Concrete Thinkers

I'm feeling like Professor Kirk from The Chronicles of Narnia—"What are they teaching in the schools these days?"

I suppose it's all electronic. If my students want a flight of imagination (someone else's imagination), they go to a movie or fire up a computer game. If they actually read print (an increasingly odd and specialist activity), it always has a recipe-book concreteness. Each word only has one unambiguous simple meaning. No shades. No poetry. No assignment from a teacher can ever be humorous, sad, sarcastic, or ironic.

It all reminds me of the time when I was a tour guide for a busload of Japanese students. I tried to warm them up with a joke. They took notes.

One of my colleagues was trying to teach Shakespeare's Hamlet. The textbook said it would be helpful if the reader imagined himself/herself to be in Denmark or England. The students came to the conclusion that all plays take place in Denmark or England.

I once tried to do something with non-literal language. I began with the old song, "You Are the Wind Beneath My Wings," then moved to the 23rd Psalm, and asked if we could take these literally. Did Bette Midler think she had aluminum wings projecting from her body? Did the Psalmist think he had white wool and ate grass? The students' conclusion: poetry in general is totally stupid nonsense.

I'm not sure how to get out of this depressing loop. I think I'll try folk songs. I wonder if I can find a great joke that everyone gets. (Not likely)

I do suspect that this hyper-literalist language that avoids all thinking and interpretation does play into the hands of the right-wing nut-case demagogues. Example: Someone in the Federal government suggested that it would be a good idea to perhaps restrict fishing in certain areas to avoid depleting streams and lakes. (That's a very nuanced and "maybe" kind of statement.) Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh picked it up. They can't do "maybe" and "nuance," so it came out as a solid order (it wasn't) from the president himself (it wasn't) saying that all fishing would forever be forbidden in the USA. And because my students (and others like them) can't discern between the literal prescription of an operating manual and the ambiguity of someone who is pondering an idea—and assume that anyone who speaks on the radio is always absolutely correct—America assumes that Obama has come up with another way to strip us of our rights.