Thoughts on Go Set a Watchman

Go Set a Watchman

Are you one of the many who have set your mind against reading Go Set a Watchman? I understand, I really do. Why spoil the lovely experience that is To Kill a Mockingbird? And what’s all this we hear about possible fraud, taking advantage of the elderly author, cynical manipulations by Rupert Murdock, and Atticus a racist, for heaven’s sake!

With all that though, I must admit, I had planned to read it from the moment I first heard of it.

I’m one of those teachers who regularly used To Kill a Mockingbird in my classroom and during my 34 years in junior and high school classrooms, I’m sure I read it, often aloud, close to 200 times (read it to my own kids, too, as bedtime story). With that background, how could I not want to see its forebear? And now that I’ve read it, who better to discuss it with than all of you?

On the issue of whether or not Harper Lee wanted it published, I, too, would hate to think she was "being taken advantage of," but I've yet to see anything but speculation on whether or not she was. Joe Nocero's article offers little more than his distrust of Rupert Murdock as evidence of fraud.

In everything else I've read, there are statements that people close to Lee say she is happy with the book’s publication. And I am absolutely sure that the slightest whisper from Harper Lee that she was upset about its publication would turn into a media roar. As far as I am concerned there is already too much decision-making devoid of facts going on in this country and maybe even in me, I am not about to let innuendo keep me from seeing for myself.

Having read the NY Times pre-publication review, I was a bit put off by the glee with which the reviewer “mourned” Atticus’ racism. TKAM is thematically rich and one of the chief themes is racism, specifically its gradations in the South of the 1930s. Atticus and Bob Ewell may be on opposite ends of the continuum of racism, but a careful reading of the book shows that both believe in the difference between “them” and “us.” (Malcolm Gladwell explored this in an interesting article in The New Yorker a few years ago.) We tend to hear a word like "racist" used as though it had a single meaning and a single way of being represented in the world. While in fact, it can be used to designate anyone from people who simply believe that there are different races, to people who believe that "purity of race  must be maintained," and on to people who believe that war among races is necessary, inevitable, and up to them to get started.

              Atticus is far from the last of these, but seems pretty close to the middle one. But as a friend of mine pointed out, Atticus is not presented as so much of a superman in ...Mockingbird that he is incapable of making mistakes. (For example, he certainly misunderstood and mishandled the mob at the jailhouse. It was Scout, not he, who defused the situation.) So far as I can see, the Atticus we are given in …Watchman is essentially the same as the one in …Mockingbird. He is not perfect in his understanding of humanity, but, to use Jem’s assessment from …Mockingbird, he is, “…a gentleman just like me!”

I've known quite a number of people like Atticus in my life; people who express awful views about groups of people, yet who see it as their business to make every person with whom they come in contact feel comfortable and respected. It seems to me that sometimes the people who are so clear about how far we have to go, don’t stop to realize how far we have come. Atticus’ views on race were mild for a white of his time, let’s thank goodness that they make us uncomfortable now. (Notice that I don’t say white Southerner, growing up I heard the same sentiments in the North.)

The fact is, the Times reviewer and the media in general, have been focused on the wrong person; …Watchman just like the much better …Mockingbird is not about Atticus; it is about Scout. And it’s not about how to deal with racism (I’m not convinced that either Scout or Harper Lee has any clue about how to create an equitable society); it is about growing up. Like the book it spawned …Watchman is not a blueprint on how to change the world, it’s an exploration of how to live in it as yourself—and discovering whoever that might be.

 Did I like the book? Well, Harper Lee can certainly tell a story. And when she gets out of her way, she writes beautifully. Makes me wish she had a whole bunch of novels hidden in trunks somewhere. Each time she shares an anecdote from Scout’s childhood, the book soars. The story of the falsies is as sweet and cringe producing as can be—who would want to suffer through that age again! Still, all in all, the book is immature and not as good as it should be. I wish that after ...Mockingbird was published, the editor had taken this book in hand and sent Lee back to use what she had learned to make this work stronger.

 I guess more to the point for us is the question, can we use it in the classroom? I think so. For one thing, contrasting it with …Mockingbird, gives us real insight into what is meant by “revision.” Aside from the description of Aunt Alexandra, Harper Lee changed, strengthened, and refocused every aspect of this book in creating …Mockingbird. For an advanced class of students, it would be a wonderful exercise to see how each of the themes gets different treatment in each book—racism, growing up, friendship, individuality, community, family, extended family, neighbors, cruelty, kindness, justice (both legal and social), etc. Much can be discovered, too, in contrasting the narrative point of view—Scout the elder vs. Scout the younger.

It is also a very timely book with passages that might find a use in Participation in Government classes. The issues of latent racism, unequal justice, States’ Rights, the role of government, the nature of freedom/liberty, the power of the Supreme Court and the meaning of the U.S. Constitution are in the book and in our national conversations. Certainly they can be explored in our classrooms, too.

On the other hand, there is much in this book that is offensive. In its world there are two n-words, both are used frequently but it is far more uncomfortable with “NAACP” than “nigger.” The KKK is presented in better light than Catholics. The Supreme Court is the enemy. And, of course, the South is presented as a separate country and a far more virtuous one than the North. Further, by current standards, Scout is a terrible spokesperson for Civil Rights willing to assent to Atticus’ statement that “our Negro population is backwards.”  When kindly Uncle Jack serves her a vicious backhand to the jaw followed by a return slap, she gives in meekly, “I can’t fight them any more,” and allows him to tend to her. 

I can’t see making the reading of Go Set a Watchman a requirement. I can see reading excerpts together and/or having a book group of interested students tackling it. What amazing conversations it might stimulate. I'll bet a Socratic/Harkness discussion on the treatment of the themes in both books would be the highlight of a term.

I’m glad I read it. For me, it revives memories of my experience with the Civil Rights movement of the 50s and 60s—Lee is capturing the country just as it was poised on the edge of momentous change. I can see where my own understanding came from and how it evolved. I can see where I came to reject the received wisdom of my elders—a rejection that many of my contemporaries also embraced, and that set us on a path to war protests, “Don’t trust anyone over 30,” and “Turn-on, tune-in and drop-out.”  Go Set a Watchman places key current issues into a context that is already distant and different even as it is timely and familiar.

 In many ways, Harper Lee has once again given us the right book for our times.

Bibliography

Lee, Harper. Go Set a Watchman. First Ed. New York: Harper, an Imprint of Harper Collins, 2015. Print.

http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-atticus-we-always-knew

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/08/10/the-courthouse-ring

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/03/books/harper-lee-go-set-a-watchman-may-have-been-found-earlier-than-thought.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/11/books/review-harper-lees-go-set-a-watchman-gives-atticus-finch-a-dark-side.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/14/books/review/harper-lees-go-set-a-watchman.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/15/books/harper-lees-go-set-a-watchman-brings-division-and-curiosity-to-monroeville-ala.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/25/opinion/joe-nocera-the-watchman-fraud.html

Comments on the Net: Can’t Live with Them Can’t Avoid Them

Once you’ve bitten your cheek, it’s impossible not to bite it again and again. For me that is how I feel about reading the comments that follow on-line blogs and reports about education. I know it is going to hurt and annoy me, but I find myself irresistibly drawn to do it again and again.

The thing is that I want to hear other opinions. I want to sharpen my thinking by listening to the thoughts, objections and experiences of others. Each complication introduced to a topic requires an effort of mind either to make it fit into my paradigm, figure out why it doesn’t fit, or to decide that the paradigm itself needs modification or scrapping. This helps me move a bit closer to wisdom. But the problem is that far too many of the responses veer towards the rude, the crude, the racist, the ignorant, or the cliché.

It’s worse, of course, when the article itself is one of the masterpieces of partial truth that masquerade as news. I meet these quite often in reading articles or blogs dealing with education.  When I read one of these fabulous mythologizations of my profession, I always feel certain that other readers will call the author on it. I expect this despite years of experiences that suggest otherwise. Surely, anyone who would take the time to read and then respond to such an article will be a person who has done some serious thinking based on reality! Unfortunately, this is seldom the case.

Recently, I read a piece that said that teachers hate creative students. It cited studies from1962 to 1992[1] which defined personality traits of “creative” people and then indicated that these are traits that teachers identify as ones they find annoying in the classroom. In fact, the interviewed educators identify these traits as obnoxious. The writer of the article concludes that teachers are repressing creativity in their classrooms in favor of compliance, and, since creativity is of the essence in order to compete in the global marketplace, obviously, teachers are responsible for America’s fall from dominance.

I was incensed at the use of studies that were from two to five decades old; at the misunderstanding of the structure, purpose and meaning of the studies; at the illogic of the writer’s conclusions; and at the fact that the article was given space at the Huffington Post[2]. Surely, I told myself, the respondents would be choking either with laughter or with rage at the sloppiness of the writing and the thinking behind it. At the same time, the voice of experience in my head was screaming, “Don’t, for God’s sake, whatever you do, don’t read the comments. They will make you crazy!”

But even as I was thinking it, my hand was on the mouse scrolling to the bottom of the page. Sure enough, instead of pointing out the limitations of the studies or questioning the way they have been misinterpreted, the readers were accepting the idea as true, and putting forth their own unsubstantiated theories about why it is so, what should be done about teachers and schools, how unions are ruining the country and how Obama was a mind-controlling megalomaniac.

I should stop reading but I can’t. I’m searching vainly for the person who mentions that teachers are advisors for literary magazines, choruses, drama clubs, forensics, chess, art, and band. That much of the creativity that thrills us began as an idea during one of these activities. Surely there will be one person who mentions the junior high school project assigned by their social studies teacher that brought to life the creative spark that led to their lifelong love of the subject.

If not that, then certainly someone will dispute the idea that creativity is limited to people with certain personality traits. Aren’t compliant people also capable of creativity in areas of interest? Don’t, in fact, the best students in a class get to be thought of as the best as much for their creativity in going beyond the formulas and formats they are given as for their ability to internalize those forms to begin with? Someone should note that the vast majority of teachers are thrilled by really thoughtful work that goes beyond what was expected. They share this work with other teachers and all shake their heads in wonder.

And isn’t anybody going to question the idea that teachers should be allowing obnoxious behaviors in their classrooms because those behaviors indicate creativity?  I know better than to expect that any of the readers would check the author’s sources, but if they did, they would find this statement from Arthur J. Cropley whose 1992 study was the latest work cited,

“Associated with the spiritual view of creativity is the notion that any restrictions on children’s behavior will crush their creativity. In its strongest form, this view holds that expecting children to be familiar with bodies of facts, or to regulate their behavior in accordance with anybody else’s wishes, blocks creativity. However, although excessive dependence on external sources of evaluation and excessive conformity to social conventions, may well be anticreative, it does not seem likely that creativity is automatically encouraged by the fostering of selfishness, arrogance, contempt for everything but one’s own judgment, or by ignorance of the three Rs. Marjoram (1988) explicitly rejected the idea of “freedom” (in the sense of doing whatever you like) as a precondition for creativity in the classroom. His experience suggests that the opposite is true.” (Cropley, p. 5)

Page five, page six, page twenty-three of the responses and I’m still seeing them flowing in the same tired argument streams.  “My teachers all stink and they get paid whether they teach me or not.” Fine, but do they hate creativity?  “My son’s teachers are incapable of understanding his need to express himself.” Really? And is anyone capable of understanding your son’s need to stand up in the middle of class and turn and bend to fart loudly in the face of the girl sitting next to him? “Unions demand better pensions than those given in the private secter (sic) and are bankruping (sic) the country.” Uh, does anyone here remember the topic?

I’m defeated. I skip the rest and head for the box where I can leave my response.   It will be response number 498 and no one will get to see it, but at least I can be sure that at least one person responded to the topic, at least one person will bring up the weaknesses in the author’s argument, at least one person will bring to the board actual knowledge of what goes on in the actual classrooms of thousands of actual teachers.

I type my response and send it.  Then I realize that this, in fact, is my problem. The reason I keep looking for thoughtful, knowledgeable, respectful responses, is because I know there is one person who is trying to write in that way…me.

Early in his study, Cropley writes, “In this book creativity is conceived of primarily as the capacity to get ideas, especially original, inventive, and novel ideas.” (Cropley, p. 6) Whether or not this is expected in education, it has become increasingly obvious to me, that it is not expected in the public responses to blogs and articles about education.

Bibliography

Bachtold, Louise M. “Effects of learning environment on verbal creativity of gifted students”. Psychology in the Schools, pp 226 – 228. Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Oxford, England. 1974.

Cropley, Arthur J. Fostering Creativity. Greenwood Publishing Group. Westport, Connecticut. 1992.

Dettmer, Peggy. “Improving Teacher Attitudes toward Characteristics of the Creatively Gifted”. Gifted Child Quarterly, v 25 n1 pp11-16. 1981.

Getzels, Jacob W., Jackson, Philip W. Creativity and Intelligence: Explorations with Gifted Students. Wiley Publications. Oxford, England. 1962.

Tabarrok,  Alex. “Teachers Don’t Like Creative Students”. Dec. 12, 2011. www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2011/12/teachers-don’t-like-creative-students.html

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[1] Bachtold1974; Cropley, 1992, Dettmer, 1981; Getzels and Jackson, 1962, Torrance, 1963

[2] Alex Tabarrok, “Teachers Don’t Like Creative Students”, Dec. 12, 2011, www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2011/12/teachers-don’t-like-creative-students.html.

Today's poem looks at the importance of good teachers in hard times.

Rehydration

Jes mamma an me sittin on the porch

of a hot Sunday

with flies for guests

for visitors

and “buzz” for a song

Main Street, like a dry river bed, jes down the steps

nothin on it movin

‘til the services end and

smokebelchin ol Chevies and pick-ups cough by with neighbors-like-strangers

givin a nod to us (or to the flies)

as they go by

I hear the boys, Petey & Joe

up on the porch roof

playin some boy-foolishness

up there high above the Main Street trickle

They like to be high up

over things

up trees, up telephone poles

climbin

like there’s somewheres to climb to

Main Street dries up again

parched for traffic

cracked and pitted

with thirst for some

             people

with a job or a store

or a friend

to go to

Mama’s darnin socks—makin do

I’m tappin a pen

watchin her try to mend

the holes left

when the mine closed down

Then I see Miss Teacher

she’s walkin from church

polished apple-bright

and crisp as a mackintosh

The riverbed sits right up and drinks her in

like God’s own sweet rain

So, I climb into her eyes and look around

and she climbs into my mind and she walks around

“Mornin, Miss Teacher”

“Mornin, Lisa, I need that piece by Monday”

“Yes, Ma’am”

Yes, Ma’am

--Joe Bellacero

I've decided to focus on poetry for a while and i thought that this might be a nice pace to share some, if, by any chance, someone happens to visit this blog.

Here is the latest poem I wrote, just last Friday. Let's see how many I can get here before the end of the summer.
Joe

Reflection

Papa held the camera

for all sixteen years that I knew him.

Papa is on the other side of the blanket

where the five of us mug.

Mom, the boys, and me

make scary faces

and he stuffs them into his camera.

At the far end of the room,

Papa’s flash douses the sixteen candles

on the birthday cake

Mom sets before me.

“Puff your cheeks but don’t blow.”

the camera demands.

In the dark, it’s glass eye is all I can see.

Having shown us how to grab the knot in the rope

and swing out over the icy mountain creek

down at the Hollow,

Papa snaps JB’s laughing terror

at letting go.

Papa caught graduations, track meets, driving lessons, first dates

but also

homework sessions, dish washing, TV snacking,

then, his heart stopped.

And the only photos of him we have

are us.

--Joe Bellacero