed their students and hold their hands through problem solving; 2) teachers allow students to make factual or logical errors in papers, presentations, and in class participation; and 3) teachers don’t challenge students to research, reflect, and argue well. So how can critical thinking be taught? Simple: challenge students. Tell them when they are wrong. Demand that they argue well, reveal their sources, and support their claims. And don’t provide answers; provide questions.

I remember a conversation that Thesaurus and I had with a professor who regretted a class she taught that she did not think “went well” when in fact it was the best class I ever took (and I took two grad classes with the great Larry Levine). I suspect that some students were disappointed because the teacher did not do 1, 2, and 3 above because as students we are accustomed to being coddled. Why was it such a good class for me and for Thesaurus? Because the teacher provided the three elements most important to critical thinking: A) a healthy intellectual environment; B) good texts and discussions that provided both context and theories; and C) unanswered questions. As it turns out, I am still learning from that class.

Answers, as I explain to my students, are antithetical to argument. And to this I could add critical thinking. As Lao Tse taught thousands of years ago, “the point of the journey is not to arrive” (from a translation by Neil Peart). Similarly, the point of learning is not to stop learning. Answers end arguments, learning, and critical thinking. If you want to teach critical thinking ask unanswerable questions, then sit back and watch the students think. Oh, and when the students are wrong or they think they've got the answer, tell them the're wrong.

Bay Window State

Massachusetts is known as “the Bay State” because of its historical ties and geographical proximity to Massachusetts Bay. Perhaps “the Bay Window State” would do just as well because this architectural feature graces so many homes in the commonwealth. And these are more remarkable than the rather puritan Cape Cod homes that are also so common here.

Everywhere I walk in Boston, I am struck by the architecture of seeing. Bay windows are in so many respects like Museum display cases. On the other side of each is supposed to be something important, valuable, or interesting. And through the glass panes of each we gaze and are looked upon (on the latter, see James Elkins’ disturbing and mind bending The Object Stares Back). Thus I ask: what is the object framed by the bay window? We look out of these windows suggesting that the world beyond is supposed to be the object of our gaze. Yet we block bay windows with curtains, shades, furniture, plants and so on to prevent people from looking in. Maybe it’s the people inside who are objects of the gaze. While bay windows circumscribe our vision as we look out (you can’t look out the walls where the architect chose not to install bay windows), they also act like an animal cage making the objects within interesting – a fact made all the more real when we recall that as children we are tabooed not to look inside people’s windows.

Automobiles are an even better example of this taboo. Most of us rest secure in the knowledge that others will not look into our cars as we pick our noses or clip our fingernails (or worse). Truckers have caught on that violating the taboo comes with no penalty. So if you are ever on a long trip, check out the truckers as they try to watch you pick your nose. What are you gonna’ do about it? Put a couch in front of the window?

Sophistai

Definer likes the trend of groups "taking back" negatively charged words. The most famous of these reclamation projects is the term Queer. It's about time another word was taken back - ok, it's about 2,500 years late, but the term Sophistai should no longer carry the negatively charged weight heaped upon it by a utopian philosopher named Plato.

As I will explain to my students this fall, I do not want to be called professor. A professor is one who professes; or a person who declares his or her beliefs. The term emerged in the late fourteenth-century in England in reference to those scholars at Oxford and Cambridge who professed faith (theologians) or knowledge (philosophers). Sophistai make no professions. 2,500 years ago, sophistai were teachers of rhetoric and wisdom. They did not profess knowledge, they practiced wisdom.

Philosophers after Plato searched for the truth and condemned sophistai for teaching that persuasion was only related to the truth. One could be persuasive without telling the truth, as rhetoricians understood. But utopian philosophers condemned sophistai for teaching this rather obvious bit of wisdom. Sophistai were dangerous because we taught students the elements of democracy: persuasion, compromise, the search for common ground, and reaching the "best" decision. Contrarily, philosophers were only interested in the "right" decision and disdained democracy and the very thought that individuals imperfectly trained in philosophy might somehow be persuasive.

All of that philosophical hubris has landed Americans in a lot of trouble. We know we are lied to by our elected officials, many of us have abandoned the truth, and those that haven't have stayed steadfastly with a President who professes faith while rejecting knowledge. Thanks to professors (or in other words, doctors of philosophy), we have become incapable of democracy. With the resurgence of rhetoric as an academic discipline, perhaps democracy can be saved.

This is my one profession: I am not a professor. I am a sophistai.

The Athens of America

One of Boston’s many nicknames is “the Athens of America.” The nickname is derived from two contradictory sources. The first is Boston’s harboring of America’s great orators during the eighteenth-century and the role those orators and the city played in starting a democratic revolution in 1775 and in extending that revolution to African Americans and women during the antebellum period. The second source is a product of the many universities in Boston. These universities make Boston the best educated large city in America if not the world in much the same way that Athenians were a well-educated citizenry (the slaves and women didn’t count) thanks to the many academies and traveling teachers in that great city.

There is a contradiction here. Boston’s great orators were trained in rhetoric—that expertise is what made them great. But Boston’s universities, following Harvard’s lead, are opposed to rhetoric. As rhetoric fell out of favor in the Truth-mad eighteenth century, Harvard took the lead in expelling the one discipline most firmly opposed to truth. Rhetoric, and its practice of argument, is a search for common ground, compromise, and what is best—not truth. Solutions are reached through the employment of words, debate, give and take, and a mutual ability to recognize two sides. But during the eighteenth century, Enlightenment scientists were certain of truth—a good-given, yet scientifically provable ideal. Though some scientists hold fast to the model, even Einstein’s theory of relativity suggests that truth can occupy many different positions. And while rhetoric is gradually regaining prominence in universities across America, it is not in Boston where rhetoric can only be found at Boston College (an institution inspired by the pre-Enlightenment Jesuits) and Northeastern University (created by the practically inclined YMCA).

Here is the great irony: Though it was rhetoric that gave the Americans the ability to expel the British, inspired Americans to democracy, and enabled the incorporation of African Americans and women into the polity, the abandonment of rhetoric threatens most of those goals. Without the ability to argue well and to recognize the validity of two or more sides in an argument, we are left with self-righteousness, polarization, and deadlock. In other words, Harvard’s abandonment of rhetoric has led us to a politics of hatred and incomprehension in the American republic that dooms democracy to a slow death. Will Harvard recant? This is doubtful because Harvard has grown accustomed to being right (this is more a measure of its endowment than its accuracy). Community groups in Boston and Cambridge have come to dislike Harvard because the institution’s lack of interest in negotiations and thus in rhetoric. What we must hope is that other universities stop following Harvard’s lead.

Orwell and the Gutting of Brown v. Board

Yesterday in a feat of rhetorical prowess, a majority of the Supreme Court decided to gut Brown v. Board of Education. Normally, when a court overturns a precedent, it carefully explains why circumstances have changed. The power of precedent (the Latin term is stare decisis) normally controls how courts may rule - even new justices Roberts and Alito vowed to maintain precedent during their recent Senate confirmation hearings. Yet . . . a little rhetorical criticism reveals just how quickly Roberts and Alito broke their vows. Two sentences should suffice:

Chief Justice Roberts, writing the Court's opinion in Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1 et al. (June 28, 2007), "argued" that: "The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race." While repetition has been an extraordinarily effective weapon in the arsenal of conservative speak since the 1980s (a trick they may have learned from George Orwell's 1984), this one is so much a tautology that it not only reveals the absence of an argument, but also the conservative rhetorical strategy of repetition. Roberts may have thought himself clever, but a quick look halves his too cleverness.

My favorite rhetorical trick appears as well in this opinion - redefinition. Roberts argued, "Before Brown, schoolchildren were told where they could and could not go to school based on the color of their skin." This is the most powerful of Orwellian exercises: the re-writing of history. An accurate rendering of history would read, "Before Brown, BLACK schoolchildren were told where they could and could not go to school." As Justice Stevens in his dissent noted, "The Chief Justice fails to note that it was only black schoolchildren who were so ordered; indeed, the history books do not tell stories of white children struggling to attend black schools." Roberts and the Supremes redefined "schoolchildren before Brown" in a manner that conflates the Black and White experience in America. Stevens called them on their lie, let us hope the press informs Americans about the Court's Orwellian rhetoric.