During the first week of classes one of my professors said something which, though two very busy weeks have followed, has kept most of its original force in my mind. The following represents my paraphrase from memory:
The Invisible Man is a long novel, but to be in this class you will have to own it-to have most of it somehow in your head. I realize that this imperative, in some ways, goes against the operating educational paradigm: that we do not need to posses our knowledge, but rather only need to know the location of our knowledge…
I think a part of the reason that his declaration has stayed with me is because of its accuracy. Moreover, it is accurate twice-first, in its recognition of the prevailing “paradigm” and second in its unfashionable amendment to that paradigm.
Let me explain what I mean. Think of your classes, where in them have you ever been asked to own the material? What sort of class (or professor) was it that made the demand of you? How did you react?
By these question, I do not mean to suggest that this sort of thing never happens at Amherst College (nor is it even the case that the Invisible Man is my only experience with “ownership” in two years), I have seen once or twice that it does. I am more interested in where it happens. Is it only in literature courses? Or philosophy? Or are students at the college ever asked to own formulas and models, too?
With an instance of “ownership” in mind, now I want to ask, what is the difference in the quality (not just good/bad, but the quality, in the broad sense sometimes termed “accidence”) of that knowledge? For instance (taking a poem as an example) what is the difference in “knowing” the following poem from having read it many times:
Batter my heart three person’d God, for you
As yet but knock, breath, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may stand, o’erthrow me’and bend
Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like a usurp’t town, to another due,
Labor to admit you, but oh, to no end;
Reason your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captiv’d and proves, weak or untrue;
Yet dearly I love thee, and would be loved faine,
But am betrothed to thine enemie:
Divorce me, untie, or break that knot again,
Take me to thee, imprison me, for I
Except you enthrall be, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.
(And, besides having read it many times, also having basically committed the general progress of the poem to memory.) What is the difference between that and having the poem itself memorized? Does it look differently when recalled-as opposed to “accessed”? If so, what’s the difference.
To whet the plane here, I’ll share some suspicions.
1) Memorizing, especially with something like poetry, forces you to listen to what you’re reading, for the simple reason that line after line of text is hard to memorize without the sound and rhythm to help you. (unless you have some sort of photographic memory).
2) Memorizing encourages readers to more carefully unpack syntax, again, for the simple reason that it’s much harder to memorize a poem if it seems to you not to make coherent sense.
3) Memorizing allows readers to feel their way into patterns and structure in a poem. As you work to remember the lines, you have to work to remember the movement of what comes next-the question, for me at least, is never really, “oh, what’s the next word,” its always much closer to, “oh, where does it go next.” It has always helped me with a sense of time and space, as well.
Whetted and true-what thinketh you (plural)?
1 response so far ↓
1 dtemin10 (dtemin10) // Sep 30, 2008 at 12:38 am
Hey Ryan, I really enjoyed what you said here. It seems like, as humanities and social science people, we do often lose out on the concreteness of knowledge that memorization embodies. I haven’t taken serious math or science since freshmen year, but it does seem there is a satisfaction inherent in the possession of a body of knowledge that is not as elusive as, for example, literary theory or political philosophy. Getting to the end of a proof and writing down QED elicits an odd feeling of liberation.
I think here you happen upon a critique of the liberal arts that’s been brewing in my head for quite awhile, for which I should give credit in part to the writings of the famous conservative political theorist Michael Oakeshott. It seems the liberal arts have been reduced to a set of analytical tools by which everything can be analyzed yet nothing can be know. I think in every class I’ve taken here a professor has said something like the following: “I don’t care how much you know or what the end result is. I want to see your line of reasoning–that is, how you arrive at your ideas.” In other words, professors want to see your technique. They want to see you test a set of assumptions or a specific theory.
Here’s my problem with this: It seems that we’re missing out on alternative types of knowledge, and by this I don’t mean some vague concept of the divine, etc. Pure reason is only one among many forms of knowledge (or, if your a psych person, only one among multiple intelligences). Blacksmiths, for example, apprentice for years to learn their trade. If they could learn it by applying a set of analytical tools gleaned from a manual, they would do so. Technical knowledge is a kind of knowledge that will translate into a great resume for the business world, which seems to be similarly arranged along technical lines. So while we’ve (rightly) stripped an inane and stultifying practicality from education, we’ve adopted a form of education regimented in its own right. We’ve forced ourselves to develop into one-sided people even though the entire point of a liberal arts education is to become a well-rounded person.
A Harvard professor (I wish I could find the source or remember who it was) has said, along similar lines, that we do neglect our educational responsibilities when we don’t have a moral aspect to our education. In part, of course, the change in our tertiary education system resulted from the upheaval of social movements finding their origins in the sixties. These movements thought that what I have called “moral education” was simply a facade for indoctrination–an ideological brainwashing that would prepare upper class students for the mind-numbing life of Wall Street and lower class students the vocational skills necessary for a mind-numbing life on Main Street (to invoke Obama’s favorite metaphorical class dichotomy)
Basically, what those radicals in the sixties who rallied against “moral education” wanted to do was create institutional means to attack what they perceived as hegemonic ideas in the academy (this was an extension of the Italian Marxist’s Antonio Gramsci’s concept of the “war of position” in his theorization of revolutionary strategy). Instead, we’ve managed to create institutions that more efficiently allow our subordination to an insurmountable rationalism. I guess what I mean is that this quest to revolutionize education by stripping it of its “moral” and “practical” purpose has in some ways been a giant failure.
Now don’t get me wrong. I have no desire to memorize reams of poetry or do mountains of proofs, nor do I want professors to lecture me on how I should live my life. It does seem, though, that our relentless commitment to rationalism does leave many sources of wisdom untapped. Perhaps our extracurriculars provide us with the alternative sources of knowledge I’m trying to describe. I doubt that, though the college should be commended for the ample room it gives us to pursue them. Critiques of rationalism are difficult in as much as they partake of the very tradition they are trying to reject. Their (anti-) logic tends to bear strange fruit.
Just some thoughts I’d been meaning to string together, and your post helped me do so (kind of).
-David
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