English Teacher Weekly for Sept. 5th
Welcome to English Teacher Weekly—your source for what’s worthwhile from the worlds of literature, education, Christian thought, and the humanities.
This is the 88th edition, and I have no plans to slow down now. If you’re a new subscriber, thank you for joining the club! I hope you find some inspiring and helpful resources here. For those of you sharing ETW with your like-minded friends, your help in this project is deeply encouraging. Thank you. And if you’re a paying subscriber, thank you for keeping the lights on at the ETW offices. Much appreciated.
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For this week’s art selections, we’re going with a laundry theme. Not sure why, just following the muse. Enjoy!
THIS WEEK’S FEATURES
Sing Sing
Sing Sing, a new A24 movie about a theater group at the infamous Sing Sing prison, looks very well done.
From the A24 website:
Divine G (Colman Domingo), imprisoned at Sing Sing for a crime he didn’t commit, finds purpose by acting in a theatre group with other incarcerated men. When a wary outsider joins the group, the men decide to stage their first original comedy, in this stirring true story of resilience, humanity, and the transformative power of art, starring an unforgettable ensemble cast of formerly incarcerated actors.
From Tom Shone’s The Times (UK) review:
“If that sounds like The Shawshank Redemption — or any other of a number of prison movies brimming with lazy bromides about how the real prisons are the ones we carry inside and only art can set us free — think again.… The film walks across a viper-pit of potential cliché every step of the way, but [director] Kwedar keeps his direction loose and urgent.”
Every Generation is an Anxious Generation
Alex Tzelnic doesn’t disagree with Jonathan Haidt’s theory of smart phone use being a major cause of teenage discontent, but let’s not forget the deeper societal forces at work.
From Slate:
For most of human history, identity was ascribed at birth: pauper, peasant, preacher, princess. Of course, inequities could cause suffering. But social position was a period, not a question mark. Today, modern teenagers are more engaged in the process of trying to see who they are than any other generation that has come before. This is not about identity politics but ennui: Even minuscule choices, like what socks to wear, are part of a larger cultural self-definition and viral conversation. Getting dressed in this context is certainly preferable to fleeing a saber-toothed tiger—but it’s not without its edge.
Today’s teens face a yawning chasm of potentiality. “The natural limitations of human existence are the only limitations life imposes on contemporary Americans,” wrote Greenfeld. “In comparison to other societies, our sphere of freedom, and choice, is greatly extended.” It’s not just about the freedom to pick (or avoid) a religion, and whether or not to have kids. It’s the choice of where to live, what to buy (there are so many choices about what to buy), what to decorate your walls with—everything down to how to groom the hairs on your head. Teens today are taught they can be whatever they dream.
In this kind of wide open abundance of choice, a phone acts as “anxiety incubators, amplifying the sense of abundant possibility like a prism refracting light.”
The Legacy of René Girard
The trailer for a new documentary about the life and ideas of René Girard:
Naming Creatures
As Mark Mitchell has said, “to be human is to be a namer.” Here is
, for Plough, on the great British pastime of birdwatching and Adam’s God-given task to name the creatures of the earth and sky.It isn’t a matter of pure domination. God was giving Adam an opportunity to care for what he had dominion over. To name something is an act of love. Done rightly, naming bestows value, dignity, and an identity on what is named. It is attentive, recognizing the nature of the thing. This is why improper naming is so wrong. Calling a human by a string of numbers or a slur dehumanizes and causes offense. Referring to a species as a pest or a weed will mean it is always viewed as an enemy. Naming creation is therefore a task that involves skill, knowledge, and wisdom – attributes that rely on relationship and careful observation. It is no simple task. It is, instead, a great and profound responsibility.
Naming is an act of love, too, because knowing the names of the creatures around us enables us to see them. “To look and to see are not the same thing,” writes Norman Wirzba in Agrarian Spirit. “Though individuals may ‘look’ at the same scene, what they ‘see’ can vary considerably. This is because viewers come equipped with different habits of attention and are motivated by varying desires and interests.”
DNF
One sign of a wise reader is a mastery of the art of abandoning books. Give up on a book too early and you miss out on hard-won treasure. Slog through the wrong book at the wrong time and you’ll rue the day. The best readers know exactly when to say “maybe later.”
The
newsletter proposes this nifty formula that’s bopping around social media as a good guide for knowing when it’s time to call it quits:…read 100 pages minus your age before deciding to put down a book.
So at 37, I should give a book 63 pages. (100 - 37 = 63)
If you were 16, you’d be slightly less ruthless, giving the book 84 pages.
But if you’re 80, you’d only give it 20 pages (because who has time for books you’re not enjoying at 80).
As avid reader Jay Venables says in the The Atlantic’s recent piece on the topic: “My goal is to keep reading, not read everything.”
Abolishing Grades
’s excellent analysis of grade inflation in American universities and his not so tongue-in-cheek proposal to just pull the plug and abolish grades altogether:The grading system at American universities is an embarrassment. The best solution would be to take the simple, if somewhat brutal, steps to end grade inflation. But if that is not in the cards, then it’s time for universities to admit that the emperor has no clothes. If reestablishing more demanding standards turns out to be impossible, then the second best option may be to put an end to the whole charade.
According to my “modest proposal,” universities would make all of their courses pass-fail, a practice that has already been adopted by some elite law and business schools. Students would still have to submit their assignments and meet the minimum standards that are now expected of them. But they would no longer be able to pretend that they had been recognized for exceptional achievements.
Abolishing grades is much worse than a grading system that makes real distinctions between students. But by the same token, it is much better than the status quo.
In Praise of Wolverine
In the early ‘90s, like generations of preteens before me, I began to devour comic books. My favorite was Marvel’s X-Men series. And from among all of the cool superheroes of the Marvel Universe, Wolverine was easily the coolest. This was, of course, before Hugh Jackman, sequel after sequel, and Marvel empire that we know today. These were simpler times.
For Café Américain Magazine, Daniel Hadas offers this tribute to our favorite cigar smoking, adamantium infused Canadian superhero. The guy was different—and not just on the surface level. As Hadas says, “Wolverine’s destiny is more tragic than most. His essential native gift is not strength or speed or mind control, but a unique capacity to endure punishment.”
Wolverine is tough and nasty and sardonic, but also a knight errant at heart—he is, in the eyes of little boys, cool, in a way the square-jawed Superman and Captain America, or the nebbishy Spiderman, could never quite be. We quite simply wanted to be him, to extrude our adamantium claws (SNIKT!) when the going got tough, and then ride off on our Harleys into the sunset (we were too young and confused to actually want to get the girl, and Wolverine almost never could stick around for the girl). He was, to quote from Darren Franich’s delightful ranking of the X-Men, “a fifth-grader’s idea of a grown-up”, or rather of the ideal form that manhood would take.
Of course, really growing up is nothing like this, and if Wolverine retains his appeal for some grown men, it is largely because we have not entirely let go of our fifth grade selves. There’s no shame in that—at least not necessarily. Still there is also something in this ludicrous character (and all superheroes are of course ludicrous) that goes beyond the little boy’s longing to be the toughest and noblest kid on the playground.
THE HYPERLINK GARDEN
I always thought the descriptor “tell-tale” had to do with storytelling, but no. It’s a nautical term.
A new book by Robert P. George and Cornel West out this January: Truth Matters: A Dialogue on Fruitful Disagreement in an Age of Division
requests that we go take a walk: “Walking is one of the great forms of inactivity and in a world of striving and consumerism and grasping and impatience it is one of only very few potential forms of inactivity left. It is that that makes it precious.”For The Nation, David Hobbs reviews E. E. Cummings’ first published work, the novel The Enormous Room, which he says contains the seeds of all the good and bad of Cummings’ later work.
A new poem by Aaron Belz in Ekstasis called “The Problem.” Here’s how it starts:
When I was young my brain was delicate
as the spritzed orchid among ice chips.Via the Cult of Pedagogy, Mitch Weathers’s guide to teaching executive functioning for all students
From Dappled Things: Oso Guardiola’s favorite books on the craft of writing, including several that were new to me.
Emily Wilson, the excellent translator of the Homeric epics, is now on SubStack. Her first post provides her commentary on four famous translations of the opening lines of The Odyssey, including her own.
interviews Susan Blum, author of the new book Schoolishness, about the difference between playing school and true learning: “Students have learned to imitate learning; to provide a performance, a facsimile of whatever each teacher demands as evidence of learning. So much of what we do in schools doesn’t work, whether by “work” we mean learn or thrive or prepare for a competent, meaningful life beyond school.”From the
: 23 Reasons to Love Education from a 23-Year Teaching VeteranEvidence Snacks on “why routines are the bedrock of responsive teaching.”
Create your own Penguin Classics cover with this generator. Very fun.
Regarding routines, I shared in a staff meeting recently how I always keep a book of short stories at my podium. If we finish with five or ten minutes to spare, around this time of year I start offering to read local ghost stories.
If I catch their interest early, my middle school students absolutely eat them up! But even the last few minutes of class demand established routines.