A couple of weeks ago we held a debate in our freshman argumentative writing course: "Is the millennial generation more narcissistic than previous generations?" To prepare, I had my students read several articles, some of which argued "yes," some of which argued "no," and some of which argued "it's complicated." 

While looking around for articles, I happened upon one (of many) that harped upon the millennials' impaired ability to delay gratification. I ended up not assigning it, since the goal of this particular project was not to exemplify the overgeneralization fallacy. I am not convinced that my own generation is morally superior to the current one just because we used to wait three days for the film to develop.

On the other hand, I can't totally disagree that delaying gratification is a challenge for young people today. I'm a parent as well as a professor, and I know what a constant battle it is to persuade my children to wait. It would be very easy to lay the blame on them--or at least on the hyper-technical, innovatively disrupted, constantly changing world in which they are being raised. (Which of course begs the question of who created this hyper-technical, perennially disrupted world in the first place. It wasn't the kids.)

As I was revising an article yesterday in response to a "Revise & Resubmit" request, I noticed a recurring thread in my scholarly writing: a plea for more patience. And no, I'm not addressing "the millennials"; I'm talking to people who are at minimum over thirty, usually older.  So many of the educational trends that I perceive as misguided are grounded in wanting results and wanting them NOW. What could be a better case study in collective cultural impatience than NCLB? Once again, it isn't the kids.  It's adults who want to see measurable results and want to see them now. It's adults who question the value of the liberal arts and humanities because they can't see a direct, immediate link to that kind of education and the making of money. It's adults who make pedagogical and institutional decisions that don't allow for the factor of time.

Take the teaching of writing, for instance. A a couple of years ago I heard a presentation by a noteworthy cognitive psychologist, Ronald Kellogg, whose research demonstrates that the development of expert writing skills "takes many years of deliberate practice." One of my recent articles built upon this and other findings from cog-psych research. Yet all those of us who teach writing have probably had some conversation along the lines of, "You teach writing? So how come our students can't write?" Or, "Why are they such crappy writers? Didn't they take freshman comp?" 

The implication here is that we writing teachers must have done a bad job--not that we are trying to achieve in 14 weeks something which takes more like 14 years. Unfortunately, if you give kids a bunch of K-12 writing instruction that teaches writing in a narrowly prescriptive way, rarely veering beyond the five-paragraph essay or the aspects of literacy that can be assessed on a standardized bubble test, most students are unlikely to morph into expert writers in even the most effective 14-week course.  What does work? Patience, practice, and process. 

The concept of patience also reared its head in the article I was revising yesterday, about the long-term effects of a liberal arts education. In this piece I quote extensively from the retirement/graduation speech given by my high school drama instructor--one of the most truly gifted and dedicated educators I have ever known, who was both insanely creative and tough as nails (much like my son's current middle-school music teacher). He summarized the lofty goals he held for all of his students with the preface, "This is a review for a very long take-home quiz"--and, he said, this "quiz" will last for the rest of our lives. 

And from reading comments on our alumni Facebook page about this man and other effective teachers, the length of the "take-home quiz" is what stands out to me. Some of the people posting comments there now, by their own admission, were hardly paying attention thirty years ago. Many comments were variations on the refrain: "It took me  years to understand."  

My drama teacher's speech took place 25 years ago, before the "millennial" generation was even born, and in it he harked back to his earliest teaching days, in the fifties. What he aimed for--what he always aimed for--was for his students to learn how to back up their words with actions, to conquer fear and prejudice, to achieve self-confidence through self-discipline, to "trade in tunnel vision for a wide-angle lens," and to "learn the value of patience." Apparently he perceived that those were qualities we needed more of, even in the supposed "good old days" of camera film and vinyl. Teenagers have always been impatient. Patience has always had to be taught. 

Of course, doing that requires adults who are willing to model patience themselves.

Digital photography, downloaded music, instant access to full-text articles in databases--actually, I don't have problems with any of that. If I'm visiting with people whom I see maybe once every five or ten years, I'd prefer to know if all our group poses are crappy before the photographic moment passes. If I hear a symphony on Pandora that sends my spirits soaring, I'd rather download it now rather than try to remember later who the composer was (or where I put the piece of paper on which I wrote it down). And when it comes to research, no one will ever convince me that I might achieve some kind of moral benefit by browsing in library stacks for journal articles to photocopy (a task that required driving time and the burning of fossil fuels), rather than clicking on "Full Text" and downloading the article into my computer where I can locate and reference it forever. Take that convenience away from me and, given my heavy teaching and admin load, I probably wouldn't be publishing at all.  

In short, I think are many situations in which "instant" (or at least rapid) gratification isn't necessarily a problem. When it comes to the little everyday matters, efficiency does make it possible for us to do more. Yet there are many bigger-picture situations in which patience is not optional because there are no shortcuts: long-term relationships, gardening, pregnancy, raising children, healing (whether physical or emotional), mastery of complex skills--i.e., education. The key lies in knowing which is which--when to go for the "now," and when to understand that "now" is too soon to expect results. Not all seeds sprout on the same day they were watered.

When our class debate concluded with a somewhat mixed verdict, our discussion began with narcissism but soon veered into many other realms. My students collectively acknowledged that they are a little too technology-dependent as well as a little too impatient (though also far more self-reflective on these issues than most older folks give them credit for), They also recognized--correctly--that they are still teenagers, and they anticipate that patience will be a virtue they continue to develop as they mature. 

I like to think that will happen, and thinking back to my own adolescence gives me hope. Sometimes when I remember some of my more remarkable teachers from thirty-plus years ago, I realize that in some ways I'm only just now beginning to grasp all that they were really trying to teach me. My own growth, both intellectual and otherwise, has taken time--something I must remind myself on those days when it feels like I'm talking to the walls and I'm not sure whether anyone is listening to me.

I also think about legislation like No Child Left Behind, quick two-year studies like Academically Adrift, and optimistically worded 14-week student learning outcomes, and I wonder if some adults have ever grown out of their adolescent impatience. I also wonder, if the millennial generation truly is less inclined toward delayed gratification than ever, which generation might really be responsible for that.

I don't believe we have to learn how to wait for everything in order to be worthy human beings. But we do need to understand that even as our world becomes more technology efficient, some things remain that are not only worth waiting for, but are impossible to achieve without waiting.

A few months ago one of our graduating seniors, in a farewell moment, posted on Facebook her belief that her fellow English majors are "the greatest people you will ever meet." Comment stream discussion echoed this sentiment until, through a convoluted series of exchanges, the students had resurrected our once-defunct creative writing club, adopted this saying as our official slogan, and enlisted a colleague and me to be faculty advisors. Dinosaur that I am, it was only after the fact that I learned the origins of this slogan. It's from the movie Mean Girls, which I missed during its theatre run (probably because it was released while I was raising a toddler). Thus, Mean Girls has also become our official club movie. 

If a student club that I'm going to co-advise has claimed an official movie, I'd better see it. So I did. And apart from the fact that even now I hate being mentally transported back to the social jungle of high school, I found the film surprisingly worthwhile, if only for the way it dramatizes power dynamics. The aptly named "queen of the universe," Regina George, terrorizes everyone throughout the film and when she is confronted in the climactic scene--a school assembly in the gym--she insists she's never victimized anyone. When the teacher Ms. Norbury asks, "How many of you have felt personally victimized by Regina George?", the students begin raising their hands until everyone is included--and then they are joined by the faculty, followed by the principal. Regina, of course, still doesn't get it.

I love this scene because it dramatizes a truth about power differentials: those with relative power and privilege are too often oblivious to the fact that they have it. Once in grad school, a professor asked us to consider the power differentials within our own classroom, a mix of MA and PhD students. After we discussed the usual--differences in class, gender, ethnicity and so forth--an MA student said, "You know, there's also that MA versus PhD student thing." All of us MA students (that was me then) nodded knowingly--"Oh, yeah, that thing"--while the PhD students looked at us blankly until one of them asked, "What MA/PhD thing?" These weren't clueless people by any means. It's just that when you're the one at the center of things, it can be hard to know there's a center at all, let alone that you're in it.

For the last few days I've been at a conference, and afterwards I thought about all this. One of my co-panelists analyzed the advice given to grad students in public venues such as blogs and books. Our culture is so hyper-individualistic, he argued, that we have difficulty conceptualizing "success" or "failure" as anything other than individual triumphs and disasters. (This point seems closely related to the "Just World Hypothesis" I posted about below.) If someone with a PhD fails to land a full-time position and must work as an adjunct, many would prefer to believe it's because that person is either an inferior scholar/teacher, or doesn't "want it" badly enough. Similarly, those who do have such positions often prefer to view themselves as more worthy, rather than recognizing that certain structural advantages (such as timing) may have factored in to their success. Combined with the individualistic blindness to increasing structural inequities, people in relatively privileged positions often project their own, necessarily idiosyncratic experiences onto others--people whom, frankly, they probably barely even know.

The result? Conversations like the one a friend of mine--a colleague from another institution, and an adjunct--had to overhear yesterday on the airport shuttle from our conference hotel. (She shared this with me.) They began by complaining about their teaching loads, wondered "how adjuncts do it," and then one professor insisted that "they" "like it that way," "they" don't want tenure track because "they" actually "prefer the freedom," "they" don't want to "have to" go to conferences or publish because it's exhausting" ... and, one of them added, "We're mostly adjunct now."  (Side note: If you're using the vague pronoun "they," you just might be committing a fallacy of some type.)

My friend interjected that this is a "nice story, but complete fiction--most of us would love something stable, and we want time to publish."  The professors stared at her briefly, then continued talking, ignoring her. 

Rudeness aside, my friend was disturbed by their lack of structural awareness. If their institutions are now "mostly adjunct" (i.e., the majority of their classes are now taught by woefully underpaid part-timers who receive no benefits and have no job security), this is an administrative cost-cutting decision. It didn't happen in spontaneous response to the sudden emergence of a lazy crop of doctorates who prefer a poverty-stricken itinerant life of "freedom" to the "exhausting" work of publishing and attending conferences. No pack of new graduates descended upon admin en masse, demanding that they be given the opportunity to work for chump change and zero benefits so they can enjoy their "freedom," to which administrators replied, "Oh--thanks for the heads up. We were about to create a bunch of new tenure-track permanent positions with benefits and opportunity for professional growth, retirement, and stuff like that--but since it sounds like today's doctorates would really prefer to be 'free' from exhausting demands, maybe we should take a second look and while we're at at, we can realize some cost savings."

But I don't want to single out these particular "mean people," because the overuse of adjunct professors is part of a larger cultural and economic landscape--as is the too-frequent blindness of those with relatively more privilege. Most of those who work in the service economy are subjected to similar economic exploitation, as well as to the same hyper-individualistic culture that blames lower-paid workers for their own situation (while, by implication, valorizing the economically "successful"). And this is starting to happen across the board, not just in service  industries. 

Somebody close to me has been working part-time now for several years. This person doesn't want much--just a full-time job with benefits that pays the costs of an extremely modest lifestyle, with which this person is content. Twelve bucks an hour would do it. But despite being a fine employee, this person has been cobbling together part-time work for nearly ten years now. What's worse: it's difficult to get a predictable enough schedule from one part-time job to incorporate a financially necessary second part-time job. "We need our part-time workers to be flexible," insist the bosses. Final insult: This person and most of the part-time coworkers have specifically requested that they be moved to full-time positions when they become available. But when companies need to add more staff-hours, rather than moving their existing part-time workers into full-time jobs, they hire more part-time workers. Why? Because when the feds come to collect their data, they can look like "job creators."

We've all seen people who have blown certain opportunities, whether in academia or elsewhere, and I'm not going to argue that lack of success is always a structural problem. Sometimes people do make mistakes, and sometimes they pay the price. But it's equally blind to argue that lack of success is always an individual problem--and the way our culture is, we skew toward the second form of blindness.

"Mean people" (disentangling the gender assumptions of the movie title) exist everywhere, not just in academia. It's terrible what institutionalized greed is doing to our society. Things are made more terrible by the fact that our hyper-individualistic society often shifts our focus away from institutionalized greed and toward victim-blaming, leading to a kind of cultural blindness that we can find anywhere, not just on the airport shuttle bus as my friend experienced yesterday. These two professors aren't the only mean ones, and frankly, in the larger scheme of things they are probably pretty minor players.

What bothers me, though, is that as academics, we are the ones who are supposed to have studied power differentials and systemic structures. We are the ones who are supposed to know better. We should be the ones on the front lines arguing for economic justice for all--including, but not limited to, our underpaid adjunct colleagues. Because they are our colleagues, and we need to remember that.

In more ways than one, this wasn't an easy week. Nor did it end in an easy way. 

On Saturday afternoon, about 25 faculty, students, and former students from our small department gathered for a literary reading in memory of one of our English majors, who died a few weeks ago of complications from a hereditary illness. In her too-short life, this remarkable young woman had endured more pain than any human being deserves--and yet she remained bubbly, enthusiastic, loving, and generous, despite having every valid reason not to be any of the above. Amidst all that, she produced some truly beautiful writing, some of which we were able to hear today.

As is so often the case with the best memorial events, this occasion was uplifting despite the sadness.  One of the most heartening things for me, as I expressed in my opening remarks, was to see so many of our former students return to their old campus to remember their classmate. Seeing that the friendships forged in class are still intact some four years later, realizing that the interactions we shared inside and outside the classroom might actually have been meaningful to those involved--what could be more satisfying for a teacher? To think that what we did might actually have mattered in people's lives--what else is there?

Unfortunately, there is a great deal else. Enrollment numbers. Student learning outcomes. Aggregated assessment data. Observable, measurable learning results. Development of marketable workplace skills.  Et cetera. 

I'm not arguing against any of those things per se (beyond pointing out that not all meaningful learning, especially in the humanities, is equally amenable to "observable, measurable results"). I'm not saying that numbers don't matter or that achieving desired learning outcomes doesn't matter, and I'm especially not saying that developing marketable skills doesn't matter. 

I'm arguing against the implication that nothing else matters. I'm arguing for the significance of qualities that certain powers-that-be neglect to consider because they are not as easily measurable or marketable--healing, relationships, meaning, community. Today we used our knowledge of language and literature to help sustain one another after a loss that feels cruelly random. We shared the writing that we had done and she had done, and excerpts from the literature we had studied together. 

I do wish somewhere out there, we could find a handful of administrations or accreditation agencies or stakeholders or, God help us, even employers, who care about human experience in its full dimension--people who, had they attended this afternoon, would have recognized some remarkable "outcomes" beyond the SLO's.  I hope such people are out there, for we need such people in positions of influence if we are to develop appropriate parameters for funding, assessing and sustaining education in the humanities.  Our disciplines may not be as easily "measurable" nor as narrowly marketable. They may not yield the largest numbers on the spreadsheet. But are those things all that matter?

A couple of weeks ago I led an educational discussion forum on Dead Poets Society, and knowing that it isn't universally loved by English professors, I decided I'd better prepare. In digging around for articles to see what academic authors had said about the film, I came across Kevin J.H. Dettmar's scathing review in The Atlantic last February.  Dettmar has his reasons--quite a few reasons--for calling the film a "terrible defense of the humanities." One note that resounds throughout his piece is that he finds the film "anti-intellectual." If the humanities is to be taken seriously, argues Dettmar, we must get away from emotional/sentimental responses to poetry and instead emphasize serious intellectual analysis.

Well, of course I'm in favor of serious intellectual analysis. That's what I'm doing with my life. And in the current cultural climate, I find few things more frightening than true anti-intellectualism. So how do I make sense of my intellectual commitments, and the fact that I still see incredible value in the kind of communal and yes, emotional experience that I shared with students and colleagues this afternoon? 

As I thought of Dettmar's critique, it occurred to me: Maybe the problem is that we incorrectly view "intellectual" and "emotional" as opposites. But the opposite of "intelligent" is not "emotional"--it's more like "stupid." The opposite of "emotional" is not "intellectual"--it's more like "cold." Today's reading included works that, for deeper understanding, require serious intellectual analysis--Shakespeare, Emily Dickinson--along with pieces written by students and work by the young woman we were remembering. The writings selected were both intelligent and moving; the ideas we grappled with were intellectually challenging and emotive. We were not stupid, and we were not cold. We weren't anti-intellectual. But we weren't only intellectual.

What we do in the humanities might not be easily measurable in quantifiable terms, but that doesn't mean it's not intellectually significant--even if it also provokes powerful emotions in a way that, say, calculus does not. The sense of community I note among our remarkable group of students may not be an institutional priority in any part of the country right now. Yet for them, it may be one of the aspects of their education that they value most.  

Right now, few institutions are taking account of anything beyond the immediately measurable. And the humanities--the study of what it means to be human--would appear, if one is merely looking at a spreadsheet, to be expendable. 

But I fear for a future in which humanities education is expendable--or in which it is only for the elite. I'd also hate to think the day is coming when we memorialize those we've lost by gathering together to analyze their spreadsheets, 

Last spring, one of my freshman research writing students wrote her semester project on the issue of rape and why it is so often the case that people blame the victim. In addition to exploring some of the expected reasons--misogyny, patriarchy, entrenched and unquestioned beliefs about gender roles--my student investigated the cultural pervasiveness of the "Just World Hypothesis" put forward by Melvin J. Lerner in his 1980 book, The Belief in a Just World: A Fundamental Delusion. An online article published by Claire Andre and Manuel Velasquez (Santa Clara University) summarizes the hypothesis as follows: "People have a strong desire or need to believe that the world is an orderly, predictable, and just place, where people get what they deserve."  

Everyone gets what they deserve. Everything happens for a reason. The unfortunate must have done something to deserve their fate; inversely, those who experience good fortune must deserve it.  Couch it in the reward-and-punishment terms of various monotheistic theologies, or in the concept of karma espoused by eastern religions, or in the "we create our own reality through our thoughts and energy" bromides one finds in New Age-y memes--or keep it purely secular and posit that the poor, unhealthy and powerless have brought it on themselves while the wealthy, healthy and powerful have undoubtedly earned their success. Each of these is another iteration of the Just World Hypothesis.

And today I was reminded, yet again, repeatedly and painfully, of why I don't believe in a Just World; why I never will be able to believe in it; why I believe the world would be much better off if everybody stopped believing in it. 

I know--and have known--too many people who are suffering in ways they don't deserve. One of the many things I've learned from studying literature is to question whether this is so. I've also learned that compassion is usually a better path than judgment.

* * * 
Last fall as part of an early world lit course, I taught--as I have many times--"The Book of Job," I'm no theologian, so I apologize in advance to anyone who has a more theologically sophisticated understanding of this text than I do. I also apologize to those of you whose religious views differ from my own; I'm not asking you to understand it the same way I do. I'm an English professor, and I approached it as literature--as a story, in which one guy suffers way more loss and torture than any human being should have to endure. 

Skirting over the whole question of why an omniscient God would agree to a bet with Satan in the first place, as a class we honed in on what happened when Job's so-called friends came to visit. Here's Job cursing the day he was born, and Eliphaz pops in to tell him, "Who, being innocent, has ever perished? Where were the upright ever destroyed?" (Job 4:7-8)  Just what you always want when something's going terribly wrong:  "It must be your fault. It's gotta be something you did." 

And on and on it goes; Job wonders what he did to deserve this, he questions God, and he complains that there is no justice in the world. (If you've actually read this book, you know that the phrase "the patience of Job" makes about as much sense as calling Romeo and Juliet "a romantic story." Job isn't patient, and Romeo and Juliet end up dead.) While Job complains more and more vehemently, Eliphaz is joined by Bildad and Zophar and eventually Elihu, all of whom insist that the world, run as it is by a just God, is a fair and sensible place, and that Job's suffering must be his fault. To be suffering this much, he had to have done something wrong.

Our class turned this into a Twitter feed, complete with hashtags. "Job: I wish I'd never been born. #pityparty." "Eliphaz: You need to get over yourself. #godisjust." And so forth. Every single one of my students gave Job a hashtag that suggested less than full sympathy.  In addition to #pityparty, we had #whiner, #firstworldproblems, #whyme. The "friends" got hashtags like #trustgod, #godisgood, and the inevitable #everythinghappensforareason. 

I typed the students' "Twitter feeds" onto the computer, projected it, then asked the students to "play God," giving "thumbs up" to the posts they thought God would "like." Job's "comforters" fared well; Job, not so much. Whiner, they called him. (Never mind that he'd just lost all his children, his home, his livelihood and his health...who wants to listen to anyone whine?)  After we explored the poetic yet puzzling Speech out of the Whirlwind--which I won't get into here--we read the epilogue, where God tells Eliphaz, “I am angry with you and your two friends, because you have not spoken the truth about me, as my servant Job has." 

Whoa, I said. Who just got the thumbs up from God? Guess it wasn't Eliphaz or his pals.

So I went back to the computer and began reversing all the "thumbs up" my students had given to the friends' tweets. Turns out it was Job the Whiner that God liked after all. Scratch all those friends' speeches--they weren't "speaking the truth" about God. Scratch "everything happens for a reason." My students looked crestfallen, and confused.

We spent the rest of the class period talking about compassion. 

And no, compassion is not on the student learning outcomes, and our discussion that night may not specifically have prepared our students for the 21st century work force. As if work is all that we're here for. As if an education that touches on things that matter can be contained by a list of bullet-points. 

* * *
That night as I drove home, I remembered a long weekend five years earlier, when I flew to another town to spend a few days with a dear friend who had just been diagnosed with Stage IV cancer that had metastasized everywhere. I knew what this meant; I'd been through it with my father. It was past the time for a miracle. I didn't try to make sense of anything and I didn't try to ask "why." I already knew, from enduring too many losses already, that "why" is the wrong question to ask; at this stage the question becomes "how." How are we going to get through this? 

That weekend, "how" included a lot of talking, sometimes about important things and sometimes not. It included listening to Rachmaninoff piano concertos, powerful pieces that express everything that reaches beyond words. "How" included watching Jane Austen movies and comparing Austen's characters to people we knew. For her, "how" included sleeping a lot, and when she did, I went for long walks or wrote in my journal. I didn't try to ask why. If there is a "why," we humans don't get to know.  (That much, I did grasp from the Speech out of the Whirlwind.)

As our time together drew shorter, she thanked me for being the only person to have avoided asking "why." Her other visitors, she told me, thought they knew. Her traditionally religious friends told her this illness was due to her lack of faith and suggested she pray; there will be a miracle, all of which is part of God's plan. Her non-religious "hippie" friends wondered whether she'd eaten wrong or held on to "negative thought patterns"; they wanted her to give up meat, try some kind of herbal supplement, meditate, whatever else.  She was that open-minded kind of person who accepted people as they are and consequently had friends from many walks of life, so her friends' suggested "solutions" varied. Yet they all touched on the same theme:  You must have done something. And, Maybe there's still time to fix it, if you do the right things now.  

Same thing I got when my dad was dying. I lost track of the number of people who asked me, "So your dad got brain cancer? What did he do?"  

"Nothing," I'd say, and then I'd get the grilling, "Well, he must have eaten something..." "He didn't work out..." "His faith was weak..."  Eliphaz. Bildad. Zophar. God gives you all a thumbs down. 

The last night, we said goodnight and hugged, and my friend went to bed. My taxi for the airport arrived at four in the morning, and I was grateful for the darkness. We spoke by phone every day for the next two weeks, and once she told me, "Thank you for not trying to make any sense out of all this." Her last words to me, a few hours before she died, were: "I have to go now."

* * *
Andre and Velasquez say, "If the belief in a just world simply resulted in humans feeling more comfortable with the universe and its capriciousness, it would not be a matter of great concern for ethicists or social scientists. But Lerner's Just World Hypothesis, if correct, has significant social implications. The belief in a just world may undermine a commitment to justice."  (Emphasis mine- read the article HERE,)  What are the consequences if we continue to believe that everyone gets what they deserve, and no one gets what they don't deserve? Of course it's not very nice to suggest to dying people that they brought misfortune on themselves through bad living. But are there potential consequences to the Just World Hypothesis that are even more serious? 

Today, as I reeled from still more evidence that the Just World Hypothesis is wishful thinking, I walked down the street outside my office, heavily populated by the down-and-out among us: homeless people, poor people, folks struggling with physical disabilities and apparent mental illnesses. So many of the forces around us say, "They must have done something to deserve it." 

Maybe they didn't.

But if we start questioning that, we might start questioning a whole lot of things. We might have to change a lot of things about the way we've organized the world. Asking why people suffer might be an un-answerable question, but there are other questions we might ask. Why do we so often want to blame victims? Why do we so desperately want to believe "everyone gets what they deserve"? What would happen if we stopped doing that?

Perhaps it's no coincidence that some of the powers-that-be would prefer to limit education to what can be contained in bullet-point "learning outcomes."