SCHOOL VIOLENCE AND THE LIMITS OF LEARNING

The particular violence directed against gay teens in our schools raises the question as to the nature, prevalence and consequences of other forms of violence in shool culture. Teasing, harrassment and death threats map the range of violence that gay teens face in our school systems. Other forms of violence may well be similar to, yet also vary from, these all too familar hostilities. It is important to draw attention to these other forms and manifestations given that it's likely that such behavior has a deeper and more wide-ranging effect upon the experience of learning in the schools.
This is certainly not to say that the more overt and specific violence directed especially at gay teens does not have a deep and wide-ranging effect upon the teens immediately targeted. Obviously it does. The point is that any form of violence in a learning community will suppress the freedom of expression and inquiry that is a necessary condition of learning for all students.
In the case of Michael Mangus, the gay teen attending the North Tonawanda High School in North Tonawanda, N.Y., violence took the form of harrassment regarding his manner of dress and his mannerisms of personal self-expression. It also took the heinous form of overt threats to his life. Over a period of two years, such violence against Michael took a toll far beyond the fact of having to withdraw from school in order to feel safe. Non-attendance clearly affected his opportunity to learn. However even when in attendance, what is so blantantly overlooked is the toll taken by suppression of any subsequent attempts to express himself in the learning process once his very being is subjected to vilification and excommunication. If a student knows that his very self is deemed unacceptable how willing can he possibly be to enter into the vulnerable space of inquiry, doubt and dependency in order to seek knowledge and experience? Surely he would not be very willing to risk providing more opportunity for bullies to further snipe at his manner of being. Additionally however, when the bully, that is, the abrasive, aggessive and belligerent student, is given carte blanch to vent his anger, how many other students may hold back being fully self-expressed as individuals in fear that some distinguishing characteristics of their own person will draw fire and create suspicion that there may be something a little too "different" about them also. Moreover the violence that can prevent even information-gathering must surely put a strangle hold on the possbilities of inspiration, curiosity and interactive inquiry regarding feelings, values and issues of culture and society. Additionally is it not inevitable that exploration of real issues in terms of the experiences of the individuals whose lives embody those issues will inevitably be ruled out of bounds?
In my own teaching of philosophy at the college level, I have often wondered about the source and genesis of the reticence and self-censorship of innumerable students most of which have just completed high school. The fear, self-doubt, inhibition, lack of apparent curiosity, excuses for lack of participation, and rationalization of passivity, may all well be the sypmptoms of a variegated history of shool violence. It is the potential for such violence that has taught them that it is not safe nor even right to explore and inquire beyond the boundaries of conformity wherein noone is offended, made to feel uncomfortable, provocatively challenged or confronted.
Those who are blinded to the constant threat of violence and threatening, prejudicial attitudes may even think that, on the whole, the occurrence of considerable learning as it does occur by the "normal" within the usual "normal" bounds, is a domain that is free of violence. It may be thought that such a domain testifies to the "good job" our schools are doing. However I would like to suggest that such normal, standardized, conflict-free zones have themselves achieved their apparent placidity and eduational effectivity through not unrelated forms of violence. Intimidation need not only do its work through physical threat and social intimidation, it may also occur in the the censorship of questions that may even intimate an experience or discussion that offends the comfort zones of the status quo of conditioned compliance. The provocative question or expression that discloses our discomfort regarding a new realm of possible freedom points to the unfreedom upon which much of contemporary education is based.
We might ask ourselves what hidden authority structures and mechanisms of social control are being condoned by exonerating the bully from guilt or punishment? What fears and insecurities, doubts and dilemmas are being suppressed by student identification with cliques, gangs or other one-sided, one-dimensional identities? Isn't the school a play-ground of experimentation as opposed to a training ground for intellectual and social retreat and resignation? When the school cannot retain or revive the curiosity of the innocent child, then it becomes the apologist for the interests of a community that thrives on the repression and marginalization of those not benefiting from the present ethos and ethic of our so very troubled, divided yet homogenized society. We are in a particularly stifling sort of cultural cul de sac when conformity appears as belonging, herd behavior substitutes for individual identity and not-being-condemned serves as the measure of being on the approved path of productive purposefulness and creative self-fulfillment.

FEAR AND LOATHING IN THE HALLS OF LEARNING

The case of Michael Mangus, the gay North Tonawanda, N.Y. high school student whose life was threatened at school, is both alarming and edifying. It is an alarm sounded many times in America. Like any alarm, however, which is neither acknowledged nor acted upon, one simply no longer hears it. But why is it we don’t hear this alarm which might awaken us to an awareness that the first condition of learning is being blatantly violated in the very institution charged with protecting it? What is that condition? It is freedom from violence, intimidation and threat. And why do we not hear it? Could it be that such freedom is infinitely more terrifying than the manifold of quotidian terrors that now shackle and shadow our freedom? Possibly all this is not the least surprising if we consider the bigger picture of the normalization of violence in many forms in our daily life. A society numbed and indifferent to societal self-abuse could hardly be alarmed let alone edified by the tribulations of one teenager suffering the supposedly “normal” stress of teenage culture. If another ‘alarm’ didn’t just go off in your head when you heard the word ‘normal’, that is also not surprising. Why? Because American culture, if we can call it a culture, is capable of normalizing anything no matter how deleterious to health and well-being: e.g., death by drunk drivers, guns, drugs, obesity, suicide, reckless medical care, irrational wars, rape, hate-crimes, gangs, child neglect, etc. etc. etc. Yet rather than proposing and acting upon constructive solutions given all these symptoms of decadence and real deviance, all too many of us choose rather to blame the victim or scapegoat the innocent and vulnerable. Compared to the lethality of ordinary everyday existence, the “deviation” of Michael Magnus from the predominant social norms, should have been seen as a slight ripple on the waters of the ocean during a typhoon. But it wasn’t. Instead his expressiveness and apparent “difference” unleashed hatred and threat. Possibly more heinous than this were the denial and inaction on the part of a school which implicitly condoned such harassment. But what is it that is so threatening about someone like Michael, a young gay teen stumbling and struggling to create and express the secrets of his own being? Could it not be that Michael reminds us of a softer and gentler side that contrasts so starkly with the horror of the violence to which we have grown accustomed if not addicted. Could it not be that Michael’s very way of being might remind us of our own possibilities for sensitivity, idiosyncrasy, compassion and self-expression which we might actually have to begin to “feel” in ways that can be more threatening for some of us than even death itself. Some people, if not most, would probably rather die than feel compassion for and try to understand those who differ significantly from ourselves. We might have to become something new and better. Seemingly the homosexual “coming out” in America has so provoked the fanatical wing of the Christian community that it has conveniently forgotten Jesus’ fundamental imperative of “judging not lest you yourself be judged.” Obviously, like the church on Meadow Drive in North Tonawanda, N.Y. that recently displayed mean-spirited, anti-gay signage, it denies the very gospel of love for which Jesus died. Instead it finds it more righteous to moralistically hate and condemn “the least of them.” It is such ineluctable hypocrisy that led the great German philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche, to say that surely “God is dead.” That is, God is surely dead in the lives and hearts of those who in blind self-righteousness fail to practice the most obvious requests that Jesus made. Although the institutions of education are not required to fulfill upon Christian values, it would seem however that the schools should at least meet the minimum requirement of learning. But they do not. Whereas the public institution of the school is created to guarantee inclusion and satisfy designated needs of the people, too many have degenerated into mechanisms of exclusion, censorship and conformism. They suffer not only from “dumbing down” but also from moral and human “numbing down.” The schools and its professionals should be nurturing “identification upward” toward transformative knowledge, higher modes of existence and nobler values. But it seems they “normally” function to feed the mind- and soul-numbing status quo of adaptation and mere survival. The school is a place for imagination and inspiration not inquisition and intimidation. To tolerate such abuse as Michael suffered, and to fail to address its conditions and causes especially in the school curriculum itself, is to fail as an educational institution. It is not merely a matter of stopping toxic behavior but of promoting optimal conditions of openness, inquiry, new experience and relentless questioning and grade-appropriate life-related research. It is the task of the school to translate adolescent aggression and “attitude” into analysis and creativity. The schools should lead the community and not succumb to the lowest common denominator of its fears and fallacies. It was my great privilege to have known Michael Mangus as a child. He was a sweet, gentle, creative child with a vibrant sparkle and spontaneity. That energy is still there. Yet it would be one more American tragedy to see a reactive, insensitive school and indifferent community allow such vibrant energy to be bullied into survival paranoia and a life reduced to apology for an existence as God-given as yours or mine. Michael’s struggle is the greatest of learning opportunities for the school, the church and the community. Or it can be another round of selfish circling of the wagons for the sake of self-justification, defensiveness and a return to the safety of “normality.” This struggle can be a time for shining a new and brighter light on our humanness or a return to the dark insidiousness of smug, self-righteous complacency. Let’s not once again let fear win and fail Michael Mangus a second time.

JOEL OSTEEN: OBSCURANTISM LITE

Several days after having seen Joel Osteen interviewed on the Larry King Show I'm still recovering. I'm recovering from the shock that this man, Joel Osteen, heads one of the largest Christian congregation in America. Let me get right to the issue: Please forgive my anger, but how in God's name is it possible that this latter day obscurantist can have the largest Christian congregation in the USA? Yes, he inherited it from his dead father to be sure. But another answer, which may be adequate, is that America is filled with cretins. Or, on a kinder note, possibly we are so desperate for comfort, reassurance and ever simpler answers and directions for formulaic living that such 'twinkification' of consciousness is quite effective and thus welcomed and even demanded by the American populace. As I recover from watching King's inteview of Osteen,still quite dumbfounded, astounded and befuddled, I find myself now being somewhat frightened by this phenomenon. This smooth-sell Elmer Gantry markets millions of dollars of books, apparently, about "faith" obviously to millions of the faithful. And as if this publishing horror show isn't bad enough, now his wife is getting in on the publishing act. She says she is writing about "women." I really can't wait for this intellectual giant to tell us all about 'women!' Suddenly, thanks to her husband, she's famous and just as suddenly she's an expert on "women." Have you heard Joel Osteen?!?! He has nothing to say. He could answer none of Larry King's questions regarding some of the major issues of the day not to mention of all times. None! Not one!!! He was blathering in short well articulated cliches, vague oh so vague generalities and disclaimers that he "just didn't know" but ever so smugly as if none of these questions mattered, as if he has the real and only answer. Yet, to the real questions that the world is asking, he had no positions, no answers at all. Not even an opinion. Not a guess. He's just so self-righteously sure that his "lite" version of faith and god will take care of everything. Cliches, generalities and positionlessness. It wasn't that he was non-judgemental. He simply had nothing to say. Every response to King was a matter of excusing himself from knowing anything or sharing any understanding of anything that literate people today are discussing. Apparently the major issues of the day never even occur to him as something he should possibly take some responsibility to think about, to discuss, to deal with in concrete Christian terms. But he is exempt from participating because he has "faith." His message is not to worry because your faith guarantees that god will take care of all the big issues. That gives him permission for relentless smugness, importunate smiling and absolute ignorance regarding real life. Obviously he never considered John F. Kennedy's famous statement that "God's work must truly be our own." Osteen exhorts with a soft-spoken intensity, selling the eternal panacea without argument but with much downhome persuasion, a Christian good 'ol boy kind of logic. All one must do is plan for faith and put it into action. After all, if you don't water the garden the tomatoes won't grow. The real question though is what all this has to do with the Bible since presumably this is a "Bible based" church. It seems to me that the Bible recommends a life in the world but not of the world. And yet the likes of Osteen always advertise a pragmatic faith whose value is measured in terms of the standards and practices of the world. What's missing here is the religious experience and that mode of spiritual being that permeates one's life. What's missing is that struggle with faith that Jesus endured to the very moment of his death on the cross. Osteen's brand of religion is about getting it all for me in my way without this "religion thing" getting in the way. Osteen's 'Christianity' does not ask, as Jesus did, "what am I for" but it opportunistically asks "what can this religion do for me." Not "what can I be for" in the eyes of God and in terms of the religious life but "what good can God and religion be for" in the eyes of my ego and in the light of my worldly desires. For Osteen, religion is a self-help forum in which one plans for what one wants on the basis of one's desires, begins to act on that plan, then presumes that "faith" will assure that it will happen. That's decent advice for common sense living. It also amounts to your run of the mill conformism, banal materialism and egregious know-nothingism. Questioning, creativity and critical thinking amounts to the work of the devil or at least a lack of faith. The text of the Bible is surely no longer a problem for Osteen's brand of parasitism. It's there merely to extract useful quotes in order to verify Osteen's common sense, quaint logic and abundant reassurances. All you need do is plug yourself into the faith circuit and the spirit will begin to flow. This is complacent Christianity for the comatose. Innocuous, yet insidious if not diabolical.

POLITICS OF HUMOR: THE ISLAMIC REACTION

As of today, Feb. 15, 2006, street protests continued in the Islamic world over the Danish cartoons apparently lampooning Muhammad. The protests seemed to be continuous for the last 10 days or so, the protestors indignant, enraged and often vengeful. The fire of this protest was fueled and fanned when various European presses reprinted the cartoons. To this writer the moral and political status of the cartoons are questionable and should be questioned. The reprinting of the cartoons seems unnecessary if not irresponsible. Western presses continue to reprint the cartoons asserting their right to publish in the face of pressure to censor the cartoons. Muslims around the world were obviously offended by these cartoons. Such taking of offense is understandable to me. What is not understandable to me is the degree of offense, the fury if not hysteria of their outrage. Possibly I should be able to understand. Possibly I am insensitive, unempathetic or just ignorant. I am not sure. What I do know is that I had no such feelings as I saw last night on CNN. Possibly it is not accurate to call the cartoons a lampooning of Muhammad since they were not intended ultimately to ridicule. Maybe better to characterize them as caricatures or satires. As a political cartoon, however, it seems its main intent was not to demean but to criticize. Now if the furor was over the fact of depiction alone of Muhammad no matter what the meaning or context, then there is no explaining let alone justifying the intent of the cartoon. If however the furor was over the content or meaning intended in the cartoon, then we have, I believe, a different matter at hand. Again it seems the essential intent was not merely to ridicule nor insult Muslim sensibilities. The cartoonists, strictly speaking, are not blasphemers because they are not carrying out these offenses from within the Muslim world. They are not Muslims. They may be accused of being sacreligious or being infidels but not blasphemers since they are not believers in the first place. These cartoonists are artists or caricaturists making a political point. What is that political point? It is that the insult to Islam is really coming from within the Muslim world by Muslims who would turn their religion into an instrumentality for ultimately political purposes. To kowtow to Muslim pressures and protests would be to surrender the political and religious criticism being made. It is extremists within Islam who belittle, insult and compromise the integrity of the religion of Islam. No show of disrespect to Islamic sensibilities could touch the degree of damage done to Islam by extremists, zealots and exploiters who would use Islam to support their political purposes. The theological laxity demonstrated in the predominant silence of the Islamic world in the face of egregious interpretations of Islam to justify any and every imaginable political action is deafening. Any damage that Western attitudes and even cultural exports have done to Islam does not hold a candle to the damage done by Islam itself through theological and political laxity, laziness, opportunism and zealousness. Possibly this unacknowledged self-abuse explains the degree of outrage at the cartoons, an outrage that covers the truth being spoken by some of the cartoons: once again, this truth is that Islam is being politicized from within to the detriment of its religious content and to the denigration of its prophet. The justice which the very concept of "Islam" represents is turned into revenge and the peace which it avows is disavowed in unbridledled violent reaction against putative infidels at every crossroad. ..... It is also unfortunate that the leaders of Islam should make the same mistake that Catholics have made in the face of the sex scandals in America in which a large number of children have been molested by priests. The Catholic bureaucracy delayed, stonewalled, denied and covered up the scandal, exhibiting the callousness and indifference that finally exposes the cruelty, that is the lack of love, that characterizes its state of decay, distortion and inexorable hypocrisy. Islam should have learned from Catholicism's self-destructiveness. Apparently it has not. Instead it itself remains reactive, defensive and self-righteousness. If the rational and reflective leadership of Islam had taken as proactive a role critiquing Islam's divergence from its inner truth as its extremist fringe has taken in promoting violence, then possibly the world's respect for Islam would be greater than it is. ..... Lastly let me say that our probable failure in the West to fully comprehend and appreciate the beauty, wisdom and treasure that is Islam does not go unrivaled by Islam's ability to underestimate the value placed upon freedom of speech in the West. How infinitely often has the truth gone unsaid for fear of reaction, retaliation, offense, shunning or excommunication. When is the defense and exercise of freedom of speech too great especially in striving to express and comprehend the infinite wisdom of God. When the emperor has no clothes, for his own good, should we wait for the innocent child to speak up? Or should we recover our own authentic innocence and speak the truth about the hegemony of religious hypocrisy in our world today, hypocrisy of which countless cartoons could never speak enough truth sufficient to rectify its depth of corruption, perversion and perdition.

IDEOLOGICAL SHOWSTOPPERS

Recently on Bill Maher's "Real Time" HBO political talk show(Oct. 27, 2005), the logic of ideological economistic diversion was illustrated quite nicely. When discussion turned to the exigencies of national health care, the discussion was diverted quite effectively with, euphemism and subterfuge, nicely imperceptibly mixed. During the discussion, the issue was shaping up as to the virtue and necessity of national health care in the face of, some say, 45 million people without any health care insurance. The fools we are for the forceful sway of ideological discourse became apparent quickly. Rather than continue to deepen discussion as to the exigencies of such health care, Tucker Carlson, liberal obscurantist of the highest order, with mechanical ideological efficiency raised the point that in fact health care in Canada costs much more than in the U.S. Innocent enough, seemingly, but note the insidious tactical "logic" of deflection and diversion. Rather than discussing the questions of the priorities and problems of "national health care", Carlson, with calculated conservative yet seemingly mechanical unconsciousness, swerves the topic to 'the measure of money' as the determining and defining factor in the discussion. The ultimate concern for Carlson here is the condescending reassurance that if such a plan costs more than we already spend, how could it possibly be worthwhile. Of course the hidden assumptions in Carlson's sleight of hand are several. Surely Canada's model is not the only model as he would seem to assume. If it were, surely we could learn from such a model and not repeat their mistakes; and, surely there are variations on the Canadian approach. Though the talk show went temporarily into dead air space at Carlson's interjection, one of the other guests recovered from Carlson's 'sucker punch' and pointed out that the real question is not what it will cost but firstly what our priorities really are. Do we really care that millions are without health care? And if it were to cost more than, God forbid, CANADA, then might it not be worth paying the bill? In addition Carlson assumes that we can compare Canadian apples and American oranges in health care. But with proper pundit panache Carlson ups the ante with the claim that 'in fact' fewer Canadians are satisfied with their health care than Americans. God forbid, such powerful polemic, such forceful social scientific data. Surely, therefore Carlson adeptly implies that we must therefore have an inviolably better system. Fortunately Maher saved the day by noting that the dissatisfied Canadians could not possibly have been less satisfied than the 45 million Americans with no health care coverage. We surely should note how quickly and potently the spectre of ''too high a cost" or "not enough money" stops the show. Of course we at such times also quickly forget that billions upon billions are readily available for unjustified wars such as Vietnam and Iraq. Carlson's crowd which includes the AMA, conceivably the most powerful lobby in the world, obviously do not have national health care anywhere on the agenda, at least in the 21st Century, if ever. So the conservatives/neo-conservatives throw up the panoply of idiots such as Carlson proffering the ideological smokescreen of such idiocy, obfuscation, subterfuge and distortion. The "mental block" that we all suffer in the face of such ideological obfuscation extrudes itself in the name of "being realistic" and "mature" about the matter at hand. If one were to "think", so "think" the neo-cons, one would see that such health care is unrealistic and one who considers the possiblity is not (politically) mature. ..... In a college classroom one of my students pulled a similar (unconscious) maneuver. While discussing the costs of repairing the long neglected levees of New Orleans, the student argued that certain federal money couldn't be appropriated for local repairs because it was legally slated for federal use. Well of course. But the point that has to be made once again is how easily our supposedly democratic discourse avoids the human issue of human well-being and safety. One can so easily explain why for decades money could just not quite find its way to the repair of said levees. Now if said levees had been near Santa Barbara or some other wealthy white community, "the money" would have found its way through the bureaucratic barbwire, around the administrative mud holes and out of the coffers of the overly abundant military budgets in time and in sufficient amount to save the day. But the ideologized idiotic mind so easily blocks, diverts and explains away through supposedly "sufficient reason" the anxieties of analytic, bureaucratic-technocratic administrative defensiveness and self-justification. In the meantime, the forgotten "living dead" lost in the margins, intersticies and backwashes of "America" never seem to find a voice and logic capable of sidestepping the ideology of economistic, bureacratic and administrative "reason" long enough to have an effective and affective accounting. That is, we can't stay "conscious" long enough to deal with the human issues in a human language. The spectre of the unconscious mechanical mind is effective enough only to "mind the business" at hand. And the business at hand is always tending to and nurturing the forces preventing the fading of that very black bottom line.