The Death of the Liberal Class

It's a funny thing - to find yourself writing in oblivion and then being acknowledged as part of a larger...oblivion. In The Death of the Liberal Class, Chris Hedges asserts that, because there is no real voice for dissent in this country, intellectuals have receded into their own veritable caves, with their own Platonic ideals as comfort. For a long time, I have wondered if the world would eventually transform into a place in which people stayed inside and did nearly everything virtually. Apparently E.M. Forster had this vision in 1909, in a story called "The Machine Stops," which Hedges also cites.
(You can read it here: http://archive.ncsa.illinois.edu/prajlich/forster.html)

Most teachers I have met are already in this stage of existence. They come home exhausted from the battle with their students, administrators and parents. Most of the discussion is about language - since you cannot own your own words anymore, students, administrators and teachers are free to re-define the terms for the courses you teach at any time. What is English? Is it spelling? Shouldn't my son spell? Shouldn't we stop all discussion of reading comprehension until every student can spell? What about penmanship? What about the names of literary devices?

I'd defy anyone to bring these kinds of questions into an academically respected classroom. Ask a professor at Harvard if he or she marks off for spelling? Do the students have to count off the literary devices in Shakespeare or is their interpretation what matters? The need to categorize is something I've encountered in friends who felt out of sync - who felt on the margins. I understand that. Why do we have to teach our students to present themselves as if they, too, are on the outer rim of culture? We are not only creating two classes of students - the kind who are allowed to think "independently" at Harvard and those who must "address the task" - but we are setting up a world in which most of the former will find themselves instructing the latter to their incredible dismay.

First, I wonder why everyone insists so much that students who are loathe to read in the first place have to dissect texts dryly. Why not invite them to comprehend what they read, discuss what it means and inspires, and stop asking them to prove their rights to do so by calling something an image, a metaphor or a symbol. What matters is their ability to understand when something can resonate in many ways, and not the training of their reflexes in the art of slapping down a pen and writing in a label. What it does is limit their response to what they read and make them constantly in search of approval. It is exactly what Hedges describes: they put literary works "in their place" in the hierarchy of things, which places the reader at an even lower rank than what he/she reads. It leaves the intellectual/teacher the task of further slamming down the students and he/she becomes a kind of grand inquisitor of mechanics.

Second, I recognize that I have become the "Underground Man" which Hedges points to and I am to frightened, sometimes, to leave my lair. Like the figure in Dostoevsky's story, I am bilious.

All of this keeps our country in a kind of stasis that we couldn't possibly want for our children. Or, more selfishly, for ourselves. We are a society of lonely people.
Our separateness makes empathy harder to come by. In our caves, we re-invent ideas which wisdom could teach us to re-consider.

How do we face 2012 and not be afraid of each other - of listening to each other and sharing our ideas? How do we refuse to be bullied by a society which has made most people feel powerless because they don't have the money that those in power possess.

The lesson of Chanukah was that the few conquered the many. It was a few rebelling against an oppressor. It is easy enough to spend time rebelling, though not to win. But what do we build after?