Charity is Violence (Part 2)

An Excerpt from "College and the Boy: a Comic Epic Poem in Prose"

Headnote:

For this Rant post and the previous one, I offer an excerpt from my novel, College and the Boy: a Comic Epic Poem in Prose. Recently, my novel was accepted for publication by a mid-size press but, alas, that publisher went out of business before College and the Boy could be published. Such is the precarious state of the publishing world these days. I currently have my manuscript back out on the market, which is hostile territory for every author—but particularly for the fool who writes literary fiction with an eye toward social reality. Oh well.

To orient you as a reader, College and the Boy is a mixture of satire, formal innovation, and social realism. The story is told by a variety of narrative voices, and three of its twelve chapters are presented in the format of a stage play. This excerpt is the first of those “drama” chapters. The novel takes place at a small, southern, private liberal arts college in the year 1976. Just so you know, the professor in this chapter has just come from a very unpleasant conversation with the Dean of the College. In that conversation, the professor is strongly advised—as his tenure decision fast approaches—to adhere better to the conservative traditions and ideals of the College.

The Excerpt (Part 2):

[picking up exactly where we left off last post]

JANE [responding to MARTIN]. Or maybe it’s just better at feeding us bullshit. [No one knew JANE could swear.] That’s what this fella we’re reading now is saying. Isn’t he, Dr. Hogarth? Look on page sixty, right at the top. [JANE has her book open; she clears her throat and reads aloud.] “The more students work at storing the deposits entrusted to them, the less they develop the critical consciousness which would result from their intervention in the world as transformers of that world. The more completely they accept the passive role imposed on them, the more they tend simply to adapt to the world as it is and to the fragmented view of reality deposited in them.”

REYNOLDS [making a fly-by gesture]. Whoa there, Janie. You lost me right at the get-go.

JANE. Okay. Skip down to the next paragraph. [Clears her throat and tries again.] “The capability of banking education to minimize or annul the students’ creative power and to stimulate their credulity serves the interests of the oppressors, who care neither to have the world revealed nor to see it transformed. The oppressors use their ‘humanitarianism’ to preserve a profitable situation. Thus they react almost instinctively against any experiment in education which stimulates the critical faculties and is not content with a partial view of reality but always seeks out . . .” [Breaking off.] Okay, okay, that’s getting too long. Hold on a sec. [Scans the book.] Skip down another four or five lines. [Starts reading again.] “To achieve this end, the oppressors use the banking concept of education in conjunction with a paternalistic social action apparatus, within which the oppressed receive the euphemistic title of ‘welfare recipients.’”

REYNOLDS [shaking his head and smirking at EUBIE and CHERI; both smirk back]. Well, thanks for that clarification, there, Janie-Girl. That’s much better now.

JANE. Dr. Hogarth? Who are these “oppressors” he’s always talking about? That’s like his favorite word. That’s something I’m not quite getting, just exactly who they are.

SUSAN. They’re us.

JANE [frowns]. Okay. That’s what I was afraid of.

REYNOLDS. Hold on, now! What do you mean, “They’re us”? How the heck you figure that?

SUSAN. Oh, come off it, Reynolds. Who’d you think he meant? We’re the moneyed class. The property owners and the bosses. This guy’s a Marxist. Wake up. He’s telling us that rich people live on the backs of the poor, and they start by educating everyone into believing that capitalism is right and natural. That makes us the oppressors.

REYNOLDS. I sure as heck don’t live off of anybody’s back!

SUSAN. Sure you don’t, Reynolds. Tell that to the lady who cleans your room in the morning or serves you lunch today.

[A few minutes are spent in fruitless economic squabbling. As always, no minds are changed. As usual, few understand what they’re really talking about. We’ll jump ahead again in our colloquium.]

JIMMY [Pre-Med; ever fearful for his GPA; wishing he were back in the certainty of a Bio-Chem lab]. And so what exactly is this “banking concept of education,” Professor Hogarth? It seems like the heart of his argument.

DOC H [always looking to loosen JIMMY up a bit]. Well, Student Jimmy, it’s math worksheets, for example. Memorization and regurgitation in general. Students are treated like banks into which selected bits of information are deposited. When teachers give an exam, it’s like a withdrawal from that bank. Educational success is measured only by how well you can spit back out the information put into you. [JIMMY scribbles notes furiously.] Hence his analogy of education as capital, as money, within a wholly capitalistic educational system.

JONATHAN. Is that what he means by students being “welfare recipients”?

DOC H. Bingo, Jonathan. But it’s more than that, too. It’s a method of socialization. How you’re treated in school gets you used to how you’re going to be treated in life. Especially in your working life. School teaches you to get in line, swallow anything you’re told, fear those above you and despise those below you, depend on authority figures to tell you whether to feel good or bad about yourself. These are all desired traits in the modern worker.

JANE. But then wouldn’t that make us the oppressed, too?

DOC H. Bingo, Jane.

MARTIN. But how can we be the oppressors and the oppressed at the same time, Dr. Hogarth? That doesn’t make any sense.

DOC H. Now that is a real kick in the principle of non-contradiction head, isn’t it Martin?

[Martin scratches his head. The class goes silent for a time.]

REYNOLDS [finally grousing in his stage-whisper]. It’s all a damn mind-fuck is what it is.

SUSAN [smiling at REYNOLDS’ muttering]. That’s right. It is a mind-fuck, Reynolds. That’s the invisible trick of bourgeois ideology. It makes everybody stupid. Rich and poor. Nobody really sees the rigged social game going on. Everybody thinks instead that our economic system is natural and democratic, that it’s somehow the crown of creation. And if you believe all that, like most people do, then you also have to believe that the rich get rich because they’re smarter and work harder than everyone else. That they’re some kind of superior beings who we all should try to be like.

JIMMY [Bic pen flying across the page of his spiral notebook]. Is that true, Professor Hogarth? Is that what ideology does?

DOC H. Modern ideology, yes, largely that’s how it works, Jimmy. If you buy into the notion of the level playing field, there’s no other way to explain the success of the wealthy. And there’s no other way to view individual economic failure than as a lack of intelligence and initiative.

MARTIN. I still don’t get how you can be an oppressor and an oppressed at the same time. Ideology or not, that’s just a flat-out paradox.

DOC H. I grant the illogicality, Martin. But, in effect, we all get oppressed into wanting to be oppressors. If that’s the only game in town, then there’s no other way to play. Is there?

JONATHAN [working things through]. So … wait. That means we’re basically a bunch of idiots. We operate on a combination of … of … narrow self-interest and … limited social awareness. In fact, the first probably leads to the second, and then the second reinforces the first. Especially if you’re in the middle or upper class.

DOC H. Nicely put, Jonathan. I’m sure the theorist we’re reading now would agree with that analysis.

JANE. So why do poor people put up with this? I mean, I can see why we do. It all works to our advantage. But why don’t they do something about it?

JONATHAN. They don’t see it, either. They buy into the story as much as we do.

SUSAN. And even if they don’t, they’re out-gunned, out-moneyed, and out-educated. The poor hardly have a chance.

REYNOLDS. Watch out, everybody! We got dang Red Sue on our hands here! And she’s reachin’ for her AK-47!

SUSAN. Better Red than brain-dead, Reynolds.

RUTH. Dr. Hogarth, this is what he means by “internalizing the oppressor,” isn’t it?

DOC H. Yep. It’s probably the key concept to his overall social and educational theory.

JANE. And everybody does it, right?

DOC H. If you buy into this theory, Jane, yes, I’m afraid that would mean everyone does it at least to some degree.

JANE. That’s just scary. I can see it happening to the little girl I’m tutoring.

REYNOLDS [suddenly]. Hey! I got a question, Doc H!

DOC H. Okay. Go ahead, Reynolds.

REYNOLDS [fidgeting like he’s found the Holy Grail, like he’s located, at long last, the loophole he’s been hoping for]. Even you, Doc H? [His questions are asked triumphantly.] Even you do this internal oppressor thing?

DOC H [grateful for the breakthrough to have come at last]. Oh God yes, Reynolds. I’m by far the worst offender in the room. The way I see it, I’m a para-oppressor at best. I see what’s going on and I don’t want to oppress anybody. I even make vague attempts to subvert the oppressive system. Still, I participate in and benefit from that system, my worst personal compromise being that I teach at an expensive and exclusive college like this one. I really ought to be ashamed of myself for that. [A few students start to see that DOC H isn’t joking.] Not only is this a combined finishing school and playground for, primarily, the sons of the wealthy, but if you think about it it’s a downright oppressor factory. We award degrees in oppression, for God’s sake. And I’m one of the assembly line workers. [There’s no dry grin; he’s not just pushing buttons.] That makes me a hypocrite and what I have you do in this class laughable, even pathetic. Maybe even criminal. A bourgeois socialist. I really ought to be put up against a wall and shot. [Some jaws have dropped; there’s a long and heavy silence.] Hey, I warned you guys that you wouldn’t like this book.

JANE. What about us, then?

DOC H [cheerily]. Oh, you guys are really interesting. Like we were just talking about, you’re being oppressed in order to take your place as oppressors. You guys are the young oppressors-in-training, so to speak, being groomed for privilege. You always have been. That’s why your parents always sent you to the best schools. That’s why they send you to this college. And here you are now, standing at a profound crossroads. To oppress or not to oppress? That is the question.

[Many brows furrow. Another lengthy silence. REYNOLDS ends it.]

REYNOLDS. Golly, Doc. Sounds like a no-brainer to me.

DOC H. How could it be anything but, Reynolds?

MARTIN. Are you saying, then, that there are different kinds of oppression, and that some oppression is better than others? That somebody might actually choose it? That still doesn’t make any sense to me. Isn’t oppression just oppression? Wouldn’t it be felt by everybody the same way?

DOC H. Not at all, Martin. For the kids you’re tutoring, oppression is having their aspirations leveled, their ambition curbed. They need to come out of high school thinking that being an underpaid truck driver or hairdresser is just fine and about all they can attain. And their school and their neighborhoods are convincing them of just that. Right? [Sincere question. No takers.] You guys, on the other hand, need to be made categorically stupid. Book smart but street dumb. That’s your oppression. You need to be able to perform advanced calculus or read Milton with understanding, but not recognize the dark underbelly of late-industrial capitalism even when you stare it in the face of your learner two afternoons a week. That’s a different kind of oppression, and certainly one that’s easier to swallow, but it’s oppression nonetheless. Am I wrong? [Still no takers.] For both you and the kids at Hesperia Elementary, social reality is being masked. Each in different ways, but masked all the same.

JASON [speaking up this time]. My kid at least knows he’s getting screwed. He has no idea why and no clue what to do about it. But he knows that he is. That’s more than I can say about us.

REYNOLDS. Hey, man, if this is gettin’ screwed, handcuff me to the dang bed.

SUSAN [to herself, shaking her head]. Wow.

MARTIN [because Aristotelians die hard]. Sorry, Dr. Hogarth, but I just can’t buy it. Oppression is oppression. It’s always going to be violent and objectionable. Those who are oppressed are always going to feel the violence of their oppression.

DOC H. Think of it more as discipline, then, Martin. As training and assimilation. For oppression to be really widespread, and therefore the most effective, many of us have to experience it as something positive and productive, even pleasurable. That way we enforce it on ourselves and perpetuate it with minimal supervision. Only the weak state puts a boot heel on the faces of its populace. The really successful and stable modern state presents to its population choices within carefully constructed constraints. Modern power is action upon the actions of others. It’s a way to regulate and channel more than outright impose and forbid. That way conformity can be presented as individualism, submission as freedom, ignorance as knowledge, dead-end as boundless opportunity.

REYNOLDS [making the fly-by gesture again]. Really, Doc, I ain’t even tryin’ to be thick or a smartass now. I got no idea in hell what you just said. [EUBIE and CHERI nodding.]

JASON. Brave New World instead of 1984.

REYNOLDS [turning around in his seat to look back at JASON]. Really, bud? Like that helps?

RUTH. Dr. Hogarth, you’re fixin’ta make me cry.

DOC H. I know, Ruth. I apologize. [The kind but wicked grin is back.] I’m afraid it’s what I do for a living now.

JIMMY [raising his hand]. I didn’t get down all of what you just said, Professor Hogarth. Can you say all that last part again, slower this time?

DOC H. Don’t worry, Jimmy. I just gave you a preview of the next theorist we’re going to be reading. We’ll go over all of his ideas very carefully in class, I assure you. You guys won’t like him, either.

REYNOLDS. Oh, goody. Somethin’ different for a change.

SUSAN. Dr. Hogarth, I have a question. [A pause to gather her words.] If what you just said is in fact the case, what’s our motivation, then, for not becoming oppressors? Or for someone not to try to work their way up into the oppressor group? I know most people don’t even understand that this kind of stuff is going on. But even if you do see that we live inside an artificial system and mindset, it’s a system that offers the safety of a productive life inside of it. So why take on the trouble of bucking that kind of power?

DOC H. These are great and weighty questions, Susan. Anybody have any thoughts?

SUSAN [insisting]. No, Dr. Hogarth. This time, could you just answer them, please?

DOC H [thinking about it, then nodding]. Sure thing, Susan. To be honest with you, very little motivation exists to resist really sophisticated modern power. Justice, maybe. Equality. Solidarity. Those noble ideas. Some argue that oppression hurts the oppressor as much as it does the oppressed. That both are de-humanized by it, so there’s a reason not to oppress. To be fully human. But I find that, by and large, oppressors don’t feel guilty about their advantages even when the curtain is pulled back and they do acquire a vague understanding of the rigged game going on. They’re content to continue their well-ingrained habit of buy till you die. Pleasure is everything. Right? [Nearly stops here, then doesn’t.] Then there are those who argue that, out of self-preservation, oppressors should be working to level the playing field. Otherwise, somewhere down the road, maybe even in your lifetimes, the global imbalance of have-nots to haves will become so great that our laissez-faire carnival will come to a grinding halt. And that’s not even taking into consideration how industrial capitalism is no friend to the environment. [DOC H waves a hand dismissively.] But nobody wants to hear that kind of crazy talk. Not yet. Oppressors aren’t big forward planners. [He knows it’s time to wrap.] This fellow we’re reading now, however, says simply that only the oppressed can liberate themselves. That oppressors will never willingly give up their power. So I guess, Susan, that means only you and your learner can do anything about all this. Neither of you are oppressors at this point.

SUSAN [daring this confession]. Well that’s what scares me most, Dr. Hogarth. I don’t know about anybody else in here, but my tutoring over at the elementary school is in the process of crashing and burning. Nothing I do is working worth crap. And I have no idea what to do about it.

[Grim nods around the classroom.]

DOC H [checking the clock on the back wall, seeing only a few minutes left in the period]. Okay, gang. Open your books to page sixty-one. Listen closely. [Gives them a moment to find the page, then reads aloud.] “The solution is not to ‘integrate’ them into the structure of oppression, but to transform that structure so that they can become ‘beings for themselves.’ Such transformation, of course, would undermine the oppressors’ purposes; hence their utilization of the banking concept of education to avoid the threat of student conscientização.” [That last word DOC H pronounces fluently, like he’s somebody else. He looks up from the book to gauge the faces. He bends his head and reads aloud the passage again, taking even more time over it.] That last concept is a complicated idea with several layers, but at its heart is emancipatory education. What students really need to study is their own political and historical reality, their own social circumstances and moment. They can’t just study what the school tells them to study. Remember, school is one of the quintessential institutions and instruments of the dominant class. There more to indoctrinate than to educate. So students need to cultivate a different kind of literacy. The ability to read the world. I call it critical literacy. The way you go about doing it is undertaking what this theorist calls critical pedagogy.

JANE [caution in her voice]. No offense, Dr. Hogarth, but just how on earth do you expect us to do that with our learners? My goodness, they’re just little school kids. Most of them can hardly spell “boo.” And the teachers over there are breathing down our necks all the time. Especially that Mrs. Braymire lady. She just wants us drilling the kids on their times tables and their spelling words. How are we supposed to get them to investigate their political and historical reality under those circumstances?

DOC H. Believe me when I tell you, Jane, that I feel your pain. Acutely. [The bell rings.] We’ll start to get into the how-to next class. I promise.

SCENE II

[As the students gather their books and file from the classroom, DOC H calls SUSAN, JANE, and RUTH aside to speak with them. After he describes something, they all nod enthusiastically. Then they file out with the rest. DOC H turns to the blackboard to erase all the lists and drawings he’d put up during class. JASON approaches and speaks to the professor’s back.]

JASON. You pose problems, right?

DOC H [continuing to erase, without turning around]. So this theory goes, Jason.

JASON. And a limit situation is anything the banking style teacher does to keep students in line, to inhibit their critical and creative thinking. Right? It’s an imposition of the status quo.

DOC H. For the most part. Okay.

JASON. It’s basically any roadblock the problem-posing teacher runs into in the pursuit of emancipatory education. Is that it?

DOC H [turning around now, placing the eraser in the trough, clapping his hands free of the yellow dust]. The limit situation is the primary educational opportunity, yes. [Looks the student up and down.] It’s the teacher’s basic job to identify a good one and help the student deal with it.

JASON. And so what’s a generative theme?

[That’s the perfect next question.]

DOC H. They’re related. A generative theme either leads to or emerges from a limit situation. It’s a topic or an issue that the teacher and the student decide to investigate because it seems somehow crucial to the student’s life. Normally, it’s something that’s bothering the student, some big problem or frustration. The trick is to find something that will lead the student into a critical reflection of his or her own life. The ultimate point is for the student to come up with a positive way to do something about it. Again, that’s according to this educational theory.

JASON [nodding his understanding]. You’re using problem-posing teaching on us, aren’t you, Dr. Hogarth? That’s what this tutoring is all about, isn’t it?

DOC H. Of course I am and of course it is, Jason. Or, at least, I’m trying my best to.

JASON. I can find tons of limit situations with Julius, my learner. [This student is a good three or four inches taller than the professor; pounds and pounds lighter, too.] Too many to count, you know? [Broad but slim shoulders, narrow hips, greyhound fit.] Limit situations all over the place with this kid. [Hair and beard like Jesus Christ, eyes and nose right out of Christian iconography.] What I need, though, is one of those generative themes. Something that will kind of pull everything together and really focus Julius on what I’m trying to do with him. You know what I mean?

[The sincere, innocent aspiration of a young mind. The opium that keeps this professor professing.]

DOC H. Jason, I know exactly what you mean. [Walks over to the lectern lying sidelong on the floor. Picks it up delicately. Situates it back on the front table with care.] Maybe that’s our limit situation.

JASON [thinks it over, then sees what the professor means]. May be.

[Lady with a beehive hairdo pops in through the open doorway.]

MARIAN. Here you go, Dr. Hogarth. The Dean wanted you to have this back.

[The lady approaches briskly and hands something to the professor.]

DOC H. Thank you, Marian. [He pockets the item.]

MARIAN [to JASON]. Why, hello again there, dearie.

[Sashaying, MARIAN clacks her way on her high heels back out the door. Honeysuckle perfume lingers to cloy the air.]

DOC H. Do you want to take on a special project?

JASON. Sure.

DOC H. I’ve just asked three of your classmates to take one on, too. But yours will be a different one. A bit more behind-the-scenes than theirs. And only you will be doing it. You game?

[JASON nods. The professor gathers his books. Tucks them under one arm. Places his free hand on the taller student’s shoulder. Steers them toward the door, starting to explain.]

End of Excerpt (Part 2)

COMING IN TWO WEEKS: likely more thoughts, of a more Rant-like kind, on charity...

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