The Fires of Our Devotion

It is getting hot again. I would say it gets to about 90 degrees in the peak of the afternoon now. Find the lightweight blazers! Don’t let them know you are wearing used-car-salesman-like short sleeve shirts! (Why hide the ‘ss’ you ask? Short stocky man in short sleeves? Need you ask?) Keep the wash cloth handy in case your brow gets a little moist as you explore the 1919 Paris Peace Conference! It is not as hot as it was last August and September. But there are some reminders…and there were beads of perspiration around 8:30 a.m. this morning…

As with the heat, there is another reminder of what life was like way back, way back here in August and September—time goes so fast in class. There is never enough time in class to accomplish all I wish in my headiest of hopes. As Mr. Hall taught me in French class at Gamble Junior High, “Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose.” For the Francophobes in the group, that would be, “the more things change, the more they stay the same.”

Ahhh…but it is not the same! Yes, time in class is still a precious commodity, but back in the beginning of the year, the period I dubbed “Scratch,” I had to corral these young scholars simply to open a notebook, hold a pen, restrain their every impulse. I gave out candy if they did the most basic student tasks—showing up on time, raising their hand, showing me a pen! It was candy to cajole. Now the “problem” as I careen through the centuries of world history is that they have so many questions! I may not get to something in class because they are so fired up by their own discoveries they have to ask question after question! And offer epiphany after epiphany!

As perspicacious Adam suggested a couple months ago, here is how he envisioned my students’ progress this spring: “You've reached The Poke. The students are starting to get it, though some need to be nudged a little bit more. In addition, pokes are discrete. An itch is felt continuously, but not as many students are causing you discomfort any more. And once most people have really gotten it, you'll have reached The Tickle, because you'll feel all giddy. And once everybody's gotten it, you'll find The Soothing. And when the year's done, you'll find The Relief.”

Guess what? We have made it to The Tickle. If you could have watched them this last week as we explored the First World War, and the headaches and back-room deals that culminate in the Treaty of Versailles, and heard them studying for a test last night, there is little doubt: they are now giddy about history. Go figure!

It may be hot out, and old Kronos might steal time from class, but it is not the same.

Last week I thought the students were finally ready for one of my favorite phrases in teaching history: the stew of simultaneity. I don’t know when this phrase popped in my head—maybe it goes back to Charlotte Latin, but the idea is that I want them to deal with many things happening at one time, and revel in that stew, and that they are all happening at one time, ahhh…what a great word—simultaneity. Here are my young Arab scholars, smiling as I offer them this tough word, and they start saying, “Hmmm, Mr. John, the stew is so nice. This stew of simultaneity!”

We spent our first week back from spring break dealing with what I called “on the cusp of the 20th century,” and we looked at the rise of Japan as a military power, and the erection of the Eiffel Tower in Paris, and the paintings The Kiss and The Scream, and the Rudyard Kipling poem, “The White Man’s Burden,” Eugenics, the science of racial superiority, and among other things, the bizarre string of assassinations of government leaders around the world by anarchists. After we learned about each one discretely, I put many of the items, and vocabulary words, on the board, in a random way, so there was a mess of words on the board. In class I asked each student to come up to the board, one at a time, and connect at least two things with a line and explain the connection. Now this is an exercise you can only do if students are prepared and willing to connect the dots. It takes outstanding evaluators, connectors, and reflectors to do this exercise. I tell you, they were giddy. I think it was Rashed who linked ‘Positivism’ and ‘Marxists.’ He believed that this perverse movement of Positivism (akin to “Don’t worry—be happy”) might have developed out of the fear that the Marxist promise of a class struggle would come to pass. This young man who had thought research and knowledge a few months ago was just printing a page off an internet site, offered a wonderful speculation.

In one class I made brownies. Now, I have to explain why this class got some brownies—it was not just a generous spirit. I had made a bet with this class, a class in which several members had had a hard time doing and submitting homework. So in February I promised that when we had 100% participation in submitting homework, they would get brownies. Do you know, it took until April for that 100%??? But—it happened, and so last week I made good on the promise. After I gave out the 17 brownies to the members of the class, there was considerable brownie goo left, so I decided I would offer pieces of brownies for the most stupendous epiphanies that day. One student remembered when I gave out candy for simply holding a pen, now I returned to food distribution but for much more higher-order work!

Here are some of the insights, as I remember them, which earned them gastronomic medals:

(1) “The Russo-Japanese War is a big deal because it is the first time in hundreds of years that a non-European power had beaten a European power.” A moment after she said that, another student realized that that military victory “trashed the theory of eugenics!!”

(2) Qusai was noticing that in Klimt’s painting, The Kiss, “there are rectangles all over the man’s coat, and circles all over the woman’s coat.” Scrappy Jude yelled out, “Oh my, that’s just like the Greeks! The same shapes! Men were always seen like rectangles and women with circles in their architecture!”

(3) Leen said, “Japan wanted to have its own version of European progress. The Japanese had to give up feudalism—even though it allowed for stability, it didn’t transform them. They got a plan.” And a moment after that, Farah yelled out, “and they paid for it with their silver mines! That’s how they paid for all the changes!”

I noticed that all three of those observations started with one person, and another young scholar piggy-backed…oh my gosh…are these guys listening to each other??? Is it possible? And the exclamation points I am using is just my way of trying to relay their giddiness! And mine!!

We have moments reaching poetry as well…Adel looks at all the stew of good and bad and suggested about the new inventions: “These new toys were the keys to the gate of Hell and the lock to the doorway of Heaven.” Raja cynically offered, “That “White Man’s Burden” stuff is just a justification to enslave people.” Reed drew a graph illustrating the development toward progress made by England, a steady climb over 100 years, and the meteoric rise of Japan in under 50 years. She loved her graph. Another Jude offered, “The Kiss reminds me of Leonardo’s drawing of the “Vitruvian Man” with the circles and the squares, that it is the meeting of male and female—the perfect kiss.”

As we debated whether it was a good time in which to live or not—in glamorous new cities like Vienna and Paris, using new inventions like the automobile and the radio, but also enduring terrorist assassinations and the nervous spirit pervading The Scream. Hamzah noted that in Munch’s painting The Scream “there were so many curly, confusing lines and that is like what is happening in the world and you look for the straight lines, the only way you can take to survive from the terror and the unconfidence you are living in.” Abdullah calmly waved his hand, and nonchalantly quoted a source we looked at in early April: “It was the best of times. It was the worst of times.”

A boy named Faris reliably comes up with provocative conclusions, and he often goes back to The Mission, a movie from which I showed some scenes back in March. The movie is about the Spanish colonization in South America. Faris stroked his chin (I had told them, it really does help to have good ideas to stroke your chin!) “The Scream reminds me of the moment in the movie The Mission when Robert DeNiro goes through a lot of agony in the river to get to a new moment of truth. The man in the painting is on a path, and he is on a path and we don’t know where he will end up.”

According to Adam, we get to end up in Soothing and Relief.