WIGGING OUT WITH A SCHOOL ADMINISTRATOR
“You’re a boy, how come your hair is long?”
A lot of kindergarten kids asked me that, they’re gender stereotypes well in place.
It wasn’t only five-year-olds who thought that way, of course. An older sister was so shocked when she saw my long hair she wasn’t sure she would let me in her house.
Reason enough to wonder, then, what a school administrator would think if he knew the person who was to be in charge of a teacher-training program at an elementary school in his district wore his hair long. When you seek to do something in the schools different from the customary, you don’t want to provide unnecessary reasons for balking. As we all know, bureaucrats are skilled in that.
I'd decided it would be politic to go around and introduce myself to the administrator. But if he saw my pony tail what would he think? ‘One more radical education reformer--a university type, too--out to change the school system with hair-brained ideas’ (pun intended)?
I'd purchased a wig, which I half-seriously thought might come in handy sometime to cover up my long hair. That time had come. The reform for which I was struggling--getting some classroom reality into teacher training--was worth the dissimulation.
I parked across the street from the former schoolhouse where the area administration had its offices. It was one of those old schoolhouses with windows so high you couldn't see the street sitting down. (Gotta keep those kids from wanting to go outside!) The windows, though, would come in handy.
The wig--thick, wavy brown hair complete with hair net and bobby pins--wasn’t the hairstyle I would have preferred. And it took some dressing to keep it from looking like a fright. But, checking it in the rearview mirror to be sure it was in place, with my pony tail tucked neatly underneath, I grabbed my briefcase and headed for the man’s office.
When I was ushered into his presence what should I discover but a bald-headed man sitting behind the desk. I wondered, ‘I have trouble with my hair, does he have trouble without his?’
Shortly after sitting down, I began to have the distinct feeling that my wig was sliding up. The heat from my body had something to do with it. Controlling an incipient desire to rush out of the room and rip the wig off, even if it meant disclosing my shameless cover-up, I crossed my arms on top of my head--a gesture sufficiently common to look normal. But I couldn’t keep all the edges of that wig from their alarming creep. I did all I could to hurry the visit along.
I managed to get out of that office and the school building hoping I hadn’t been, you might say, uncovered. I imagined eyes peering out of every window. I checked in the mirror: Yes, there it was, a line of my dark brown hair showing under the wig of light brown hair! Had anyone noticed? I decided to leave it on until I was out of sight of the building.
And then I realized to my horror that I had left my briefcase in the man’s office. I would have to go back and retrieve it. I adjusted the wig once more, tugging it to get it fairly well down on my head, trying to hide what I was doing from those eyes I imagined peering out of those tall windows. I was perspiring now and that was oiling the upward creep.
Dashing inside I breathlessly asked about my briefcase, but no one had noticed I’d left it behind. When it was finally fetched I hastily thanked the secretary, grabbed it in one hand, the other atop my bewigged head, and dashed out the door.
Well, I thought, people wearing toupees also have trouble making their rugs look normal.
My program was approved despite my apprehensions, and another sin against education would be averted. But, alas, only for the 20 co-eds in the experimental program.
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
Sunday, June 13, 2010
Sunday, June 6, 2010
IT'S THEIR WAY, NOT MY WAY
After spending the night with students who had occupied the UCLA Administration Building, their leaders asked me to speak at a mass meeting in the morning. As students and faculty packed Royce Hall I began scribbling some notes.
I linked the takeover with the new social and political views of education emerging on campuses throughout the country in the 70s; looking at higher education as a political institution, questioning its nature, control and purpose in relation to different segments of society.
It was the product, I suggested, of young minds with fresh ideas engaging in serious thought about their university and society. But now they weren't just thinking about it, they were doing something about it.
Philosopher Sydney Hook--an avid student of John Dewey, famous advocate of learning by doing--had rejected that idea. Speaking for a lot of people inside and outside higher education, Hook asseverated that it was “perfectly appropriate" for students to study class conflict, but not to practice it; to study revolution but not to practice it; to study democracy but not practice it. Not, at least, in the university.
A perfect example, I maintained, of how we separate what is learned in school from what is often--and tellingly--called the "real world."
The audience seemed largely to go along--though I detected some hooting here and there. Coming from some of my colleagues, I suspected. I wasn't preaching to the choir or the converted entirely, and I was making the most of it!
“It was inevitable,” I continued, “that young minds, less patient than their elders, less inclined to adjust and compromise, should begin to ask how the wrongs in society and in its institutions can be righted, how they can be reformed. Especially their own university.”
And then my grand peroration:
“Incomplete and incoherent as its articulation may be, strident and demanding though it can sound, and yes, disturbing to the status quo, the vision of these students is nothing less than a new college, a new university in which the old barriers are broken down, education is more de-campused, and new curricular and instructional methods are developed and used for new educational purposes.
“Perhaps to some it may be surprising that the concern of the students is basically educational. The Administration Building takeover was an educational act.”
Cheers and applause from the students; hoots from colleagues. I was told later my Dean looked around disbelievingly and asked, “Do all these students know Tom?”
I have often thought of that appearance before a packed Royce Hall, and fantasized that instead of my comments I had a piano wheeled out and accompanied myself on a version of Paul Anka's "My Way." First heard in 1970 on Minnesota Public Radio, it's titled "Their Way":
I came, I bought the books, lived in the dorms, followed directions.
I worked, I studied hard, made lots of friends, and had connections.
I crammed, they gave me grades, and may I say, not in a fair way.
But more, much more than this, I did it their way.
I learned so many things, although I know I'll never use them.
The courses that I took were all required. I didn't choose them.
You'll find that you'll survive, it's best to act the doctrinaire way,
And so, I snuggled down, and did it their way.
There were times I wondered why I had to crawl when I could fly.
I had my doubts, but after all, I clipped my wings, and learned to crawl.
I learned to bend, and in the end, I did it their way.
Thinking that was the end, people all over the hall were standing and cheering. But I waved them to wait. There was more:
And so, my fine young friends, now that I am a full professor,
Where once I was oppressed, I've now become the cruel oppressor.
With me, you'll learn to cope. You'll learn to climb life's golden stairway.
Like me, you'll see the light, and do it their way.
For what is a man? What can I do? Open your books. Read chapter two
And if this seems a bit routine, don't talk to me, go see the Dean.
They get their way, I get my pay. We do it their way.
I would have been a campus sensation.
(Words for "Their Way" by Bob Blue, adapted by Bright Morning Star, Minnesota Public Radio. Available from Flying Fish Records. Thanks to Lara Blue for permission to use here.)
After spending the night with students who had occupied the UCLA Administration Building, their leaders asked me to speak at a mass meeting in the morning. As students and faculty packed Royce Hall I began scribbling some notes.
I linked the takeover with the new social and political views of education emerging on campuses throughout the country in the 70s; looking at higher education as a political institution, questioning its nature, control and purpose in relation to different segments of society.
It was the product, I suggested, of young minds with fresh ideas engaging in serious thought about their university and society. But now they weren't just thinking about it, they were doing something about it.
Philosopher Sydney Hook--an avid student of John Dewey, famous advocate of learning by doing--had rejected that idea. Speaking for a lot of people inside and outside higher education, Hook asseverated that it was “perfectly appropriate" for students to study class conflict, but not to practice it; to study revolution but not to practice it; to study democracy but not practice it. Not, at least, in the university.
A perfect example, I maintained, of how we separate what is learned in school from what is often--and tellingly--called the "real world."
The audience seemed largely to go along--though I detected some hooting here and there. Coming from some of my colleagues, I suspected. I wasn't preaching to the choir or the converted entirely, and I was making the most of it!
“It was inevitable,” I continued, “that young minds, less patient than their elders, less inclined to adjust and compromise, should begin to ask how the wrongs in society and in its institutions can be righted, how they can be reformed. Especially their own university.”
And then my grand peroration:
“Incomplete and incoherent as its articulation may be, strident and demanding though it can sound, and yes, disturbing to the status quo, the vision of these students is nothing less than a new college, a new university in which the old barriers are broken down, education is more de-campused, and new curricular and instructional methods are developed and used for new educational purposes.
“Perhaps to some it may be surprising that the concern of the students is basically educational. The Administration Building takeover was an educational act.”
Cheers and applause from the students; hoots from colleagues. I was told later my Dean looked around disbelievingly and asked, “Do all these students know Tom?”
I have often thought of that appearance before a packed Royce Hall, and fantasized that instead of my comments I had a piano wheeled out and accompanied myself on a version of Paul Anka's "My Way." First heard in 1970 on Minnesota Public Radio, it's titled "Their Way":
I came, I bought the books, lived in the dorms, followed directions.
I worked, I studied hard, made lots of friends, and had connections.
I crammed, they gave me grades, and may I say, not in a fair way.
But more, much more than this, I did it their way.
I learned so many things, although I know I'll never use them.
The courses that I took were all required. I didn't choose them.
You'll find that you'll survive, it's best to act the doctrinaire way,
And so, I snuggled down, and did it their way.
There were times I wondered why I had to crawl when I could fly.
I had my doubts, but after all, I clipped my wings, and learned to crawl.
I learned to bend, and in the end, I did it their way.
Thinking that was the end, people all over the hall were standing and cheering. But I waved them to wait. There was more:
And so, my fine young friends, now that I am a full professor,
Where once I was oppressed, I've now become the cruel oppressor.
With me, you'll learn to cope. You'll learn to climb life's golden stairway.
Like me, you'll see the light, and do it their way.
For what is a man? What can I do? Open your books. Read chapter two
And if this seems a bit routine, don't talk to me, go see the Dean.
They get their way, I get my pay. We do it their way.
I would have been a campus sensation.
(Words for "Their Way" by Bob Blue, adapted by Bright Morning Star, Minnesota Public Radio. Available from Flying Fish Records. Thanks to Lara Blue for permission to use here.)
Saturday, May 29, 2010
A SOCIETY WITHOUT SCHOOLS
When American philosopher John Dewey visited Utopia, he once revealed, he discovered that the most utopian thing about it was the absence of schools. Oh, yes, they still had education, but without anything like schools. And it worked.
Children gathered in centers with adults who directed their activities, and you might right away say the centers were substitutes for schools. But when Dewey asked his Utopian friends what their purposes or objectives were, “the whole concept of the school, of teachers and pupils and lessons, had so completely disappeared” that it was as if he was “asking why children should live at all.”
The Utopians did help youngsters make their lives worthwhile for them and society, and they did see to it that they grew and developed. But the notion of special goals that all children should try to attain was completely foreign to them. Instead, Dewey found, the fundamental purposes of education--discovering aptitudes, tastes, abilities and weaknesses of each child--were thoroughly ingrained in the activities they engaged in. That was Dewey’s famous--or infamous, for a lot of people--Progressive Education. Learning by doing.
But how did these people know whether the children every learned anything? Once more the Utopians were nonplussed. Did he think it was possible for a normal boy or girl to grow up without learning what they needed to learn? Only “a congenital idiot” would do that.
Dewey was discovering that the “whole concept of learning as acquiring and storing away things had been displaced by the concept of creating attitudes, shaping desires, and developing the needs that are significant in the process of living.” The non-Utopian world, he was told, is dominated by the idea that education is a personal acquisition and private possession-which, of course, fits snugly into a society driven by accumulating stuff. It had “taken possession of the minds of educators” and controlled all of the educational system.
There was also competition and rivalry (like today's Race To The Top); the use of rewards and punishments, examinations to determine success or failure, and the idea of promotion. The Utopians viewed these as ways to produce achievements and successes in an acquisitive society; where learning and scholarship were considered private valuable possessions, even if they were little more than “useless or remote facts.”
Utopians had discarded objectives that every child was required to achieve, which they saw produced a brand of rote learning without enjoyment; instead “fear, embarrassment, constraint, self-consciousness. and the feeling of failure and incapacity.” In their place were the “development of a confidence and a readiness to tackle difficulties; of actual eagerness to seek problems instead of dreading them and running away from them.”
If it disturbs you to think of America without schools, it may be because you equate going to school with education--and maybe some other things along the way, like baby-sitting, sequestering youngsters in institutions that take on the character of prisons to keep them under control. After all, we have no other place for them to go. It also does the work of employers by house-breaking young people to take future jobs
But we all know--don't we?--that it's possible to become educated with little or no help from school. Just because you don't do what they do in schools doesn't mean you can't learn. We all know that. But it's just that we forget it when we think about schools.
But what Dewey saw was that nothing less than a cultural revolution would be necessary for a society to adopt what the Utopians had. The last time something like that was tried was 40 years ago or so, when UC Berkeley student Mario Savio uttered the immortal words, “There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious. . .you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears. . . you’ve got to make it stop.”
And you know how far we got with that!
When American philosopher John Dewey visited Utopia, he once revealed, he discovered that the most utopian thing about it was the absence of schools. Oh, yes, they still had education, but without anything like schools. And it worked.
Children gathered in centers with adults who directed their activities, and you might right away say the centers were substitutes for schools. But when Dewey asked his Utopian friends what their purposes or objectives were, “the whole concept of the school, of teachers and pupils and lessons, had so completely disappeared” that it was as if he was “asking why children should live at all.”
The Utopians did help youngsters make their lives worthwhile for them and society, and they did see to it that they grew and developed. But the notion of special goals that all children should try to attain was completely foreign to them. Instead, Dewey found, the fundamental purposes of education--discovering aptitudes, tastes, abilities and weaknesses of each child--were thoroughly ingrained in the activities they engaged in. That was Dewey’s famous--or infamous, for a lot of people--Progressive Education. Learning by doing.
But how did these people know whether the children every learned anything? Once more the Utopians were nonplussed. Did he think it was possible for a normal boy or girl to grow up without learning what they needed to learn? Only “a congenital idiot” would do that.
Dewey was discovering that the “whole concept of learning as acquiring and storing away things had been displaced by the concept of creating attitudes, shaping desires, and developing the needs that are significant in the process of living.” The non-Utopian world, he was told, is dominated by the idea that education is a personal acquisition and private possession-which, of course, fits snugly into a society driven by accumulating stuff. It had “taken possession of the minds of educators” and controlled all of the educational system.
There was also competition and rivalry (like today's Race To The Top); the use of rewards and punishments, examinations to determine success or failure, and the idea of promotion. The Utopians viewed these as ways to produce achievements and successes in an acquisitive society; where learning and scholarship were considered private valuable possessions, even if they were little more than “useless or remote facts.”
Utopians had discarded objectives that every child was required to achieve, which they saw produced a brand of rote learning without enjoyment; instead “fear, embarrassment, constraint, self-consciousness. and the feeling of failure and incapacity.” In their place were the “development of a confidence and a readiness to tackle difficulties; of actual eagerness to seek problems instead of dreading them and running away from them.”
If it disturbs you to think of America without schools, it may be because you equate going to school with education--and maybe some other things along the way, like baby-sitting, sequestering youngsters in institutions that take on the character of prisons to keep them under control. After all, we have no other place for them to go. It also does the work of employers by house-breaking young people to take future jobs
But we all know--don't we?--that it's possible to become educated with little or no help from school. Just because you don't do what they do in schools doesn't mean you can't learn. We all know that. But it's just that we forget it when we think about schools.
But what Dewey saw was that nothing less than a cultural revolution would be necessary for a society to adopt what the Utopians had. The last time something like that was tried was 40 years ago or so, when UC Berkeley student Mario Savio uttered the immortal words, “There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious. . .you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears. . . you’ve got to make it stop.”
And you know how far we got with that!
Friday, May 14, 2010
"THERE'S NO BEST IN KINDERGARTEN"
When Noah began kindergarten, dutiful parent that I was, I went around every Friday to work out with him and his cohort. I could see why people thought his teacher was thought to be the best in the school.
She could get instant attention simply by counting out loud; “One two three,” and the children would freeze. (The school used the same tactic to round up the students when recess ended: A blaring horn blew, and the kids would freeze. I mean no matter what position they were in when the horn blew, they froze--standing on one leg, leaning forward with arms outspread, you name it. And they held the position until the horn blasted again, and then ran off to take their places in their classrooms' lines.)
Noah's teacher ran a tight ship, strictly no nonsense, never having to raise her voice. No child was idle; no one out of line. I imagined a banner over her classroom door: “A place for every child, and every child in his place.”
She was friendly but not warm, with an inscrutable reserve that left me wondering what she was really thinking and feeling. She never touched the children; no stroking or patting or hugging, and quite formal when she said “good morning” and “goodbye.”
From the moment they entered the room the kids went to work on their basics. My job was to help them through the drills
set for them. It wasn’t the sort of thing I had hoped I might do.
One day the teacher assigned me to walk the kids from the classroom to the playground and back. They immediately began testing me; I think they suspected a softie. They were right, soon running all over the place. I was a lousy disciplinarian, and sensed teacher’s quiet disapproval.
But those kids found another weakness: I would touch them, pick them up, let them sit on my lap, and they made the most of it. When it was time to be read to, or to watch films, I sat on the floor and they vied to see who would sit on my lap. I had to set up a waiting line; even Noah had to take his turn, which he didn’t particularly like.
Those children hungered for that kind of attention. I had to peel them off so the others could have their turn. Kids came out
of their shells as they climbed and hung on me. I could see a part of them that the curriculum excluded. They were just normal youngsters who liked to be touched and held and picked up and bounced around.
One boy, big for his age, ordinarily withdrawn, was first in line every morning. He reeked of urine and sour sweat, and his clothes looked like the hand-me-downs I wore during the Depression. I almost gagged when he first snuggled up, but after a time he didn’t stink so much--or I got used to it.
If all I did was allow those kids some physical de-compressing from their regular regimen, I thought, I could make a significant contribution. But the activity was becoming disruptive. I had become an attractive nuisance, a subversive insidiously undermining what was going down in that classroom in the name of education.
Along about November the teacher quietly told me she was concerned about my picking up kids, fearing they could be hurt, and the school district would have to pay.
“I haven’t dropped one yet,” I cheerily replied, not yet sure she was serious.
“I know,” she firmly replied, “but it could happen and then someone would sue.”
“Gee, I wish there was some way I could pick them up. They so much want to be held, and don’t seem to ever get enough.” (I was using my new non-authoritarian problem-solving skills; avoiding "you" statements, that sort of thing.)
“Well,” she said after thinking about it a bit, “perhaps if you just kneel down when you pick them up, and don’t do it out on the playground.”
It was a deal.
But Teacher’s concern had gotten to me, and I began soft-pedaling, holding off the kids, restraining them--and myself. I wondered if what I was doing was unseemly to her. The kids became even more clamorous for my attention.
I began to see why Noah, when I asked him what he liked best about kindergarten, sourly replied, "There's no best in kindergarten."
"Well," I responded, careful not to be judgmental, "what do you do in kindergarten that you'd like to do more of?" Right away his reply was, "Go outside!"
Noah's teacher might have thought I was as much trouble as help.
Given her agenda, I think I was.
When Noah began kindergarten, dutiful parent that I was, I went around every Friday to work out with him and his cohort. I could see why people thought his teacher was thought to be the best in the school.
She could get instant attention simply by counting out loud; “One two three,” and the children would freeze. (The school used the same tactic to round up the students when recess ended: A blaring horn blew, and the kids would freeze. I mean no matter what position they were in when the horn blew, they froze--standing on one leg, leaning forward with arms outspread, you name it. And they held the position until the horn blasted again, and then ran off to take their places in their classrooms' lines.)
Noah's teacher ran a tight ship, strictly no nonsense, never having to raise her voice. No child was idle; no one out of line. I imagined a banner over her classroom door: “A place for every child, and every child in his place.”
She was friendly but not warm, with an inscrutable reserve that left me wondering what she was really thinking and feeling. She never touched the children; no stroking or patting or hugging, and quite formal when she said “good morning” and “goodbye.”
From the moment they entered the room the kids went to work on their basics. My job was to help them through the drills
set for them. It wasn’t the sort of thing I had hoped I might do.
One day the teacher assigned me to walk the kids from the classroom to the playground and back. They immediately began testing me; I think they suspected a softie. They were right, soon running all over the place. I was a lousy disciplinarian, and sensed teacher’s quiet disapproval.
But those kids found another weakness: I would touch them, pick them up, let them sit on my lap, and they made the most of it. When it was time to be read to, or to watch films, I sat on the floor and they vied to see who would sit on my lap. I had to set up a waiting line; even Noah had to take his turn, which he didn’t particularly like.
Those children hungered for that kind of attention. I had to peel them off so the others could have their turn. Kids came out
of their shells as they climbed and hung on me. I could see a part of them that the curriculum excluded. They were just normal youngsters who liked to be touched and held and picked up and bounced around.
One boy, big for his age, ordinarily withdrawn, was first in line every morning. He reeked of urine and sour sweat, and his clothes looked like the hand-me-downs I wore during the Depression. I almost gagged when he first snuggled up, but after a time he didn’t stink so much--or I got used to it.
If all I did was allow those kids some physical de-compressing from their regular regimen, I thought, I could make a significant contribution. But the activity was becoming disruptive. I had become an attractive nuisance, a subversive insidiously undermining what was going down in that classroom in the name of education.
Along about November the teacher quietly told me she was concerned about my picking up kids, fearing they could be hurt, and the school district would have to pay.
“I haven’t dropped one yet,” I cheerily replied, not yet sure she was serious.
“I know,” she firmly replied, “but it could happen and then someone would sue.”
“Gee, I wish there was some way I could pick them up. They so much want to be held, and don’t seem to ever get enough.” (I was using my new non-authoritarian problem-solving skills; avoiding "you" statements, that sort of thing.)
“Well,” she said after thinking about it a bit, “perhaps if you just kneel down when you pick them up, and don’t do it out on the playground.”
It was a deal.
But Teacher’s concern had gotten to me, and I began soft-pedaling, holding off the kids, restraining them--and myself. I wondered if what I was doing was unseemly to her. The kids became even more clamorous for my attention.
I began to see why Noah, when I asked him what he liked best about kindergarten, sourly replied, "There's no best in kindergarten."
"Well," I responded, careful not to be judgmental, "what do you do in kindergarten that you'd like to do more of?" Right away his reply was, "Go outside!"
Noah's teacher might have thought I was as much trouble as help.
Given her agenda, I think I was.
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
POMP AND CIRCUMSTANCE
It became for me the anthem of academic pretentiousness--that march by Sir Edward Elgar, which you've probably heard at every graduation you ever attended: Sir Edward Elgar's "Pomp And Çircumstance."
There's nothing in either its composition or its musical nature that explains why it came to be the theme song for graduation. It originally wasn't intended for that purpose. Elgar composed it for the coronation of King Edward VII.
But in 1905 Elgar received an honorary doctorate from Yale, and they played the song. Other Ivies--not to be out-shown, I can imagine--quickly followed. Princeton, Vassar, the University of Chicago, even dear old Columbia. By the 20s its use as a Commencement march had become part of the academic protocol.
"Just the thing that you had to graduate to," one commentator noted.
The origin of the title confirmed my questioning about its use in the Groves of Åcademe. Elgar took it from Shakespeare’s Othello, where the Moor is lamenting what he has lost after being tricked into thinking his beloved Desdemona and Cassio have been getting it on:
Farewell the neighing steed and the shrill trump,
The spirit-stirring drum, the ear-piercing fife,
The royal banner, and all quality,
Pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war!
Farewell, Othello's occupation's gone!
Act III, Scene III
One commentator has written that perhaps the academics were moved by the ability of music to “sound triumphant, but with an underlying quality of nostalgia, making it perfectly suited to Commencement that marks the beginning of one stage of life, but the end of another.”
Triumphant over what? Ignorance? I know what’s ending, but what’s beginning?
I didn't attend my college graduation; nor the graduation when I was supposed to received my PhD. But it was an unwritten Commandment where I taught that faculty shalt attend, and in the full regalia of their caps and gowns.
Now here we may be getting closer to what that pomp and circumstance at graduation is fundamentally about. Ecclesiastics began wearing caps and gowns back in the 14th century, embodying the authoritarian and hierarchical structure of their positions. And so, too, the regalia calls attention to the structure of the professoriate. The students don black or white; but oh! those professors' garb. Depending on the degrees they hold, there are hoods down the back, and the floor-length gowns bear the different colors of their degree-granting universities.
For those holders of the supreme PhD there are black velvet stripes on the puffy arms (reminding me of the "hash marks" on the Navy's Chief Petty Officers marking the number of four-year stints they've put in). Down the front of the doctoral gown, on either side of the robe openings, is a black velvet stripe.
Most caps do earn the title of board--as in mortar boards--but Columbia's cap had no such stiffener, and it flopped down the sides of my head, making me look like a Roman Catholic Cardinal. Those caps and gowns reek of the ecclesiastical influences that, believe it or not, still lurk in the darker recesses of Academe.
You can’t wear such regalia and solemnly march to Elgar’s tune without calling attention to yourself. I felt like one of those ecclesiastics you see marching down the aisles of great cathedrals. Why all this attention to the faculty, anyhow? Wasn’t this supposed to be a day to honor the students? Elgar’s march soon became like a dirge to me. To this day I have trouble listening to it.
A possible opportunity for me to expose this folly arose at the first Commencement of an alternative B.A. program in the University Without Walls movement I'd became involved with in the 70s. It was one of Antioch College's far-flung alternative programs, called Antioch West. It was dedicated to inventing alternatives to just about everything in higher education.
There were only seven students receiving B.A. degrees at our first Graduation, and with an equal number of faculty and administrators we'd gathered in a student’s home for some sort of ceremony. But other than a buffet and drinks, and giving the students their degrees, we had no idea what we would do.
I brought along my elegant Columbia cap and gown, though I had no idea what for; or even whether I'd wear them. We faculty members put our heads together. One had composed some humorous verses for the occasion; one would play a faintly recognizable "Pomp And Circumstance" on a kazoo. But what would I contribute?
Then it hit me, just before the hastily constructed ceremony began. I took off all my clothes and donned the robe, which, like all such robes, had nothing to keep it closed. Never mind, I joined the others on the program standing before the seated students. And as we proceeded I could be spotted shaking a wicked leg out from the robe.
Ånd when the students came forward to receive their degrees I threw my arms around them in a big hug--the robe opening be damned. My point was well received (no pun intended): underneath all that medieval splendor there were only naked bodies.
It all turned out to be quite creative, and when it was over we went skinny-dipping in the pool.
It became for me the anthem of academic pretentiousness--that march by Sir Edward Elgar, which you've probably heard at every graduation you ever attended: Sir Edward Elgar's "Pomp And Çircumstance."
There's nothing in either its composition or its musical nature that explains why it came to be the theme song for graduation. It originally wasn't intended for that purpose. Elgar composed it for the coronation of King Edward VII.
But in 1905 Elgar received an honorary doctorate from Yale, and they played the song. Other Ivies--not to be out-shown, I can imagine--quickly followed. Princeton, Vassar, the University of Chicago, even dear old Columbia. By the 20s its use as a Commencement march had become part of the academic protocol.
"Just the thing that you had to graduate to," one commentator noted.
The origin of the title confirmed my questioning about its use in the Groves of Åcademe. Elgar took it from Shakespeare’s Othello, where the Moor is lamenting what he has lost after being tricked into thinking his beloved Desdemona and Cassio have been getting it on:
Farewell the neighing steed and the shrill trump,
The spirit-stirring drum, the ear-piercing fife,
The royal banner, and all quality,
Pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war!
Farewell, Othello's occupation's gone!
Act III, Scene III
One commentator has written that perhaps the academics were moved by the ability of music to “sound triumphant, but with an underlying quality of nostalgia, making it perfectly suited to Commencement that marks the beginning of one stage of life, but the end of another.”
Triumphant over what? Ignorance? I know what’s ending, but what’s beginning?
I didn't attend my college graduation; nor the graduation when I was supposed to received my PhD. But it was an unwritten Commandment where I taught that faculty shalt attend, and in the full regalia of their caps and gowns.
Now here we may be getting closer to what that pomp and circumstance at graduation is fundamentally about. Ecclesiastics began wearing caps and gowns back in the 14th century, embodying the authoritarian and hierarchical structure of their positions. And so, too, the regalia calls attention to the structure of the professoriate. The students don black or white; but oh! those professors' garb. Depending on the degrees they hold, there are hoods down the back, and the floor-length gowns bear the different colors of their degree-granting universities.
For those holders of the supreme PhD there are black velvet stripes on the puffy arms (reminding me of the "hash marks" on the Navy's Chief Petty Officers marking the number of four-year stints they've put in). Down the front of the doctoral gown, on either side of the robe openings, is a black velvet stripe.
Most caps do earn the title of board--as in mortar boards--but Columbia's cap had no such stiffener, and it flopped down the sides of my head, making me look like a Roman Catholic Cardinal. Those caps and gowns reek of the ecclesiastical influences that, believe it or not, still lurk in the darker recesses of Academe.
You can’t wear such regalia and solemnly march to Elgar’s tune without calling attention to yourself. I felt like one of those ecclesiastics you see marching down the aisles of great cathedrals. Why all this attention to the faculty, anyhow? Wasn’t this supposed to be a day to honor the students? Elgar’s march soon became like a dirge to me. To this day I have trouble listening to it.
A possible opportunity for me to expose this folly arose at the first Commencement of an alternative B.A. program in the University Without Walls movement I'd became involved with in the 70s. It was one of Antioch College's far-flung alternative programs, called Antioch West. It was dedicated to inventing alternatives to just about everything in higher education.
There were only seven students receiving B.A. degrees at our first Graduation, and with an equal number of faculty and administrators we'd gathered in a student’s home for some sort of ceremony. But other than a buffet and drinks, and giving the students their degrees, we had no idea what we would do.
I brought along my elegant Columbia cap and gown, though I had no idea what for; or even whether I'd wear them. We faculty members put our heads together. One had composed some humorous verses for the occasion; one would play a faintly recognizable "Pomp And Circumstance" on a kazoo. But what would I contribute?
Then it hit me, just before the hastily constructed ceremony began. I took off all my clothes and donned the robe, which, like all such robes, had nothing to keep it closed. Never mind, I joined the others on the program standing before the seated students. And as we proceeded I could be spotted shaking a wicked leg out from the robe.
Ånd when the students came forward to receive their degrees I threw my arms around them in a big hug--the robe opening be damned. My point was well received (no pun intended): underneath all that medieval splendor there were only naked bodies.
It all turned out to be quite creative, and when it was over we went skinny-dipping in the pool.
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
IF THE NAME'S THE SAME, WE MUST BE RELATED
I have used some genealogical findings of Jeffrey Keller and Martha Anderson in what follows. They are not responsible, however, for how I use them
There was a time when I thought I had a pretty good fix on the genealogy of Frank Joseph and Eugenia Antoinette Remillard Robischon, and their Kalispell 711 Seven. (711 was the Kalispell, Mont. home at: 711 3rd. Ave. E.) And then I heard from Sara Robischon in St. Cloud, Minnesota.
She'd come across my name while searching the Net. Might we be related? Turned out we are; and so, too, are all the rest of you 711 Seven offspring. She could count up to 18 R's living in the Minnesota area Frank and Genie were from--and that was ten years ago.
Her heritage goes back to the same man as the 711 Seven's: Mathias Robischon, my Dad's father. Her wing of the family is a descendant of Mathias's first marriage--to Marie Castenholtz in 1875--while we 711 Seven are descendants of his second marriage--to Gertrude Hriber in 1884.
So Dad had a ("full") brother and sister, Michael and Mary, and two half-brothers, Peter and John. But, as apparently often
happens with half-siblings, there was little contact between the two groups of children and their offspring.
"It's so weird to know now that I have other relatives out there that I have never even really heard of or even met," Sara commented following her discovery that we were related. "Funny how life is sometimes."
Someone out there reading this right now may experience a similar feeling as I tell you about relatives you never knew you had.
Like Mary Robischon Ventura and the New York State Robischons.
I'd become hooked on Robischon genealogy, like a user searching for a fix, and was poking around the Net to see if there might be other R's when I came across Mary Ventura, who at the time lived in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. She happened to be looking for information on a Peter Robischon, and I wondered, 'Çould she perhaps have any Robischons in her genealogical tree?'
She sure did! She proceeded to provide me with 13 pages of Robi's, most from the Eifel area of the Prussian Rheinland of Germany, bordering Luxembourg and Belgium. With her help I was able to trace the Eifel Robischons back to 1743. But the name appears as early as the 13th century in France, where it was spelled, "Robichonet," or "little Robert." So contrary to what my father thought, and took pride in--i.e., that we all originated in Prussian Germany--we may well have gotten started in France. Sacre bleu!
The Eifel region, with its rich ore deposits, attracted many people from France looking for work. But by the mid-1800s it had become known as the Poorhouse of Prussia. And many Germans had begun migrating in search of work.
"I think all the Robischons are related somehow," Mary Ventura wrote. And with her help, I concluded that our common ancestor was a Peter Robischon, born about 1768. But until I contacted her, she knew nothing about the Minnesota Robischons.
Though I discovered a man in the Utica area named Robischon back in the late 50s--who in a photo he sent me looked so much like Dad--I knew nothing more about Mary Ventura's relatives. They first appeared in the U.S. in the 1880's, when almost one and a half million Germans emigrated to the U.S. Among them were nine Robischon children and their parents, and they were from the same Eifel region that Mathias Robischons was from.
I am not sure why they chose to settle in upstate New York. By the 1800s, the north-central states of Wisconsin, Minnesota and Michigan were the principal settlement area for Germans.
So that makes three branches of the Robischon tree: One grown from New York, and two from Minnesota. But there's one more branch you should know about. They live today in Germany; two of them I am in touch with: Fritz and Rolf Robischon, the latter a teacher in a Progressive public primary school, and a cartoonist.
There are others; some with the name that Rolf and his brother are unable to connect with genealogically. Rolf told me about a Christian Robischon, son of a Joseph Robischon, living in Strasbourg, who Rolf says is not related. But how can anyone have the name and not be?
If you are in need of a genealogical fix, Google the Robischon name and your plate will runneth over. But beware: keepers of records can be capricious. You're apt to encounter Rubischons, Rubitschones, Rohenschons, Rubatschems, Robenschons, Robinschons, Robichons, and a quixotic Roberchon de la Guerinier (in France). (Reminds me of how often the name is mis-pronounced.)
For an even more quixotic version there's Robidouche, the name given me by my buddies on the U.S.S. William P. Biddle, the ship I bled and died for my country on during World War II.
A recent book by Alexander Roth--Unterwegs in der eisernen Welt (which I feebly translate as having something to do with iron workers)--has 13 spellings. They range from Roichon and Robischon, to Rubitschung and Rudischum.
Grossvater Mathias Robischon, 24, arrived in the U.S. on September 10, 1868, accompanied by his cousin Johann and wife, and his mother Wilhelmia (his father had died). It was during the time when Minnesota's foreign-born population nearly tripled, as a result of aggressive recruiting by, inter alia, railroad companies and civic boosters. They were publishing books and pamphlets extolling Minnesota's virtues.
Like many other German Catholic immigrants the Mathias entourage settled in Minnesota, first in Minneapolis. In 1877 Mathias and Marie moved to St. Cloud (I've not been able to find a record of what became of his cousin and mother). Mathias went into the soda pop business--Robischon And Thelen Bottlers--which eventually was taken over by Peter.
One thing my father revealed about himself--you will see how seldom he did that--was the pride he took in his Prussian roots. He would praise its values and ideals, and its highly vaunted military discipline. He not only approved of “German discipline” and “German efficiency,” he walked his talk, embodying it in his own life.
But I am not at all sure he included his father in those positive feelings, and a big reason might have been the way Mathias treated his children. Dad told how his father would get his kids out of bed at five in the morning, whether it was needed or not, and wouldn’t allow them to put sugar on their breakfast food. What I know about him, he doesn't strike me as a father his children could easily relate to.
My father reflected some of that sort of thing with his own children. He didn’t prevent his children from putting sugar on their breakfast food, as Grossvater Mathias had; nor did he roust them out of bed when nothing required it. But while he allowed us to sleep longer than his own father had, there was no shilly-shallying about getting out of bed and into your clothes in the morning. (How amazed--and envious--was I when I found my chum Bobby Evans still in his pajamas when I went to see his Christmas presents one morning.) To this day, I do not feel comfortable if I stay in my bedclothes.
I also find it worth pointing out that while there was a Franz and a Gertrude among my sibs, there was no one named Mathias.
My father was never as sure about his mother Gertrude Hreber's origins as he was about his father’s. She was born in 1849 in Gorga (Gorje) in northwestern Slovenia, at that time part of Austria and now part of Serbia. She came to this country in 1874 on the U.S.S. America with her parents, Appolonia and Simon, and her brother Franz. They settled on a farm 20 miles east of Sauk Centre.
When Uncle Mike told Dad their mother was from Slovenia, he adamantly refused to believe it. Slav blood in his Prussian gene pool? Mein gott in Himmel! Dad went into near-terminal denial. Eventually, after a good deal of convincing by Uncle Mike, my father accepted the Croation in his family background. But I don't think he fully shook the stigma in his own mind. He died without knowing about the French origin of the family name.
I do not find it difficult to imagine that Mathias might have harbored some Volkisch repulsion for Gertrude’s Slovenian background. Her father was a poor Bohunk farmer who couldn’t speak English, in contrast to Mathias’s status as a successful businessman.
But, though they lived only 15 miles away, little is known about the Hreber family. And I never could find out how it was that Mathias Robischon hooked up with Gertrude. Neither of my parents, for that matter, could come up with much information about the families of their parents and grandparents. Such knowledge may not have been considered important enough to bother about.
Or was it part of the efforts by immigrants to separate themselves from their past, and avoid the xenophobia that still bubbles in the great American Melting Pot?
NEXT: Eugenia Antoinette Remillard adds a new mixture to the blood of the 711 Seven.
I have used some genealogical findings of Jeffrey Keller and Martha Anderson in what follows. They are not responsible, however, for how I use them
There was a time when I thought I had a pretty good fix on the genealogy of Frank Joseph and Eugenia Antoinette Remillard Robischon, and their Kalispell 711 Seven. (711 was the Kalispell, Mont. home at: 711 3rd. Ave. E.) And then I heard from Sara Robischon in St. Cloud, Minnesota.
She'd come across my name while searching the Net. Might we be related? Turned out we are; and so, too, are all the rest of you 711 Seven offspring. She could count up to 18 R's living in the Minnesota area Frank and Genie were from--and that was ten years ago.
Her heritage goes back to the same man as the 711 Seven's: Mathias Robischon, my Dad's father. Her wing of the family is a descendant of Mathias's first marriage--to Marie Castenholtz in 1875--while we 711 Seven are descendants of his second marriage--to Gertrude Hriber in 1884.
So Dad had a ("full") brother and sister, Michael and Mary, and two half-brothers, Peter and John. But, as apparently often
happens with half-siblings, there was little contact between the two groups of children and their offspring.
"It's so weird to know now that I have other relatives out there that I have never even really heard of or even met," Sara commented following her discovery that we were related. "Funny how life is sometimes."
Someone out there reading this right now may experience a similar feeling as I tell you about relatives you never knew you had.
Like Mary Robischon Ventura and the New York State Robischons.
I'd become hooked on Robischon genealogy, like a user searching for a fix, and was poking around the Net to see if there might be other R's when I came across Mary Ventura, who at the time lived in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. She happened to be looking for information on a Peter Robischon, and I wondered, 'Çould she perhaps have any Robischons in her genealogical tree?'
She sure did! She proceeded to provide me with 13 pages of Robi's, most from the Eifel area of the Prussian Rheinland of Germany, bordering Luxembourg and Belgium. With her help I was able to trace the Eifel Robischons back to 1743. But the name appears as early as the 13th century in France, where it was spelled, "Robichonet," or "little Robert." So contrary to what my father thought, and took pride in--i.e., that we all originated in Prussian Germany--we may well have gotten started in France. Sacre bleu!
The Eifel region, with its rich ore deposits, attracted many people from France looking for work. But by the mid-1800s it had become known as the Poorhouse of Prussia. And many Germans had begun migrating in search of work.
"I think all the Robischons are related somehow," Mary Ventura wrote. And with her help, I concluded that our common ancestor was a Peter Robischon, born about 1768. But until I contacted her, she knew nothing about the Minnesota Robischons.
Though I discovered a man in the Utica area named Robischon back in the late 50s--who in a photo he sent me looked so much like Dad--I knew nothing more about Mary Ventura's relatives. They first appeared in the U.S. in the 1880's, when almost one and a half million Germans emigrated to the U.S. Among them were nine Robischon children and their parents, and they were from the same Eifel region that Mathias Robischons was from.
I am not sure why they chose to settle in upstate New York. By the 1800s, the north-central states of Wisconsin, Minnesota and Michigan were the principal settlement area for Germans.
So that makes three branches of the Robischon tree: One grown from New York, and two from Minnesota. But there's one more branch you should know about. They live today in Germany; two of them I am in touch with: Fritz and Rolf Robischon, the latter a teacher in a Progressive public primary school, and a cartoonist.
There are others; some with the name that Rolf and his brother are unable to connect with genealogically. Rolf told me about a Christian Robischon, son of a Joseph Robischon, living in Strasbourg, who Rolf says is not related. But how can anyone have the name and not be?
If you are in need of a genealogical fix, Google the Robischon name and your plate will runneth over. But beware: keepers of records can be capricious. You're apt to encounter Rubischons, Rubitschones, Rohenschons, Rubatschems, Robenschons, Robinschons, Robichons, and a quixotic Roberchon de la Guerinier (in France). (Reminds me of how often the name is mis-pronounced.)
For an even more quixotic version there's Robidouche, the name given me by my buddies on the U.S.S. William P. Biddle, the ship I bled and died for my country on during World War II.
A recent book by Alexander Roth--Unterwegs in der eisernen Welt (which I feebly translate as having something to do with iron workers)--has 13 spellings. They range from Roichon and Robischon, to Rubitschung and Rudischum.
Grossvater Mathias Robischon, 24, arrived in the U.S. on September 10, 1868, accompanied by his cousin Johann and wife, and his mother Wilhelmia (his father had died). It was during the time when Minnesota's foreign-born population nearly tripled, as a result of aggressive recruiting by, inter alia, railroad companies and civic boosters. They were publishing books and pamphlets extolling Minnesota's virtues.
Like many other German Catholic immigrants the Mathias entourage settled in Minnesota, first in Minneapolis. In 1877 Mathias and Marie moved to St. Cloud (I've not been able to find a record of what became of his cousin and mother). Mathias went into the soda pop business--Robischon And Thelen Bottlers--which eventually was taken over by Peter.
One thing my father revealed about himself--you will see how seldom he did that--was the pride he took in his Prussian roots. He would praise its values and ideals, and its highly vaunted military discipline. He not only approved of “German discipline” and “German efficiency,” he walked his talk, embodying it in his own life.
But I am not at all sure he included his father in those positive feelings, and a big reason might have been the way Mathias treated his children. Dad told how his father would get his kids out of bed at five in the morning, whether it was needed or not, and wouldn’t allow them to put sugar on their breakfast food. What I know about him, he doesn't strike me as a father his children could easily relate to.
My father reflected some of that sort of thing with his own children. He didn’t prevent his children from putting sugar on their breakfast food, as Grossvater Mathias had; nor did he roust them out of bed when nothing required it. But while he allowed us to sleep longer than his own father had, there was no shilly-shallying about getting out of bed and into your clothes in the morning. (How amazed--and envious--was I when I found my chum Bobby Evans still in his pajamas when I went to see his Christmas presents one morning.) To this day, I do not feel comfortable if I stay in my bedclothes.
I also find it worth pointing out that while there was a Franz and a Gertrude among my sibs, there was no one named Mathias.
My father was never as sure about his mother Gertrude Hreber's origins as he was about his father’s. She was born in 1849 in Gorga (Gorje) in northwestern Slovenia, at that time part of Austria and now part of Serbia. She came to this country in 1874 on the U.S.S. America with her parents, Appolonia and Simon, and her brother Franz. They settled on a farm 20 miles east of Sauk Centre.
When Uncle Mike told Dad their mother was from Slovenia, he adamantly refused to believe it. Slav blood in his Prussian gene pool? Mein gott in Himmel! Dad went into near-terminal denial. Eventually, after a good deal of convincing by Uncle Mike, my father accepted the Croation in his family background. But I don't think he fully shook the stigma in his own mind. He died without knowing about the French origin of the family name.
I do not find it difficult to imagine that Mathias might have harbored some Volkisch repulsion for Gertrude’s Slovenian background. Her father was a poor Bohunk farmer who couldn’t speak English, in contrast to Mathias’s status as a successful businessman.
But, though they lived only 15 miles away, little is known about the Hreber family. And I never could find out how it was that Mathias Robischon hooked up with Gertrude. Neither of my parents, for that matter, could come up with much information about the families of their parents and grandparents. Such knowledge may not have been considered important enough to bother about.
Or was it part of the efforts by immigrants to separate themselves from their past, and avoid the xenophobia that still bubbles in the great American Melting Pot?
NEXT: Eugenia Antoinette Remillard adds a new mixture to the blood of the 711 Seven.
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