It’s kind of fun to do the impossible
-Walt Disney
I’m not the kind of teacher who works for the summer, but don’t
get me wrong: I like a good vacation.
Two weeks is about right. Just
enough time to take the family somewhere nice, see some sights, try some new
food, maybe—procure a little inspiration.
Then it’s back home for summer school, a couple enrichment camps, and a
little gardening before the term starts back up again in August. Perfect.
This year, my wife and I found ourselves a little antsier
than usual, so after school let out for the summer, we jetted off to the
UK. That’s right, reader: London,
England. The capitol of Western culture. We hit the streets as soon as we landed and
enjoyed a quick drink on top of some Yorkshire fish and chips. Delicious.
When we finished, though, my imploring glance toward my wife was met
with a silent riposte and furrowed brow that said it all: “This isn’t up to
snuff; let’s get out of here.” I’m not
one to say no to my wife, so we moved on to France, straight away. Paris, more specifically. The capitol of Western culture. Enchantee,
Paris. Immediately, we did the Paris
café thing. Dark coffee, magnifique. The crème brulee, tres bonne. Absolute
paradise, it was; my little family seated under an umbrella beside some
old-looking red brick streets, my little children wiping their cute little mouths
of croissant crumbs with cute little
napkins, not a care in the world; me—as we speak—drawing my laptop from my
backpack for a hasty blog about education.
On my left wrist: a handy, ironic eighties calculator watch that most
people think is a Walter White thing, or maybe an homage to that kid from Stranger Things, but the truth is it’s
the same watch Ryan Gosling wears in Half
Nelson; I bought it immediately after I saw that movie, when Bryan Cranston
supported Frankie Muniz and those Stranger
Things kids’ parents were seeing off the very decade the show would
reference some two decades later. That’s
right: I out hipster the hipster, everyone.
I was there first. On the other
hand, literally, on my right wrist, I sport a blue, rubber Micky Mouse Magic
Band with which I can purchase anything at any of the parks, eyes blinded to
the bloody cataracts of capital streaming from my wallet. It drips quietly, the money. Gone without a whimper. It also opens my hotel room door. I am quite the contradiction, nowadays.
Oh, did I forget to mention?
By London and Paris, I meant their miniature, Mouse-sanctioned simulations,
as featured at Epcot Center—my family and I are in Disney World, of course; we
didn’t even need to cross the Atlantic and we were hand-delivered the
highlights of Europe right to our faces, right to our eyes, right down our
distended gullets. Eliminated are the inconveniences
of international travel: no extra flight, no unnecessary walking, no dirt or
grime in the streets, no pesky foreigners, and no awkward fumbling through un petit peu de francais. I don’t even need to crane my neck to view
the top of the Eiffel Tower as the good people at Disney have condensed it down
to just a third of its actual size. What we have is all we want, just a
distilled version of England and France right here in the culturally comfortable
humidity-hug of sun kissed Florida, USA.
Disney has even shipped in some incredibly qualified English and French
citizens to work as waiters in these countries. Anything for authenticity at Disney World;
anything in the name of fun.
All disingenuity aside, I have to admit this Disney World is,
if anything, creative, even if it triggers night sweats in Baudrillard. I consider the different rides and shows and
architecture examples of some very innovative people bringing worlds of fiction
to life, which is, for me as an English teacher, part of the daily challenge of
my job. These guys, though, they’ve got it
down. Every single detail. Before we
left for the park this morning, for instance, we took a dip in our hotel’s Finding Nemo themed pool where my
six-year-old son heard audio from the movie piped into the water itself only to
be heard when a swimmer dips his head beneath the surface. Incredulous, he returned to my pool
chair. “You were right dad; Disney world
is awesome!” Just wait, my son, you haven’t even seen the parks yet. It was like Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave”
all over again: I can try to describe it for him, but until he experiences it,
he will not—he cannot—fathom my description.
And here is where my two current ventures—Disney vacations
and Ranciere texts—intersect (I’m the only one reading Ranciere at mini-France,
believe it or not). Disney world, with
all its creative magnificence, stupefies us,
which, as Kristen Ross explains, “implies a sense of wonderment or amazement”
(7) to the point of inaction. Disney is
attractive, sure, and to the right audience, it can be inspirational. I imagine, for example, a select group of
young visitors go on to lead creative lives after sampling the Disney wares and
might even offer their trip to Disney World as a formative experience. But for the vast majority, Disney World is
the goal in-and-of itself. It’s not a
starting point; it’s the end—save up enough money to get the family to Disney,
swallow the oily spoonfuls of their fully ripened creative juices, return home,
repeat. For these, Disney world is not creative
emancipation from the shackles of possibility that it might be for some. No, Disney World is the illusion itself—that
fetishized social opium that keeps the masses content, quiet, and, more
importantly, homogenous. The people at
Disney don’t want my kids, their customers, to go on to lead creative lives,
they want my kids to come back to Disney World, to watch their programming, to
develop a sense of brand loyalty so my kids buy
into the product Disney offers.
Going to Disney World alone becomes a sort of American Dream—a carrot just
large enough to galvanize we languid mules through the drudgery of our
quotidian lives, be it school or that inhuman rat-race known as the working
world.
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| © BANKSY - photomontage of Napalm Girl by Nick Ut |
This is the problem with capitalism. Not only are there winners and losers, but
these positions are entirely liquid.
Winners don’t have to stay there de
jure as they did by virtue of being born into the upper classes during
feudalism. Winners in a capitalism must
necessarily become conservative to protect their spots at the top. Generation upon generation legally exploit
the lower classes of their product—their economic capital, their social
capital, their creative capital—sometimes
stupefying but always stultifying the ambitious proletarian to inaction,
failure, and conviction of personal futility.
As part of the capitalistic superstructure, then, our
schools must do the exact same thing, only we the teachers take on the role of
Disney World and our stakeholders the park-goers. Our job is to make the content stand on its
head. We’re supposed to interpret it,
jazz it up, decorate our rooms with it, relate it to the lives or our students,
to contemporary events—we spoon-feed material to our students the same way
Disney stuffs our faces with their productions, and, trust me, they learn to
eat it, and ask for more if need be. And
although some of our students go on to use
what we have taught them to
enhance their lives morally and materially, the vast majority learn to play our
game simply to graduate to the next grade until they are eventually finished
with the ordeal altogether, school being nothing more than a necessary
obstruction to the commencement of their actual
lives when they graduate from the university.
I don’t think we teachers do this consciously, so don’t take
this as an accusation, as such; however—and Ranciere is clear here—teachers who
explicate, despite positive intentions, do nothing to raise their students and,
in fact, create a stultifying gap between their intelligence and their
students’ the same way Disney World does between their “cast-members” and their
fans. Disney claims only to show, to
entertain, to present, not to encourage or improve. They don’t want you to match their levels of
creativity, they want you to hemorrhage bucketfuls of capital into their
mouse-eared buckets because you cannot and never will be able to do what they
do. And you know it. And after you spend your year regenerating
your capital, they want you to do it again.
Same goes for schools. Pay us to
enrich you. Take a break. Go to Disney World, for crying out loud. See France and England while you’re there. See Morocco.
But after that, you come back and do it again and again. Always come back to school, the unending
circle of power from which there is no messiah and no redemptive nirvana.
 |
| From Sir Ken Robinson's Changing Education Paradigms |
So what do we do?
Even if Ranciere provides what proves to be the perfect recipe for
success, it’s not like our school system is in any shape even to absorb such a
teaching philosophy—not when grade point averages, standardized test scores,
and college scholarships rule the roost.
After all, Ranciere admits that, while Jacotot’s method proves students
can and will learn anything they want to,
what they want to learn might be nothing at all. I don’t know about you, but if my students
learn “nothing at all,” I am out of a job, and my progressive philosophy of
teaching statement will do nothing to hinder the executioner’s ax. So, again, what do we do?
I recommend starting small.
Winston Smith small. We can’t
expect a total overhaul of the school system at once; it’s the little
rebellions that lead to reform. Change
what we can in our classrooms. Pick one assignment if we have to—one
activity, one policy, one discussion. If
we really believe what Ranciere says, we need to get the momentum moving in the
right direction, and change will come.
Organic food hasn’t always been available at local chain grocery stores,
has it? But it is now. Something changed for the better, and the
results are there for all to benefit.
This has been a post by Nick Dressler (@nick_dressler) for the #Ranciere18 reading project. Go here to see the google doc, and go here to join the hypothes.is group.
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