Lessons for Teachers #9: Oops

Once upon a time when I was a was a wee lad of a teacher, a student needed to make up a test. Lo! The naughty boy did not do so when he should have, so the grade was not posted for his mother, Mrs. Periwinkle, to see when she was looking for it. So when dear Mrs. Periwinkle wrote me to inquire, I said it had then been entered.

Alas, the plot then thickened. Little did neophyte I know that when I entered a grade it wasn't automatically updated on the school database. So the boy's dear mama writes again, inquiring. I update it manually and reply. It's still not showing up so she can see it, so she writes me a third time. Little did I know again that the administrators don't check updates to the database, rather they reference a printout which is, obviously, not current. So I update it on paper in the office. She writes one last time requesting a signed confirmation from an administrator.

Now what I wanted to do was deliver a full-throated Ciceronian lambasting to the staff who made me look like a jackass by not explaining how the lousy software they were using worked and moreover how illogically it was employed.

Instead I replied graciously and took my lumps, opting not to throw anyone under the bus and not even complaining up the chain because I was new at  the job. A few lessons:

First, when you get an email that flusters or frustrates you, don't respond right away. Take time to cool off.

Second, don't be quick to get defensive and blame parents, especially when they're just trying to get information and especially when mistakes have, in fact, been made. Lack of communication is extremely frustrating, and many parents are already defensive because they know they are not as informed as they should be. Add to that low grades for their kid and fears about college, and you have a recipe for stress over what seems slight to you. They'll really appreciate it if, above all things, you are prompt, clear, and take responsibility.

Third, don't lightly throw people under the bus, but it is alright in most cases to let them know they put you in a tight spot.

Finally, take your lumps. I had no reason to expect the software and manner in which the school used it would be so convoluted, but ultimately knowing was my responsibility.

Some Choice Gilbert & Sullivan

The end of The Mikado has, for my money, the jauntiest rhythm and wittiest rhyming in Gilbert and Sullivan.

My favorite bit is the duet between Katisha and Ko-ko in which Sullivan's music has, in essence, re-punctuated the text. The unexpected pairings make you work just a bit harder to piece together the meaning and the result is that the text is splendidly vivid and lively.

If that is so,
Sing derry down derry!
It’s evident, very,
Our tastes are one!
Away we’ll go.
And merrily marry,
Nor tardily tarry
Till day is done!

The finale is such a bright, sprightly conclusion I think it would have made Mozart smile.

YUM. and NANK. The threatened cloud has passed away,
 And brightly shines the dawning day;
 What though the night may come too soon,
 We’ve years and years of afternoon!

ALL. Then let the throng
 Our joy advance,
 With laughing song
 And merry dance,
 With joyous shout and ringing cheer,
 Inaugurate our new career!
 Then let the throng, etc. 

Advice to Myself: On Anger at Those Absent

When you grow angry with someone absent, do not indulge your temper, your wit's ability to craft clever insults, or your imagination's tendency to imagine slights and injustice. Instead, call to mind the face of this person, this object of your anger, and call it to mind as vividly as you can. Then call to mind this person's other deeds, both good and bad, and set this newfound source of anger in its proper context.

If you are too irate or otherwise unable to do this, then find some task at once to distract you from the passion of the moment and revisit the matter later with a clear head.

Belated Thoughts on International Women's Day

I don't have much fondness for holidays, thinking as I do that what is worth commemorating by such a grand gesture is worth remembering more often than once per year. Too I think that celebrating something once a year has less the effect of drawing its value into focus so that we vividly see its meaning than it does of giving license to forget about that meaning through the rest of the year.

That said, I have more faith in some holidays than others. I prefer those steeped at least in tradition, if not religion. Easter reigns supreme, mostly unscathed by modern culture because its preparatory period of abstinence and the ineluctable element of suffering at its heart are unpalatable today. I'm most skeptical of modern, secular, international holidays, as they mostly seem cooked up for contemporary appetites, concocted out of whatever elements happen to be at hand.

It's probably so, though, that many holidays and festivals which today are solemn have an inglorious origin, sometimes pragmatic and others simply expedient. I am reminded of two accounts from Livy, one of my favorite Latin authors and one not remembered well enough as a masterful storyteller, that remind us of what gets lost in the years of retelling.

The first regards how the Lupercalia, a Roman festival of purifying and fertility that included a nude trot along the Palatine, was begun even before the founding of Rome when two youths ran around naked for "sport and wantonness" (per lusum atque lasciviam), in honor of Pan. The second tale concerns the passing of Romulus, who was either carried away on a cloud during a sudden storm on the Campus Martius or, some say, torn to pieces by the senators.

Much like being torn to pieces, International Women's day is hard to like, and not just because I don't have faith in it, a modern, secular, international holiday if there ever was one. Rather it is the spirit of antagonism that never seems to have dissipated from its socialist origins. The first march was organized by socialist-suffragist-activist Theresa Malkiel in 1909 and caught on among the communists until in 1977 that uncorrupted body of wisdom, The United Nations, enshrined the celebration in History for every March 8th thence until the breaking of the world.

—

Despite my reservations, though, I forestalled this mild condemnation because I saw some good women posting good things, which was enough to give me pause. In my further considerations of the day I was reminded of the reaction I had roughly a decade ago upon opening a philosophy book written by a professor of mine in college.

It is the book's inscription to which I refer. First, it was dedicated to her sister, sadly deceased before the age of thirty. Second, that dedication is to "all women who, being great of mind and heart, are denied the life of one in the pain of the other."

My first thought upon re-reading this today, as a stay-at-home dad, was, I confess, one of crudest obscenity. I may not be great of mind but I have a few marbles rolling around up in my head and I spend some days rolling around actual marbles with my daughter. Equally, I will miss these months at home with her terribly when the day comes that I daily leave for the working world. Why should anyone "of great mind and heart" in such a situation, not be regarded?

My first reaction to that line a decade ago, however, was a profound sense of exclusion. Even then, with so little experience, I could not understand why one would narrow one's embrace like that, especially in preface to a book on philosophy. What more could bind all minds and hearts together than the pursuit of wisdom? Did Goethe overreach, and Beethoven when he set to music, Diesen Kuß der ganzen Welt! ?

But then, though, something pricked my conscience, or I maybe I pricked my own conscience. . . at any rate it occurred to me that women were indeed excluded from many things, in many places, for a long time. Surely many felt excluded, but many surely never even conceived of a life other than what was evident around them.

Still, many and various people were excluded from the many and various things, and continue to be, so I'm not sure just how moved to be by the plight of any one group in particular, more than the plight of unfortunates everywhere and at every time.

In the end, I don't begrudge my old professor her dedication, for all honest emotion starts not in universals but in relations, often suffering, with our loved ones. I do, though, doubt the wisdom of factionalizing sympathy, and wonder whether it might do more harm than good. Perhaps when such sympathy is shared, it is best expressed through that which speaks to all. I am more moved to be a good husband, father, and son, by Shakespeare, for example, than by leftwing ideology and pink-stained influencers, less by hashtagged bromides than by the Bard's plainest, most haunting words, "I might have saved her; now she's gone for ever!"

Still I don't begrudge women their day, but when I weigh the socialism and antagonism I see associated with and brought out on the day, it seems to me that like most recently concocted holidays it has done and continues to do more harm than good. To its organization's credit, though, the website for International Women's day urges us to "Make IWD your day! - everyday!" #Progress

Quote: Bowra on The Greeks and Old Age

from The Greek Experience (1957), by C.M. Bowra, p. 112f

from Ch. 5, The Good Man and the Good Life:

The best solution was not to complain of the passing of youth and its opportunities, but to ask what advantages come with the advance of years, and the answer was that, though a man may lose the good things of life, he can still be a good man with increased power and confidence and experience. He may not be able to enjoy himself so much as before, but he can make more of himself and become a more controlled and more complete being. To each of the four traditional virtues experience brings its special enlargement. Courage becomes a form of patient endurance, as the old Oedipus, worn by blindness and suffering but still noble and majestic, says of himself:

     contentment have I learned from suffering, 

     and from long years and from nobility.*

. . . To each of the four cardinal virtues age brings a new distinction and a richer usefulness. The man who has left behind him youth and its good things, or can enjoy them only fitfully, attains a new dignity through his renewed opportunities of being a good man.

*Sophocles. Oedipus at Colonus lines 7f

Quote: Dom Jacques Hourlier on the Fervor of Chant

from Reflections on the Spirituality of Gregorian Chant.
Translated by Dom Gregory Casprini and Robert Edmonson. p. 35f

Unction is defined by the Oxford Dictionary as "a fervent or sympathetic quality in words or tone, caused by or causing deep religious feeling." . . . Its principal author is the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Divine Love. In the liturgy it evokes holiness, order, and peace, the opposite of dryness and sterility. . . Unction makes it easier to enter into an attitude of prayer and love. . . 

Unction, or fervor, describes the atmosphere which all authentic religious music seeks to create.

On Reading, Writing, and Theodore Dalrymple

In the few months since I've started writing here again I have also read a great deal more of. . . well, there seems no decorous way of referring to writing published exclusively on the internet. Surely not the vulgar digital content, or banal web writing. Perhaps it is a sign. At any rate I've read a great deal more of it than the nearly nil I read in the first year after moving into our new house and staying home with our daughter full time. The writing has brought me more pleasure than I thought, the reading less so.

The writing, though laborious, is a near pure pleasure, excepting those frustrating moments of editing when I must part with a beloved phrase (which I will of course forget about by the next hour) and when I simply cannot decide just what exactly I am saying. Writing is as pure an exercise of unrestrained liberty as one can imagine, with the myriad possibilities only delimited by the prudence of my conscience and aesthetic sense, which occasionally speak through the wisdom of my wife.

One limitation that has always frustrated me though, is my reluctance to let what I write cause grievous offense to someone I know, thus risking our peaceful relation. Since I write much, though not chiefly, about my experiences, I have many essays that will go unpublished for a while, presuming I have at age thirty-two some plenty of years left. On the other hand—the use of this correlative that I surely use too much because of my Classical background brings to my mind this time an anecdote: one of the first errors in my writing which my wife corrected was an instance of saying on the one hand several times in a row. My defense remains that the article was ghost-written by one of the Hekatonkheires of Greek myth (Centimanes in Latin), a few of whose heads and hands moonlight while he guards Tartaros.

Anyway, on the other hand, that act of self-censorship has no doubt reformed the character of a querulous and often petty man. If I had written as a teen or college student, it probably would have resembled this ghastly piece—ghastly in content and style—on Jordan Peterson. Reading such pieces saddens me because I cannot help assume either that the person has been bought out or is deeply troubled. Worse, it seems to me that writing would invariably reform one's character. How can you write and not make use of the seemingly infinite opportunities for reflection and self-examination? The process has pricked my conscience more times than I could ever remember. I have written some unkind and uninformed things that never saw the light of day because the sight of them displeased and embarrassed me. Not fully, of course, am I reformed, and writing has precipitated a few new occasions for poor behavior.

It is a cheap pleasure of mine to refer to a piece I've written and, even more so, to have the excuse to re-state my case. I too especially enjoy the tactful praise of liberal friends, "I love your movie reviews."  How amused I am also when someone refers approvingly to something I have written, but has clearly only read the opening paragraph, which was meant in irony. They really do mean well but can't bring themselves to run the full course. Their error is similar in spirit to one that recurred among my Latin students when I would for one reason or another truncate a portion of a passage for an exam: how often I found it translated on a test anyway! Clearly it appeared by the inspiration of the Muses, or perhaps some as-of-yet unnamed goddess of the internet.

Truly, though, writing has been a healthful pleasure both on account of the good change it has precipitated, even in failure, and the kindness and generosity of friends, family, and readers who have supported my meager talents and overlooked my errors.

I wish I could say that reading has brought me such pleasure of late. More often than not I feel preached to, lectured, or chicaned. Everybody, so it seems, is hocking his ideology or his personality. They lust after my clicks, likes, follows, and subscribes, to use the terms of their cheap currency. They pander to what they hope are my weaknesses. There is precious little that is all honest, good, and necessary. Even people of apparent good character and sound mind nonetheless seem desperate to cash in on their virtues. This is perhaps inevitable and even good, for I certainly should not like the opposite situation, in which ideas are compelled, suppressed, or absent, or virtues bring people unnecessary suffering. Perhaps it is a Golden Age of Discourse. To me it feels gilded and cheap. It seems that there is no self-censorship. Everything must be said so that it can be repeated, therefore it is short, overstated, lacking in explication, and, usually, crude.

The only prominent author who seems exempt from this cheapening, and I think fully so,  is Theodore Dalrymple. Perhaps his writing remains pristine because he does not write to sustain himself or perhaps he has by his uncommon learning, significant in both the sciences and humanities, and his uncommon experiences—of the bad and worse, both at home and abroad—tempered himself and his writing just so, but it seems to me he writes in as ideal a way as possible: reflecting humbly on life, with reason but also humanity, without the purpose of proving an ideology. For my part, I have surely not merited such commendations.

He is no publication's "go-to man" for any one idea, a fact which confuses casual readers. Watch with horror as he gets scorned on Taki-Mag for showing the slightest empathy, fondness, or respect for the non-Westerners he has met in his travels. Some years ago he was swarmed with rabid libertarians for his review in The New Criterion where he had the temerity to criticize Ayn Rand. When he wrote for Pajamas Media, it seems patently so that the prose was above the heads of the readers. City Journal, Salisbury Review, and the Law and Liberty Site each pick up parts of his work to the delight of their readers, but it is perhaps unsurprising that thoughts varied, subtle, and restrained do not find a perfect home in an age characterized by, to borrow from his many inimitable artful joinings, incontinent public confession. Rather than esteem (I have in mind here Latin's diligo: select, pick, single out, love, value, esteem, approve, aspire to, appreciate) someone who in true conservative fashion considers a matter alongside life's many others, the right prefers the company of loudmouth single-minded ideologues, usually evangelists of soft-headed religion and gaudy business.

It seems beyond wishful thinking to hope that the hearts and minds of the left will ever find room for Dr. Dalrymple since, despite his work for the poor and wretched—experience oddly but consistently in short supply among the poor's most tender-hearted and self-appointed advocates—he will not sign their prescriptions for remedies that he, with regrets, finds do more harm than good. Rather than be seen to trot with an independent thinker or risk having its conscience pricked, the left, it seems, would rather exchange platitudes with the peddlers of righteous cliche-ridden activism in a morass that Dalrymple's words describe best: an orgy of sentimentality.

I have probably made Dr. Dalrymple, who has for many years written prolifically and been respected with many well-reviewed books long in print and been often sought after as a speaker or expert, seem less famous and dear to his readers than he is. Surely too his critics betoken his notoriety. I have probably brought down his status to put it within my reach. I am frank in admitting he has been and remains a great influence.

How fortunate are all his readers, though, that he continues to share his wisdom in such a vigorous yet civilized manner. In its moderation and proportion, both in style and content, his is the prose of this age in which I feel most at home, and for that I am grateful, as I am for all things good and beautiful.

Advice for Myself: Outside

Of the outside world first, when you are young, pay as much attention as you need to understand yourself. Have adventures, though know they are with risks. Then, when you are established, pay attention to the world such that you can find a spouse. Next, pay only so much as you need to sustain and protect your family. Finally, pay it attention proportionate to your ability to help it.

Minding the Children

There is some resurgence of faith in the notion that children raised with the full-time attention of one parent are better off. I too think it is so, quite broadly but perhaps not completely, for a variety of reasons. Some of those reasons are empirical and some based on my experience, but those from my experience tell me it is not only because school and daycare are such bad places.

Instead I would emphasize that parents who spend a lot of time with their children are by the sheer volume of time spent with them given more opportunities to be changed by them, by which I mean to orient themselves emotionally toward them, by which I mean to fall in love with them.

In contrast it seems plain to me that parents who try to add children to their existing lifestyle, spending with them only a few hours a day (if that), not only have fewer opportunities to experience that reorientation, but struggle more to make use of the few they have.

When the day's time is first squeezed down first by work and school, then by homework and domestic duties, there is not much time left. Still, it is possible to flourish in that remaining time, if it is left truly free and used wisely to cultivate the family, but more often than not it is filled with distractions and out-of-the-house social engagements.

Now limited time is surely a barrier toward having loving time with children, but it is not I think the only one. Equally influential but more pernicious is the resentment that can bubble up from so squeezing your kids into your old life. When you spend most of your day the way you used to before you had kids (i.e. working) and then need to start tending to them during the few hours you are home in the evening—when you formerly relaxed and when the kids now want and need much attention—which hours do you think you will resent: the old ways or the new? It's hard to open up to someone when, deep down and beneath your comprehension, you resent them.

Of course, some adults simply refuse to let the children change them even though they spend a lot of time with them. Too, some people even don't let their spouses change them. Such people don't want marriage so much as they want a merger of assets and they don't want children so much as obedient little reproductions of themselves to reflect well upon them, shower them with affection, and trot off when told.

I am not saying the change is easily forthcoming simply because you spend a lot of time with them. Sometimes we spend a lot of time with them but at every available moment turn our minds away.

Cell phones and television will distract you. Being fussy about housekeeping and domestic responsibilities will distract you. Not having your affairs in order, such as business arrangements and finance, will cause you worry and distract you. Poor relations with your spouse will distract you. Even high-minded thoughts and philosophizing will intrude and thereby distract you. The more you are attuned to other things, even necessary and good things, the farther you really are from your children, even when physically present.

Time, then, is merely the condition for change, not a cause of it. In my experience perception and reception are the essentials, or at least are of a great importance. Watch your children, with as devoted attention as you can muster, and their love for you will be self-evident, and by nature you will reach out to them with love in return. When you have prepared the way, a transcendent touch will happen and the branches of your lives will begin to entangle. In that moment, reaching out is the easiest and most natural thing in the world, but getting yourself and your life to the point where it can happen is difficult.

In fact it is not just difficult, but painful. As with learning, as Jordan Peterson has often pointed out, part of you has to die and you have to be the one who willingly kills it. You have to repudiate some part of your former self and embrace a better you—or at least a you which is better for your new circumstances—which takes courage. Life is not an additive process by which you acquire a spouse, house, children, and so on, improving in linear progression without loss. It is a process of transformation throughout which you gain and leave behind different things at different times.

This does not mean we should dote on and obsess over our children while neglecting all else, but that we should be mindful of our connection to them and sense when we are more stretched apart and when we are especially close. The former is a part of the relationship too, but why would anyone neglect latter?

This does not mean that you can't love them if you're not home with them all the time—and as I said, being home is no guarantee—but I think you are setting up roadblocks if you simply try to squeeze your children into your old ways. Parents, I think, know they are setting up these roadblocks and tend to justify them with explanations to which they hope you will assent. They point to how much time and money they spend on their children and see there demonstrations of their love, effort, and sacrifice.

This is how conscientious and dutiful people often look at the matter and they are not wholly wrong. Their commitment is commendable but the paradigm is wrong because what they are sacrificing is a portion of their old life, a life which they continue to let rule the family. They are giving up something, to be sure, but not what is needed, and because it is still a hard sacrifice, they think that it is enough. When such dutiful people say, as they seem invariably to do, that they would do anything for their children, I would like to add—but do not, for what parent has ever taken correction?—is except that which you have not considered.

I used to hold much anger for such parents, but now the thought of their predicament makes me quite sad. They have taken in the dogmas of the day: cliches about happiness, success, and fulfillment. They are lost and unhappy. Too they are hard to help, partly because of hubris and partly because it is a challenge, impossible for some people, to admit they have failed or are failing their children. Maybe they can be jolted out of their ways by a profound emotional experience, but their circles seem ferociously to reinforce the prevailing trends. So they plod on, ignoring the sadness in their hearts as they pretend to take pleasure in putting their children in that esteemed position of first priority.

But it is not enough to place them first among many priorities: you really do need some sense of their mystical connection to you. Only with that experience will the upheaval of selling your house, quitting your job, negotiating with your spouse, moving, drastically cutting your expenses, or doing whatever you need to do to be with your kids, seem surmountable.

You can't force a realization of such a thing, but you can at least start by being with them with a clear mind and open heart.

Mozart's C Minor Mass Choreographed by Scholz

I came across the late Uwe Scholz's ballet to Mozart's C minor mass on the Classic Arts Showcase a couple of years ago. (I miss the eclectic channel, but it is available online now.) The particular clip I saw was of the Cum Sancto Spiritu, which left me awestruck. I hadn't experienced the piece so strongly since I first discovered it. 

I can't find a selection of that particular part (discs of the performance seem to be getting hard to find, but it is available for digital purchase/rental), but take a look at the Kyrie here, which too demonstrates a remarkable sensitivity to the subtitles of the music.