“The stars incline, they do not compel.”
One of the most interesting and awkward parts of school is placement tests. Placement tests are really, really important. They help you figure out which classes you’re ready for, and (in a twist I did not expect) which class you have to teach yourself, if it’s not available, in order to get into and pass the class you want to take next. The math class that I just took didn’t match my learning style. Although the theory of individual differences is still developing, for a long time learning styles have been broken down into various types. Visual, Aural, etcetera- you learn by a certain sense more than others. This may not actually be true; it may just be another way to typify students in a way that doesn’t help. It’s generally recognised that one’s learning methods aren’t static- everyone learns, to some degree or another, from all their senses. No one is exactly one type or another. It would be more true to say that we each just have preferences, shortcuts we’ve developed to learn with. Getting around those can be hard, especially when we’re presented with difficult material, but they have to do with how we connect information inside our heads, not how it gets in there in the first place. There’s actually evidence to support the idea that the limitations imposed by learning styles is nonsense. http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/inside-school-research/2009/12/report_debunks_learning-style.html Daniel WIllingham’s actually taken quite a bit of abuse for talking about it openly: http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/daniel-willingham/the-big-idea-behind-learning.html My problem is simple- I am not a visual learner, or an aural learner, at all. In fact, learning is extremely difficult for me in some areas. I simply cannot learn a formula, and then spit it out, using it to recall my comprehension of the concept. I usually need to understand the concept first, and can figure it out from there. I’m proud to say that that’s changed. Ye gods and little fishes, how that’s changed, but it hasn’t changed enough to make it easy for me to learn from a blackboard. So I’ll admit it: I went to an entire semester of math class, sat in the back, tried to understand, and when it went over my head, I simply stopped paying attention. I wrote three short stories, corrected an essay, and read four books during the course of this math class. I wasn’t ignoring the material; I went home each time, sat down with my calculator and the internet, and taught myself math. It was brutal, and I hated it. More than anything, I wanted to go in to the sections available for help- but I had other classes those nights. Even though the professor told us up front, “If you don’t go to the sections, we just assume that you don’t care about the class,” I couldn’t go. The statement has meaning, though, and I can’t stress this enough: regardless of what your shortcuts are, and whether they work for that class, learning the material is your responsibility. It’s your job, not theirs, to make you learn. They are there to present material, help filter down the wilderness, provide guidance and the raw information. Your job, at the college level, is to get it into your head in a retrievable, comprehendable database. So I learned math. And more math. Standard deviations. Probabilities. I worked on learning the basics of standard interest and rates of decay. I spent an average of eight hours for each two hour class, just learning, before I could tackle the homework. I can honestly say that I have never worked so hard, on so alien a subject, for any class in my life. I didn’t like having to, but I found that I loved the material. I did well; I got an A minus. I’m sad about that; I know which material I was still shaky on by the end of class. But I did well, and felt I was really ready to tackle the next subject, hopefully with a better understanding of how to hook the informaiton up inside my head. With that in mind, I asked the TA what I should take next, and she recommended college algebra. All right. Placement test? Oh, right, placement test. The placement test advised me that I should take the class that I just passed, the one that I got an A- in. The only conclusion that I can draw is that there is a gap in my understanding, a gap in my learning, that was not covered in that class (since I learned all the material presented) and so I am not prepared for the next class. As frustrating as that is, I’m stuck with the simple knowledge that this is my problem, and my responsibility. Lots of classes, and lots of things in life, are going to have a steeper slope than expected, and require some serious prep to advance for. I have to learn algebra… in order to get into algebra. It’s a little ironic (especially the part about being sent back to the class I just completed) but it’s also not atypical for the world. I scheduled a meeting with my advisor, and I bought some good textbooks. I have every intention of passing the placement test before the class begins, thus securing my seat. I am insane. I remember how hard it was, I remember how much trouble it gave me. And I’m setting myself up, taking a hard math class alongside tech writing (with its ten page syllabus) and an Asian language. But you know what? I already learned how to learn this. So I can do it, and if I can’t, clearly I need the practice. In the end, learning comes from us. I know that I’m in for a semester of hard work, of constant homework, and of struggling with my brain to try to get it to take the bit. I know it, and I’m doing it. The stars incline, they do not compel. Paracelsus knew quite a bit about how responsible we are for our destinies. Regardless of my so-called learning style, I must take responsibility for the architecture in my own head. I don’t want to, but I will. That is what school is actually for, to pass the responsibility back to us, as individuals. I can complain all I want about the teacher’s style, but in the end, it comes down to me, with paper and a pencil, and neither of those can really take the blame.Math is Hard.
I hear it all the time. “Math makes my head hurt.” “I love math, but it’s hard.” I listen. Of course I listen. I even sympathise. Math IS hard. Math IS complicated.
Math is complicated because the universe is complicated.
Look. If there’s one thing- just one thing, that I want to be remembered for saying in my lifetime, it’s this: Math and Art are the same thing.
Seriously. Math is an effort to boil down the essence of a relationship in the universe, between objects, forces, spaces, whatever’s going on at the time. To make it understandable, reproducible. Art is the same thing. Art is the reduction and comprehension of forces- colour, shape, movement, psychological shapes and colours and movements, too- and the attempt to make them understandable to someone standing outside. (This is why the best way to appreciate a painting is with a chair; so that you have time to really examine the ramifications of the equation the painting represents.)Math is hard, because the world is hard. Math is also hard because we are taught, from childhood, that math is a separate entity of its own, a thing you are either good at or you aren’t.
This is nonsense. If no one ever told you before, I will tell you now: this is bunk.
No one ever tells you that speech is something you “get” or you don’t, that walking is something some people don’t have the capacity to get good at. Lots and lots of people are terrible at interpersonal relationships; you don’t see too many of them standing on the sidelines. People drive cars even though they’ve never looked under the hood. Basic use of numbers is something everyone can learn, and most people walking this planet have even more capability than that.
Math is hard, but so is playing the piano, right? Not everyone will be a concert mathemetician, but anyone can learn to do the basics. And the basics for most can run really, really high.
I get scared when people say they can’t do math. Which math? Balancing a checkbook? Calculating the escape velocity of a rocket? Counting change? Telling time? There is so much math everywhere that this is like saying, “I can’t understand language.”
I’m taking this math class now. I enjoy it, even though the outcome of each class is me going home with paper and a pencil and learning math off the internet for five hours. Trust me, the streets are a weird place to learn your math. But it works. Math is learnable.
Art is also learnable. Van Gogh saw things in sunflowers and starry nights that overwhelmed him, and from the depths and distances of what he was chasing, he brought back pictures of the shape of things that’ll haunt us for the rest of humanity’s lifespan. He saw it, and he brought back pieces of it alive. It’s not different from what the mathemeticians do- it’s just done with a brush instead of chalk. Same function, different brain region. The brain is amazingly plastic in its singleminded pursuit of cataloguing and comprehending the universe.
I’m considering including some basic math instruction here, but right now, I’m more interested in convincing artists to take another crack at algebra or statistics, and mathemeticians to go re-examine Calder and Van Gogh.
Go ahead. I’ll be here when you get back. Harvard students don’t need more art; they need more understanding of what art is, and why these sciences are so much a part of the same adventure. If I only come up with one original idea in my life, let that be it: You’re on the same road. They’re the same thing. No one- NO ONE- is bad at math. You have the same amount of struggle, you just climb the scale of what you’re willing to struggle with. No one encourages a violinist to set down the instrument forever after their first concert; don’t drop math after you finally pass the basics. You don’t have to be an astronomer or a physicist to need to understand the world around you.
And, oh, it is a vast and wonderful world!
Juvies (there’s a train a’comin)
http://www.juvies.net/index.php
What makes a criminal a criminal?
First and foremost, it’s the breaking of the law, the social compact that holds things together. We’re examining this in class, at breakneck speed due to the shortness of the term. Not much time for learning to craft the kind of answers they’re looking for.
So, with that in mind… Be wary of Dr. Fersch; he’s crafty. He steers you towards the kind of answers he wants to argue with, not necessarily the ones that he supports. I cringe before raising my hand, knowing that whatever I say, whatever throughts I’ve let him coax me into concluding, he will have a carefully worded, well-supported disagreement prepared to deal with. Don’t let this shut you up. He teaches for a reason.
Dr. Corbett, on the other hand, is a refreshing breeze of a teacher. He calls you by your first name, and listens to your thoughts. He’s exactly what one would hope for in a former probation officer: authoritative, without being authoritarian. He gives the impression of stability, of kindness without concession. This is a powerful thing, one which Dr. Fersch cannot offer. But Dr. Fersch doesn’t need to. He’s still there for our own good. It’s peculiar, to be in a class about the use of an institutional system, as we pass through this institutional system. So on one side, we have dry and wiry wit, and on the other, warm and substantial support. Dr. Fersch is correct that they mix well, and that we get a lot from alternating between the two, probably more than we would learning from either individually.
I like Dr. Corbett. That doesn’t mean that I learn best from him, but it certainly means that I lean that way. At the very least, it means that I’m not nervous in his class room. I can enjoy learning there, the same way Dr. Fernald teaches psych: warm, hands-on, peacefully challenging. I don’t like Dr. Fersch, yet, but I can see why many, many people do. He’s brilliant, determined, and perceptive. He may play mind games, but he plays them well, and not necessarily to our detriment. There’s something to be said for a person who can take apart your answers and put them back together better, no matter how objectionably painful the event might be.
So, we learn. We sit in our seats and we learn. I have a lot of respect for the students. They are amazing.
The most amazing thing is where they are from, personally. There’s an astonishing number who have seen the inside of the juvenile justice system, or the juvenile social services. I’m amazed by these people, strong enough to come back for more, wanting to fix what they saw broken. It takes guts to do that, doesn’t it? To not just survive it, but to go back for the others. It’s an underground railroad, of sorts. I think about this, as we watch heart-rending videos about delinquents, as we examine the film Juvies, an advocacy piece with good intentions. I agree with some of those intentions, but I’m more interested in the railroad itself, made of these students going back for degrees.
I’ve held down my stops on it. Heck, I rode it out of my own wasteland. I’m not a conductor, but I am a fervent supporter. I am amazed to see people return, to see people pick up others.
What is it that makes a delinquent? We’re examining this question. At the same time, we are not looking at the flip side of that question: What makes a law-abiding human being? What makes someone go that extra mile, to not just uphold the law, but convince others to uphold it? What makes someone teach it?
How do you convince people to go from one extreme to the other?
That’s who I’m in class with, the people who have come in from the wastelands. Some of them have answers to these questions. Others will have them, and good answers.
At the same time, there are people in this class who are only just now learning what those wastelands are like. We hear about Kip Kinkel, we hear about Damien Bynoe. And while some of us have known the badlands, there’s others whose eyes have never had these tears before. It’s different, the waters from the badland tears. It’s harsher. We break our hearts listening, and then try to think with our heads. We listen to the stories of probation hearings and try to decide whether kids are prepared for the outside world. Are they? How do we know? Is earnestness and honesty enough? What if you’re a bad k id with a good plan, or a good kid with a poor one? Are we weighing how badly the kid wants to be in society, how much society wants the kid, or neither, or both? Do we care if they obey the rules for the right reasons, or only if they obey the rules?
These are hard questions. Humanity has been asking them since the dawn of time, and it’s unlikely that one seven week course will solve them. But we’re learning to ask, and that’s a start.
In the meantime, there’s Drs. Corbett & Fersch (if you go in alphabetical order) or in order of course billing, Fersch & Corbett. And neither is giving an inch, because these are hard questions, and the answers are important.
On our side, the questions are just as hard. Does it matter why the conductors of this lifelong return-and-rescue cycle in the world want to save kids, or does it only matter how effective they are at it? Does it matter why they want to go back? Does it matter what wasteland they each came from? How much difference does it make? Ultimately, which is more important, what they get on the exam, or where it points them to help?
I guess that’s the whole point. Like our experience as a mock parole board, the answer is that both matter. That there is no one answer, but a kid can only be served by being held accountable for real actions while better motivations and better reasoning get learned. First, we focus on the grades by studying the material. Only by getting the grades can a student become more than a student. But to only have good behaviour isn’t enough, and to only have good grades isn’t enough- there must be some kind of engagement, some place for the work to go, some end for the railroad. Some reconnection to life, where ttheory becomes real work. And that’s where they come in, these return trip students, building the track as they go. They get good grades studying the kids who don’t, so that maybe they can help.
I can respect that. I can even believe that this connection to society, this use for information, is why they teach it. Without knowledge of these things, we’re left with social doctors who have amputation as the only option. And it isn’t enough to treat; we must have doctors who teach doctors. We must have people teaching other people how to ask these questions, whether we reach answers or not.
On the subject of the advocacy work, Juvies, it raises important questions, and was a good choice for showing to anyone studying the covergence point of psychology and law. Beyond that, I’m not prepared to evaluate it. It’s appropriate for class, that’s for sure. I would classify this class as a law class, touching on psychological issues, and not a psychology class touching on legal issues. It’s a fine distinction, but one worth paying attention to when choosing classes.
Don’t mind me; I’m just here for the fuses.
Class is gonna hurt. Don’t mind me, I’m just here for the fuses.
I was expecting different. Not better, this is great. But different. Fersch is an odd little guy who carries lots of paper and plastic bags, and doesn’t like to explain his grading system. He’s also one of the best forensic psychologists in the world. I have to admit, that after reading all of the books he’s written that have crossed my path, I expected… grimmer. One expects a man who’s spent his lifetime staring into the abyss of human nature to be a little more grizzled, a little more battle-scarred. This man has spent decades examining the beginnings of the roads to hell; he’s got more hands-on look what makes people do bad things than most people dream exists.
He isn’t grizzled. He’s actually very affable, and covers up the steel with a lot of friendly advice about what to expect and what not to expect in his classroom. There’s not a lot of accommodation, which is fine, that’s not what I’m here for.
He’s a law professor and a lawyer. He is also a psych Ph.d.
I am going it from the other side; clinical psych with an eye towards policy, not towards counseling psychology. I will get licensed for it, but I don’t expect it to be my lifeline. I don’t know what will be.
I have no idea where i’m headed, beyond my determination to turn my evening education into acceptance at a good grad school. I do know that it’s not the same future as the 60 fresh-faced, gorgeous pre-law harvard college kids I’m in with. Oh, my god, it’s amazing how much beauty a background of money can provide. I am old, and I am coarse, and my hands show a lifetime of work. My hope is not new and my skin is not soft and my eyes are flinty and hard.
But I have to recognise that I have a something they don’t, for all that they are brilliant and clear. They may be the best and the brightest, but unlike them, I’ve been the places that we’re studying. I’ve looked on the places where the road to hell begins from a close-up, in-person perspective, and taken my feet off it, and they haven’t had to for the most part. They are mostly privileged, mostly perfect, and precious to society and to the world and yes, even to me, for their innocence and intelligence and potential.
I have no innocence to offer. My potential is the kind that has teeth. It’s the kind that has power. My potential is all about a mind already active, stripping the material we’re given apart to rob the wires and build mental machinery that has nothing to do with the exams. I’ve got my own mental mecha already in progress, so I’m not here for drafting practice. I’ll do it, but it’s not all that I’m here for. I’m already attacking our classwork with a screwdriver held in my teeth and my spanners in an arm-holster, yanking out gears with ecstatic abandon.
I’m not here for the reason they’re here. They’re getting prepared for the world, for grad school, learning how to think. I know how to think. I’m here to get raw material and guidance on it. I don’t have to be told about a lot of the issues we’re studying because I’ve been there in a way that they haven’t, and I’ve already spent most of my life considering what makes good people become bad people, and what makes people do bad things or good things. How to forgive them for it, move on, reconcile myself to a world where people are sometimes damaged or broken or outright dangerous. It’s a big, bad place out there, and these dangerous people are everywhere.
Like I said, I’m just here for the fuses. I’m polishing, I’m here to have something to grind my hard edge against. In some ways, I’m at a serious disadvantage, because I’m thrown in with kids whom I have to allow to be kids, allow to do what they’re here to do. Keep my mouth shut and not monopolise the class, make sure that they know we extension school kids give a damn about their futures even as we’re trying to build our own. It’s hard. I have to sit down and do the same work, with a different use for it in my educational process. That’s a disadvantage, because the extension students are by far in the minority.
At the same time, when it comes to the material itself, we have a depth of perception because our lenses were forged a little hotter and have been out in that big bad world. It’s vicious out there, and they haven’t seen it yet.
I don’t have the innocence of youth. I have the radical purification of the saved. It’s a little different and it’s not scared by the fact that the course work is hard and the material is triggering for me. It’s painful to watch all these interviews with people who’ve murdered others. It’s painful to read their accounts. It’s hard for me to see children who were hurt, hurting others. But it’s mine, the pain is mine, and I will leach every last bitter drop of wisdom I can from it while we’re in class. I will take everything off the vehicle that can be taken; they will leave with an eye-widening perspective into the dark underworld of human nature and some practice in the whiteclad, gloved-hands question of what to do with it. I will leave with my arms full of bits of law process, specs of various parts of human behaviour, books of studies on how others behave and learn and deal with these things, and what’s expected in future shop classes. My tools will be sharpened from writing for a fierce critic. It appears that Dr. Fersch is a very demanding critic, and that’s a very good thing. I don’t want an easy A. I want the hardest A I can get, because I need it for later. I want the skills.
I play for keeps.
So Im excited about it, even as I recognise that the class I’m taking isn’t the class they’re taking. I’m a lot more than interested. It’s the same undergrad credit, but mine isn’t part of the same college experience. Mine is part of the Educate the Adult project, and so mine is a lot more hardcore.
I guess that’s what was different. The kids don’t look hungry. They don’t thirst to get their hands on the books. You can tell the extension students because we’ve already registered, bought them, and read them, cover to cover. They don’t know who the prof is. They don’t know how much value to place on his experience in the real world, or any real world experience. The older few, the ones from the extension school, I can tell them by their hungry look. Their grit. It’s got to be interesting to teach people who have that.
We don’t whine over tenths of a grade point. We grind our knives down sharper, and get ready for the next round. I’m proud of them. I’m proud of us, old and quirky and out of place though we may be. We’re not just the future; we’re the mental mechanics of the present, reporting for duty.
Psych!
In an interesting twist, I’ve been too busy to do much of anything but school. I’m writing this in the break between the Spring semester and Summer school, drawing my last real walking breath before plunging back into a run.
But I took Intro to Psych this past semester, and I have a request for anyone who thinks this back door into Harvard is a piece of cake: PLEASE COME HELP ME WITH MY HOMEWORK.
I showed the syllabus to a mental health professional at the beginning of the class. She asked me what kind of Undergrad class would be that intense. I assured her that this was not that unheard of. She looked at me. Then she asked me if I wanted to talk about this on the couch instead.
No. I’m not crazy. I didn’t realise, when I began, that I would be taking a class from a guy who used to go to movies with Skinner. Or that our prof actually writes the textbooks used in other psych classes. They won’t tell you this, but I will: Go to your textbook outlet and get his book on the six perspectives. It will make class much easier.
The evaluations always ask us: What would you tell people going into this class?
My response is always the same. It’s hard. Set aside study time. Pay attention. Don’t skip any classes. Don’t count on your brains to get you through.
That last is a big one. One thing that the 1% of student who take a course at the extension school and later graduate have in common is intelligence. (Oh, you didn’t know it was that low? Most who attend won’t apply. Not all who apply get accepted, even if their grades are good. Not all who get in, graduate. And yes, by that point, we’re talking one percent.)
So the ones who get in, they are the ones for whom brains have been fun. Didn’t do college the way other people did, and have therefore probably had to manage to get to where they are without the pieces of paper. But once you get there, no amount of plain brain power is going to let you coast. You’re in with sharks just as hungry as you, and you have to fight to keep up.
Those brains that have gotten you to the top of the heap of the uneducated, up into the ranks of the educated, they aren’t enough without the study habits of a Harvard student. So when they ask me, “What would you tell a student considering taking this class?” the answer is always the same:
Brace yourself. This is gonna hurt like mad.
And you’ll love every bleeding, biting, brain-blistering minute.
For the record, I loved psych class. LOVED it. It was awe-inspiring. There were many bad jokes and constant attempts to operationally define. Everything from athleticism to alcoholism to true love. There were stories about clever hans the horse that made us all feel like dull donkeys. We actually looked at a floor plan of Freud’s house. And the class moves FAST. They know how little time they have. Which is where my one piece of advice unique to this class comes from-attend the review sessions and write down every single thing they say. All of it. It will be on the exam. Everything you learn in class will be on the exam. It takes memorisation. It takes study.
I loved the class. A lot of people took it for fun and not for credit; it is a good intro to other courses at Harvard Extension, because people going in for a nice fluffy psych course get hit with exactly how interesting, and how for real, these courses are. It’s fascinating, it’s wonderful, and it’s very, very shocking how much material there is. Professor Fernald is wonderful. He has a genuine appreciation for the work that we put in. It must be neat to teach people who are giving up their spare time to come in and learn.
So I’m in for Psychopathy and delinquency in summer school; who’s with me?
Art at Harvard
Harvard would like to add more art to their liberal arts, which at the moment, I must confess, are very liberal indeed. The art is enthusiastic, a broad mix of classical and popular with perhaps a little too much popular. It doesn’t have the setting or even the selectness that it ought, at a university of our calibre. When I think, “Bastion of Culturally Significant Arts,” I don’t immediately think of Harvard.
Why?
Because deep down, I want Harvard to be something it isn’t. I want Harvard to be as rigorously scientific as MIT, as sensitive as Lesley, as establishment-minded as BU, and as traditional as itself. It isn’t. It has the capability, but right now, things are being designed by committee which need to be decided by mandate. The result is a university that is as clique-ish as MIT, as occasionally whiny as Lesley, as overpriced as BU, and as defensively liberal as itself.
Don’t get me wrong. I love and adore every one of those schools, and each has something amazing to offer the community. Especially Harvard. And a deep understanding of the arts really is important for students, of all ages. But when I think, “What does Harvard need most, right now?” The answer that I arrive at is not, “More art.”
It’s more careful screening.
See, what’s going on at Harvard is that there’s too much of everything, and it isn’t carefully chosen. It’s just added. Content is heaped in, and what happens is that Harvard gets out of hand. The current recession is going to be very good for Harvard; it will make them really examine where the money is going. Do we need to put every professor on a tenure track? Do we need certain classes? Do we need a bigger campus?
No. It’s a tough answer, but the answer is no. Instead of more, we need better.
Some examples of what I dream of for Harvard:
To have professors who do not discuss their political leanings during class hours. (I had one do this; in urging us to vote, she couldn’t even name McCain. It was Obama and, “that Other Guy.” Over and over. She swore that if “that Other Guy,” won, she was moving to Mars. She “couldn’t abide the thought.”)
Well, you know what? I expect you to abide the thought, at least as long as class is in session, because frankly, your politics have no place in a class which is not about politics. I was offended not by her leanings, but by her bringing them up, and by letting us and Harvard down by not doing so in a fair and respectful manner. You do not address anyone as, “that Other Guy.” It simply isn’t done, especially in a place that wants to be known as the place to go for culture. This, to me, was an example of something that Harvard needs to pay attention to. How many teachers are using the class this way? How appropriate is it? And… do we want this to happen with art as well? I don’t want to be taught a certain slant. I want to be shown all sides, especially when it comes to art, which is so subjective that we really need to reach, to stretch, to understand. It’s going to take very good teachers to cultivate that.
Which is another good point: classes taught by actual professors. I have had quite a few taught by TAs. More even than those taught by professors. I find it difficult to learn from a TA who does not know the material herself. (In most of these cases, it was a “herself,” and not a “himself.” I’m fine with that, it’s the TA status I find difficult.) I am really bothered by the number of classes where there is no professor, just a TA younger than I am, who is struggling to find time to correct the massive amount of work we turn in. I wouldn’t mind it if it were just a few cases, a few classes. But it isn’t. I have had classes taken from professors who, at the end of the course, had no idea who I was, because they had not seen a single thing I’d handed in. I had never had any actual interaction with them, and all questions were directed toward the crop of graduate students who waited in the wings, hovering anxiously and trying to get our papers back to us as they frantically worked on their own projects.
Or.. classes taught in up-to-date buildings. Harvard has a huge, sprawling capmus. You can easily get lost going between classes. Some of those buildings are beyond old: broken walls, threadbare carpets, radiators that don’t work. When I went to high school, we had buildings like that, because our school system ran out of money. What’s Harvard’s excuse? Surely, if a class is worth teaching, it’s worth teaching well. I don’t want them to add curriculum choices, I want them to value more highly the ones we have.
These grudges of mine are not fatal. I love my school. I even genuinely like the TAs, most of whom try desperately to make up in effort what they lack in experience, and are far more willing than the professors to help if you’re confused by the material. They work darned hard for their living, and have every reason to be proud of their work.
But… “Art.”
Art is not a thing. You cannot simply build it, buy it, have it. You cannot just “add” art. Art is something personal, valuable, and even secret; art is the spot in each of us that is capable of appreciating the beautiful, the lasting, the meaningful, in the world around us. Art is the opposite of commerce, it is not about production. It is about creation, removing materials from the line of production. It’s the act of putting together what’s there in a valuable and meaningful manner, which creates value because it represents some quality or relationship in the universe which we find to be true. This is not something that can be decided by committee. It is something that is decided privately in the back of the soul. The best that a committee can do is acknowledge that it exists, and do a better job of choosing representational examples. Adding more simply creates clutter. It introduces art for the sake of having it, it introduces the idea that art can be provided, instead of discovered.
Now, I know Natalie Portman graduated Harvard in 2003 with a psych degree. And as the number of famous artists who went to Harvard (or have been given honorary degrees) grows, Harvard wants to prove that they are a repsonsible member of the arts community. And I know that Harvard really does care about the arts, and our balanced educations. I just also feel deeply that, like politics, art is something that should be discovered as our learning takes us- it is something we should have available and be able to pursue, but the tastes should not be instilled by teaching. Only the will for it, the longing for it, should be taught.
Liberal arts does not meal left-leaning and artistic. It refers to classical learning. Languages, math, science, humanities, all of these things put together make a balanced person. I don’t want Harvard to develop its softer side. I think the creation of an “Arts task force,” is ridiculous; do we have a “Science task force,” or a “Language task force”? No. We don’t need one. What we need is more integration between art and what we learn already. What we need is more focus on what we learn already. I am afraid that Harvard will do for art what it is doing for the other subjects I am learning: relegate it to second-tier instruction, serve it up according to someone’s personal agenda (or create opportunities to, which will result in the same), let it happen in shabby, old classrooms on the fringes of campus. I want art to be what it is: pervasive, glorious, and uncontainable. I want it to be approached with the discipline and concentration that Harvard is capable of. I do not want more art. I want better art. Just as Harvard’s instruction needs to focus on improving the present version, I think we should focus on improving the art we have access to, not just exposing us to more of it, everywhere, until it becomes a commodity like any other. I want Harvard to shy away from providing more just because we need more. We are not children. We are not babies, who need to be fed from an artificial bottle held up by our Arts Task Force. We do not need to be thrown into the world of art, or have a wide net cast out to surround us with it until we absorb some.
We need Harvard to do what it has always done, to guide us in learning to appreciate and discover for ourselves. To encourage us to fairly and respectfully talk about it, to treat it with respect by giving it decent surroundings and proper introduction. We need Harvard to respect art, and us, by allowing us to pursue our friendship in our own sweet time, and we need Harvard to save its money for the best, and skip the broad sweep of popular art. Let us find it on our own. You know that we will. We always have.
They Earned Those Letter Jackets
There are some members of the Extension School who deserve special mention. I’ve met them. I won’t use their names, but they give me heart when I feel my resolve crumbling, my sleepiness creeping in. When I realise that a paper is due and I have to go to a meeting instead of sitting over my books at lunchtime. They are the people I’ve met who really stand out even in a population where everyone is proving themselves exceptional. Harvard Extension is not for precious snowflakes- it’s for the climbers who tackle Everest in their spare time. We don’t have parents to hover, or even the comfort of a dorm full of like-minded peers. We have to forge these connections and fend for ourselves. Let me tell you about some of the amazing explorers I’ve met out here in the ice.
They make the world a better place, and they make my classes a better place. I was in a writing class-Harvard demands that you take an expository writing class, just to get into the degree program. Some of the people in the class with me did not pass, and should not have. I read their work. If they worked for me, I would assign them tasks where they did not write for the public eye, until I was certain that their work would be proofread properly. But their hearts were good, and I have confidence that some of them, at least, were enthusiastic about improving, and will take that class again and get the grade that they need to get in.
In that class, there were students from other universities (Harvard Extension is a popular transfer.) There were a few older students, a few very young students, and a lot in between. One of them was a sweet, quiet woman, who was shy about participating in class and yet was one of the early ones. You know the early ones. They’re the ones who show up early, take a seat in the front row, and have all their materials ready. I’m one of the early ones, too, so I had ample opportunity to see just how determined she was.
For lack of a better name, I will call her the Beautiful Writer, because that’s what she was (and likely still is.) Not just physically beautiful, in the robust snow-white-skin-with-dark-hair sort of way, but in the perceptive way, willing to embrace her broken places and make them sources of wisdom and connection. Her writing was excellent. So good it intimidated me, but I’m all right with that. This is Harvard. I expect some intimidation. It turned out to be the best thing possible, because the sense of cooperation with just a tiny bit of competition was good for all of us. Especially, it turned out, for her.
I won’t spill the details that she eventually revealed. It is enough to say that she was a new student, first facing life after the death of a parent who had held her virtually captive in caregiving. We were reading Shirley Jackson, so this was an eerie, eerie coincidence- I had my own coincidental story, and we both went to see the professor after the class finally ended, to thank her and talk about where we’d come from.
The professor (an amazing, energetic woman in a purple shawl, to whom the energy of talking about literature seemed to be lifeblood and breath) was astounded.
“Why didn’t you tell me this earlier?” she cried.
The Beautiful Writer looked at me, and I looked at her, and we both looked at the Inspiring Professor.
“I didn’t want to be treated any differently,” she said. “I’ve never done this before. I want to know I can do it, for real, to live up to it all on my own.”
“Why would we tell you?” I chimed in. “This is our chance to really show that we can do it. Yes, the material was hard for us, because we have these background issues… but…”
Beautiful writer picked up the thread. “But this is the most meaningful thing that we’ve ever done, and it means more knowing that we did it as ordinary, everyday students, living up to the ordinary standard.”
What could I possibly add? She was right. She is still right. She is, to me, the embodiment of what makes the Extension school amazing. I met the opposite of this, in the form of a professor whose class I began attending, but then dropped.
“You all come from diverse backgrounds,” he said, “and while the material is very challenging, I can assure you that when it comes time for grading, your background will be taken into account.”
I was not the only one who wrote a letter to my advisor about it. Yes, we’re from different backgrounds, but we’re here to face the same standards, and it does us no favours to consider those backgrounds when grading. I don’t want that. No crutches, no padding, no training wheels. This is Harvard.
Then there are the home school kids. I am all for home schooling in some ways, but there’s a lot to be said for learning to manage packs of people, and get by going to a place you don’t like in an outfit like everyone else’s, working in the same environment, and still finding ways to be innovative and advanced. The home school kids we got were enrolled as early college enrollees, taking courses in languages or other things that interested them.
Great, we are now competing with sixteen-year-old geniuses. And they were. They blew us old folks away in the short term sprint. But in the middle of the term, a different pattern began to emerge, with a clear distinction between the people who were studying regularly, and the people who weren’t, and it crossed all other distinctions pretty evenly. We all learned to respect each other thoroughly, and they had as much to offer us as we did them. No one pretended that we were all the same. I wish we could send our managers here for diversity practice.
They could meet other people I’ve met: the young woman getting her Master’s, now that her daughter was two. The older woman studying Japanese in preparation for a trip. (And the older woman who had been to Japan five times, but could never seem to apply herself properly to learn the language. She dropped out in the second semester. The coursework does separate those who want to work from those who don’t.)
There were the two students who came in because their schedules needed a class at a certain time. They were from a different school, and I will spare that school the shame of connecting its name here, because those students made it very clear that they had no problems with cheating. To the eternal credit of those I was in the class with, the rest of the class was shocked and appalled, and I was never prouder of today’s youth than when I discovered that those sixteen year olds had also dutifully written letters to the instructor about it. Most of us did. We had to. We weren’t just shocked at the potential upset to the grade pool- it was the principle of the thing.
Harvard rattles on and on about ethics, but the truth is very simple. We take it seriously. We have to take it very seriously, because Harvard’s penalties are brutally simple. You cheat, and it’s the end of your career at Harvard. They mean it. I have had sleepless nights worrying about whether I missed citations in papers. Harvard is serious about its honour code, and none of us could sit by and watch. Fear of penalty doesn’t spur us to action, it just puts the questions into clear light, and once we see things clearly, most people make right decisions for reasons having nothing to do with fear of getting caught or blamed in association.
Yeah, I’m proud of my class. My whole class, all the people at the Extension school, since we all have different graduation dates. I’m proud to be a part of them, and although we don’t get as much chance to meet each other as the dorm kids do, I think we have more to be proud of. This the Varsity team when it comes to real life.
By day, a mild-mannered citizen…
By night, I’m a Harvard student.
Oh, by all means, go ahead. No, it’s all right; I’ll wait. I might even giggle. Get it out of your system. Seriously, it’s okay. We’ve got all day. I’ve heard it all before… How the Extension school is not the same as Harvard College. (Well, you’re right, it isn’t.) How it’s “Harvard Light.” (That one’s not quite right, but we’ll get to that.) How it’s for those who couldn’t hack it at Harvard for real. No, don’t start there-go back a bit. First, go back, start by explaining to me how the lack of SAT requirements waters down the competition, how the once-or-twice-a-week format dilutes the curriculum. That’s a good place to start. From there, we can move on to the arguments about people trying to pass it off as a Harvard Degree (it is, did you mean a Harvard College degree? Thanks. I’m prepared to be precise!) And finally, let’s fight dirty, and talk about how I’m one of the masses, and dilute the school brand. Got all that?
Right. Let’s go.
First, maybe, we’ll explain that I’m wasting my time, a 32-year old nobody with a day job and no education sitting in a Harvard classroom. Because I’ve heard it, but let’s sing it again. If you’re somebody, you go to Harvard College. Go swim with the sharks. Don’t waste your time in the kiddie pool.
Oh, I’ve heard it.
But I remember something that the founders of Harvard knew, something which led to the progressive moves Harvard has made to ensure financial aid for every needy student, something which led to the very development of the Extension school. This is a very simple, very vital truth about our society. It’s something that people forget, in the pushing and shoving to get into the classrooms during the day.
Common men matter.
The Extension school was not designed just so that Grandma could go take a Medeival French class in her spare time. Sure, that was part of it- remember, Harvard believes wholeheartedly in arming the populace with education, in any kind that they’ll take to. But Harvard also was founded upon the idea that plain folk like me, those who used to be farmers and grocers and shopkeepers and the sons and daughters who would otherwise never have gone to college, being too busy keeping families or businesses running, have brains. And can be taught to use them. So now you have those of us who-well, fine. We’re farmers and grocers and shopkeepers, but we’re the ones who want to be well-educated farmers and grocers and shopkeepers and sons and daughters.
This college, and this country, are founded upon the idea that greatness cannot be conferred by any external means. Greatness cannot be offered just by means of education. It comes from within, and has no regard for circumstances. However, as with health and money related to happiness, having the former can’t guarantee the latter. Not havingthem significantly increases the odds against it, but having them is no guarantee.
Well, education is the same way. It is not true that giving the materials out can make any one person become great. All people are not created the same. But the very Harvard experience is predicated on the fact that if you hand out the materials such that they are accessible to all, greatness will seize them and rise.
Well, yes, and so will I. But this isn’t just about me. This is a dangerous, very liberal concept. Not everyone will benefit from education. But what Harvard is founded upon is the idea that the value of education does not come from what a University education brings us. It comes from what we are willing to bring to the process of our education.
Of course there are Extension students looking for easy classes. There are students looking for the Harvard name only. There are those in every Harvard group. There are ALSO students who are thriving on challenge, who are every bit as bright and determined as the young ’sharks’ that swim in the daytime classes. (Incidentally, I’m not really one of them. I took the SAT, and I know pretty well how bright I am, but I also know how bright ‘genius,’ is, and will make no claims to my actual intelligence. I’m just smart enough to know that it is work, and not merely gift, that makes genius.)
What makes us different is that we are willing to push harder, to do the work at Harvard level, with our outside lives still going on. I had a teacher recommend that I apply to “Harvard Proper.” But what would I do with my life? How would I pay my rent, should I sell all my things to live in a dorm? The best I’ve met with was an advisor who screwed up her face and said, “Hm. It would take some serious sacrifices.”
I’m not prepared to make those sacrifices. I am doing good (not just doing well, but actually doing some good for the world) where I am. I am also doing well. My medical conditions are stable enough to let me work full time and manage my school as well. I love the education that I’m getting. My teachers are not just helpful, they are obsessed. They are teaching to students who really want to be there.
I want to be here. I’m the only one of four siblings to graduate high school, let alone go to college. I love it. I bring my education with me everywhere. The Extension school recognises that it takes extra work to be this level of engaged, this level of committed. A Harvard College degree is not like a Harvard Extension degree in the same way that walking a tightrope in spangles is not the same as juggling three plates and a bowling ball on a tightrope in cutoff jeans with no audience. No, we are not called upon to be there every day in the classroom. No, we don’t have youth and beauty on our side, in some cases. (Mine.) No, we don’t consider ourselves destined to a life of advantage just for using the Harvard name. (Some will try, I wash my hands of them. I’m not hiding that I went to the extension school; I’m anonymous because I still attend.)
I could have gone to Cambridge College, whose specialty is preparing people who are not ready for college. I could have gone to any of the other night schools out there. BU, for example. I chose Harvard.
I realised why, not on my first course, or my third, but on my fourth, when I discovered that the professor I’d taken my third course from had literally written the books on the subject I was researching for a paper. It turns out he’s one of the world’s foremost experts on the subject.
I’m new here. I didn’t know.
But that’s why Harvard. And why the Extension school. My school takes place everywhere, all the time, as I integrate these concepts into the world outside. I take my education to work with me every day. I work for grades at my lunch hour. I struggle with flash cards on the train. Am I diluting your brand? Well, not anymore than you’re diluting mine, out here in the world where we earn our bread.
Yes, I go to your Harvard. And I’m prepared for it. Are you prepared for mine?