Young Goodman Brown decides to go for a walk. He thinks that the enemy is the devil. But he ventures out at sunset to meet him. He thinks his wife-- his Faith--is the force of good in his life. But he leaves her at home. He thinks he's in charge every time he chooses whether to go on or to stop.
This guy clearly doesn't have a handle on his situation.
Story isn't about action, or theme, or love, or death, or good and evil. It's about conflict. Young Goodman Brown's character is only interesting to us because of his strange circumstances and the choices he makes in dealing with them. When was the last time anyone got interested or even heard of a story about a nice person who had a nice day, went to sleep, woke up the next day early and refreshed, and did it all over again? Our lives are filled with obstacles, both real and perceived, and what makes stories compelling to us is how characters deal with the challenges they encounter. For generations English teachers the world over have categorized those conflicts: man v. himself, man v. man, man v. nature, etc. (Stunningly, we've managed to take the most interesting element of story and make it multiple-choice boring.)
Conflict is entertaining. Every "Reality TV" show ever made depends on conflict for its success. This is not an exaggeration: every single one of those shows, in every single genre, for every kind of audience, goes out of its way to manufacture conflict because that's what attracts viewers.
Marshall McLuhan was one of the most insightful commentators on media and communication in the 20th century. He's the guy who famously observed that, "The medium is the message." More importantly for us, he noted:
Anyone who tries to make a distinction between education and entertainment doesn't know the first thing about either.
We have learned a great deal so far this semester. Some of what we've learned has come from the traditional American Literature curriculum: diction, syntax, tone, mood, theme, allusion, symbol, genre, etc. Most of what we've learned has to do with our individual styles and our learning community. I've learned that some of you still think you're passive consumers of a teacher's curriculum, or worse, the entertaining conflict of "student v. school."
McLuhan also said:
There are no passengers on spaceship Earth. We are all crew.
Those of you who still operate under the illusion that the roles of "teacher" and "student" are separate are trapped in old ways of thinking and you're missing the point of
Open Source Learning. For all his talk of caring, poor Young Goodman Brown doesn't see the people in his life for who they really are as individuals. He categorizes them according to simplistic labels like "good" and "evil." As a result, he's heartbroken when their words and deeds don't fit his expectations. When he sees the conversation between the devil and Goody Cloyse, Young Goodman Brown suffers a crisis of meaning-- but why should the private life of an old lady shake his own identity and everything he believes to be true? In reality, people do both "good" and "bad" things in the world. We hope they learn from the bad and use their learning to contribute to the good. In fact, we hope that all of "them" eventually come to realize there really is no "them." There is only us. We want to be understood, and that begins with understanding ourselves. The next time you want to know who's responsible for how you're feeling, grab a mirror.
The other day I had a conversation with
Mahmoud about history. Sometimes it's hard to connect the
Founding Fathers or the
Hawley-Smoot Tariff with what's happening today. But whose job is it to connect the dots? (Spoiler: it's yours.) If you want to Learn, you have to stop settling for Being Taught. I am not only giving you permission, I am demanding that you question the value of what we read and do. Whenever it's not clear, ask me: WTF is the POINT? I'll even go a step further: if what you find isn't motivating, let's talk about what else is out there, and let's do this now, because the world won't wait for you. In fact, the more you read, the more you realize that other people have felt the same way as you and are waiting for you to show up and take your place in the conversation. You also come to realize that the other 8 billion people on the planet have their own problems and they're not going to care very long if you sit on the sideline and sulk. As
Stephen Crane put it:
A man said to the universe:
“Sir, I exist!”
“However,” replied the universe,
“The fact has not created in me
A sense of obligation.”
Example: the few of you who read
"White Buffalo Calf Woman" will be rewarded at the end of the week when we have an essay exam comparing the story with "Young Goodman Brown." Since you were supposed to read it and take notes on it weeks ago, and since you're preparing for a life of independent learning, I'm not going to remind you again and I'm not going to review it in class-- unless you ask me to, in which case I'll drop everything after we finish "Young Goodman Brown" and do whatever it takes to make sure you understand the essentials. If that causes you any sort of negative feeling, consider how willing I am to help you and how hard I've worked so far to prove it. Then consider this gem of Native American wisdom, from
Sitting Bull:
Inside of me there are two dogs. One is mean and evil and the other is good. Which one wins? Whichever I feed the most.
It's easy to feed the dog that seems like an old friend, and we are
most sensitive to negative information. Change is hard. Overcoming obstacles is hard. Sometimes the fight for happiness actually feels more rewarding than actually experiencing happiness. So ask
yourself whether you're really taking steps to overcome conflicts or just sitting
with the same old tapes that say, "I can't," or "I'm just not good at
____," or "That teacher doesn't like me," or "[insert your favorite/s
here]."
We are all under a great deal of pressure. Friday we only had 30
minutes, today we'll only have 30 minutes, there are 34+ people in a
class, we're all constantly being told we suck at what we do or that
we're not doing enough, 7th period is hot and tired. The obstacles are
out there. We may not be able to control the obstacles (which will be an interesting question when we study
Naturalism and return to "Richard Cory") but we can control how we respond to them. You have more power than you think you do, so use this course to flex your questioning muscles. Stop being a victim
of your education and start putting it to work for you. Ask yourself what kind of environment you want for 50
minutes and push your colleagues (including me) to help you create it. Whether I'm in the room or not, if someone upsets the balance by clinging to their hurt, or their old stereotypes, or their need to be the center of attention, or whatever, find a way--with empathy, compassion, and critical thinking-- to bring attention to his/her choices and remind him/her that no one is putting that person in that box except him/her.
After we finish this week and I give a final exam on the first month of class, we're going straight to another story about a guy who went for a walk. Taking a walk is a small journey that begins with one step-- this is an important metaphor for the work we're doing right now.
Ray Bradbury wrote
"The Pedestrian" after he went for a late-night stroll and police started questioning him just because he was out. That experience and that story led Bradbury (who once asked my grandmother out when they sat next to each other at Los Angeles High School) to write
Fahrenheit 451. Lots of people think that book is about censorship. Partly, but it's really about self-determination. We live in a world where it's hard to imagine that one person can make up her own mind, make her own way in the world, and in the process make a difference for others. If you feel this way, spend some time with these words from expert-on-the-subject
Margaret Mead: "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."
We get to walk a path that Young Goodman Brown hasn't yet
discovered, a path where people aren't just "good" or "evil" or "teacher" or
"student," but complex individuals trying to figure out who they are and
where they fit in the world.
Again I realize that an author has put it best, so the last word goes to
Robert Frost:
| TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood, | |
| And sorry I could not travel both | |
| And be one traveler, long I stood | |
| And looked down one as far as I could | |
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
|
|
|
| Then took the other, as just as fair, | |
| And having perhaps the better claim, | |
| Because it was grassy and wanted wear; | |
| Though as for that the passing there | |
| Had worn them really about the same, |
|
|
| And both that morning equally lay | |
| In leaves no step had trodden black. | |
| Oh, I kept the first for another day! | |
| Yet knowing how way leads on to way, | |
I doubted if I should ever come back.
|
|
|
| I shall be telling this with a sigh | |
| Somewhere ages and ages hence: | |
| Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— | |
| I took the one less traveled by, | |
| And that has made all the difference. |
