As an English professor who teaches mostly composition classes, I am constantly urging my students to think in terms of argument and persuasion. How is your writing going to get your reader to accept your position on this issue as the best one? How can you convince your audience that you are right and that those who disagree with you are wrong? But frequently I wonder if thesis-driven, rhetorical writing really deserves its central place in college classrooms.
Of course I see the benefits of it. Being able to articulate one's ideas clearly and forcefully can be an empowering skill. But is something lost when we teach students to view a "counterargument" only as that-which-must-be-logically-dismantled-in-order-to-prove-one's-own-point, rather than what it is: another person's legitimate point-of-view? Granted, more sophisticated rhetorical pedagogies do just that. Respecting opposing viewpoints and taking them seriously is, itself, a sign of persuasive writing. But should our underlying goal always be to persuade?
Recently, while listening to a podcast of one of my favorite radio shows, Jonathan Goldstein's Wiretap, I heard a "conflict resolution expert" by the name of Misha Glouberman speak about how trivial disagreements between people can transform into ugly, prolonged feuds precisely because both parties become fixated on proving that they are right. I instantly recognized that I am super-guilty of this myself. At times, I exhibit a compulsive and obnoxious need to demonstrate my rightness when caught in the midst of a debate, big or small. It's one of my ugliest character traits, and I try my best (though often fail) to keep it in check. For the first time, while listening to this podcast, I began to wonder if this is actually a result of making rhetoric such an important part of the way I write and think. After all, this is a character flaw which I undoubtedly share with a lot of other people in my line of work.
Glouberman went on to make a great point about how a firm commitment to proving your "rightness" in a dispute almost never works, precisely because that is what your "opponent" is trying to do as well. The result is stubborn entrenchment and divisiveness, rather than resolution or enhanced understanding. You are wrong and stupid and that's all there is to it; I'm not going to waste my time discussing this with you any further. Such an attitude is a critical failure precisely because it is incapable of being self-critical.
So what would it mean to teach writing as a means not just for "persuading your reader" or for "argument," but to teach writing as a means of resolving conflict? What if we presented more writing contexts in which the goal was a search for common ground or a negotiated settlement rather than a validation of the writer's thesis? What if the goal was not to prove what we already believe to be true, but to explore how others see the world differently--and sometimes more clearly--than we do? I'm not sure, but I'm interested in brainstorming ways to ask my students (and myself!) to do just that.
Sunday, March 23, 2014
Sunday, March 9, 2014
When Is It OK to Kill By Remote Control?
Tomorrow my ENG 100 students will be discussing Mark Bowden's article "The Killing Machines: How to Think about Drones," published last summer in The Atlantic. The essay begins by paraphrasing the Biblical story of David and Goliath in order to establish that technologies of violence which make fights unfair are nothing new--they go all the way back to this infamous slingshot. It's hard, however, to think of the U.S. military's Predator drone as a 21st century slingshot, or the U.S. as David. After all, the U.S. is not an underdog--it's the world's only remaining military superpower. No other nation on the planet spends even half as much as the U.S. does on its military. (China, #2 on the list, spends about 1/4 as much as the U.S. does.)
In other words, imagine Goliath had the slingshot. And a nuclear bomb. That's the scenario.
Bowden goes on in his essay to show his readers that many of the common conceptions about drones are, in fact, misconceptions. There is no reason to believe that law enforcement would start to use them to kill domestic criminals; the police don't have snipers take out drug dealers, after all. While the use of drone strikes may inadvertently lead to civilian casualties, ground strikes and manned air strikes on comparable targets actually tend to produce more such casualties. Other nations are not going to use drones against the U.S. on American soil because drones would be easily noticed and intercepted. The most innovative aspect of drone technology is not, in fact, its capacity to blow things up, but its capacity to gather sustained, accurate surveillance leading to unprecedented military intelligence.
But when is it legally and ethically justifiable to use drones as "killing machines"? Bowden seems to imply that if drones are used only in times of war against verifiable enemies and with transparency and accountability, then the Commander-in-Chief ordering such executions should be on strong moral and legal ground. From my own perspective, I worry about the slippery definitions of "war" and "enemy" in our current political climate. The U.S. has been at "war" with al Qaeda since 2001, though war was never officially declared and al Qaeda is a network of international criminals--not a nation. Many people have been killed by U.S. drone strikes who were not members of al Qaeda. Even the ones who were killed--why aren't they entitled to a trial before execution, like any other serious, suspected criminal?
If this technology can keep American troops safer, then it certainly has a purpose and a valid use. But as a means of executing international criminals? I think that contradicts American values. Let's work with local and/or international law enforcement to capture and prosecute those plotting to do us harm. If we have enough evidence to convince the President that someone is a legitimate target, then we should have enough evidence to convict that same guy in a court of law.
In other words, imagine Goliath had the slingshot. And a nuclear bomb. That's the scenario.
Bowden goes on in his essay to show his readers that many of the common conceptions about drones are, in fact, misconceptions. There is no reason to believe that law enforcement would start to use them to kill domestic criminals; the police don't have snipers take out drug dealers, after all. While the use of drone strikes may inadvertently lead to civilian casualties, ground strikes and manned air strikes on comparable targets actually tend to produce more such casualties. Other nations are not going to use drones against the U.S. on American soil because drones would be easily noticed and intercepted. The most innovative aspect of drone technology is not, in fact, its capacity to blow things up, but its capacity to gather sustained, accurate surveillance leading to unprecedented military intelligence.
But when is it legally and ethically justifiable to use drones as "killing machines"? Bowden seems to imply that if drones are used only in times of war against verifiable enemies and with transparency and accountability, then the Commander-in-Chief ordering such executions should be on strong moral and legal ground. From my own perspective, I worry about the slippery definitions of "war" and "enemy" in our current political climate. The U.S. has been at "war" with al Qaeda since 2001, though war was never officially declared and al Qaeda is a network of international criminals--not a nation. Many people have been killed by U.S. drone strikes who were not members of al Qaeda. Even the ones who were killed--why aren't they entitled to a trial before execution, like any other serious, suspected criminal?
If this technology can keep American troops safer, then it certainly has a purpose and a valid use. But as a means of executing international criminals? I think that contradicts American values. Let's work with local and/or international law enforcement to capture and prosecute those plotting to do us harm. If we have enough evidence to convince the President that someone is a legitimate target, then we should have enough evidence to convict that same guy in a court of law.
Sunday, March 2, 2014
Meaty, Ethical Questions
I don't know how this is possible, but tomorrow my ENG 100 students are scheduled to discuss only their second professional essay of the semester. And it might not even happen, as another 6-10 inches of snow are forecasted overnight and into the morning. This semester has been such a mess; thank God I only teach English, nothing more important. ;)
The essay they will be blogging and chatting about is "In the Belly of the Beast" by Paul Solotaroff, published just a couple months ago by Rolling Stone. This essay looks at the investigative work done at meat farms and slaughterhouses by undercover associates of the Humane Society, and it raises a lot of interesting questions about ethics and consumerism. I'm hoping it will provoke my students to think critically not just about animal rights, but also about the rights and responsibilities of consumers, citizens, and food suppliers.
A philosophical question that I've often posed to myself (without ever definitively deciding what I think) is what does it mean to have an ethical relationship with animals--especially the animals that humans typically eat? Some people would probably argue that it doesn't make sense to talk about ethics in relation to animals; if animals don't think ethically about us, why should we think ethically about them? Others (mostly vegetarians and vegans) argue that it is never ethical to kill an animal for food when plant-based food is abundantly available (and generally healthier). Even though I haven't made up my mind on this question, I think my own sentiments are somewhere in between these two views. Solotaroff, too, seems to argue that there's nothing wrong with eating meat per se, just as long as the animals are treated in a humane and environmentally sustainable way while alive.
The animals I eat most often are fish and deer. My wife and I love salmon, mahi mahi, tuna, swordfish, and we try to get "wild caught" (usually from Wegmans) whenever possible (and affordable). The venison we are lucky enough to get for free, courtesy of my wife's father, a generous and skilled hunter. I feel good about the fact that these animals lived freely--not in cages, not covered in excrement, not pumped full of hormones--before they met their demise. Yet, I certainly could sustain myself without them. There's plenty of protein in nuts, lentils, beans, avocados, chia seeds, etc. What's stopping me from becoming a complete vegetarian? Habit alone? The sensual pleasure of sinking my teeth into fish and deer flesh?
The other question raised by this article--the more practical one, considering it's unlikely that Americans, who eat more meat per person than any society in the history of human beings, will suddenly become vegetarians--is how to get people to be willing to pay a little more money for meat that comes from humane and sustainable farming practices? Americans love a bargain, and we are willing to turn a blind eye to fairly horrifying business practices if it means low prices for whatever we crave. (Who cares about the paltry wages of the Bangladeshi workers who cut and sew our trendy Old Navy sweaters, if we can get those sweaters for $16.99 each?) Now some might argue that most Americans can't afford to pay more for their meat--after all, organic, free-range, grass-fed meat can be expensive. But if we eat less meat, we can afford to eat better meat, and most nutritionists, at least according to food journalists like Michael Pollan, agree that Americans would be healthier if they ate "mostly plants."
Still, it's a hard sell. How To Eat Less Meat and Pay More For It is not exactly a catchy ad campaign. I look forward to hearing how convinced my students were...whenever the snow stops and we actually get to have class again.
The essay they will be blogging and chatting about is "In the Belly of the Beast" by Paul Solotaroff, published just a couple months ago by Rolling Stone. This essay looks at the investigative work done at meat farms and slaughterhouses by undercover associates of the Humane Society, and it raises a lot of interesting questions about ethics and consumerism. I'm hoping it will provoke my students to think critically not just about animal rights, but also about the rights and responsibilities of consumers, citizens, and food suppliers.
A philosophical question that I've often posed to myself (without ever definitively deciding what I think) is what does it mean to have an ethical relationship with animals--especially the animals that humans typically eat? Some people would probably argue that it doesn't make sense to talk about ethics in relation to animals; if animals don't think ethically about us, why should we think ethically about them? Others (mostly vegetarians and vegans) argue that it is never ethical to kill an animal for food when plant-based food is abundantly available (and generally healthier). Even though I haven't made up my mind on this question, I think my own sentiments are somewhere in between these two views. Solotaroff, too, seems to argue that there's nothing wrong with eating meat per se, just as long as the animals are treated in a humane and environmentally sustainable way while alive.
The animals I eat most often are fish and deer. My wife and I love salmon, mahi mahi, tuna, swordfish, and we try to get "wild caught" (usually from Wegmans) whenever possible (and affordable). The venison we are lucky enough to get for free, courtesy of my wife's father, a generous and skilled hunter. I feel good about the fact that these animals lived freely--not in cages, not covered in excrement, not pumped full of hormones--before they met their demise. Yet, I certainly could sustain myself without them. There's plenty of protein in nuts, lentils, beans, avocados, chia seeds, etc. What's stopping me from becoming a complete vegetarian? Habit alone? The sensual pleasure of sinking my teeth into fish and deer flesh?
The other question raised by this article--the more practical one, considering it's unlikely that Americans, who eat more meat per person than any society in the history of human beings, will suddenly become vegetarians--is how to get people to be willing to pay a little more money for meat that comes from humane and sustainable farming practices? Americans love a bargain, and we are willing to turn a blind eye to fairly horrifying business practices if it means low prices for whatever we crave. (Who cares about the paltry wages of the Bangladeshi workers who cut and sew our trendy Old Navy sweaters, if we can get those sweaters for $16.99 each?) Now some might argue that most Americans can't afford to pay more for their meat--after all, organic, free-range, grass-fed meat can be expensive. But if we eat less meat, we can afford to eat better meat, and most nutritionists, at least according to food journalists like Michael Pollan, agree that Americans would be healthier if they ate "mostly plants."
Still, it's a hard sell. How To Eat Less Meat and Pay More For It is not exactly a catchy ad campaign. I look forward to hearing how convinced my students were...whenever the snow stops and we actually get to have class again.
Sunday, February 2, 2014
Have No Worries--Bloggin' Is Back!
Last semester I made my ENG 100 students buy a textbook (shudder!), and write weekly response papers instead of weekly blog posts. It wasn't a complete disaster (the textbook, The Composition of Everyday Life, was better than most, but still overpriced), but I decided to go back to my older way of doing business, with some minor changes. I picked articles that students will read, discuss, and blog about for Mondays; students will pick the articles we read on Wednesdays. Add in some sample student essays from previous semesters, and some peer review, and that's most of the schedule. Until...the last few weeks of the semester, during which we will read an actual, real book (not to be confused with a textbook). I gave students a list of 10, well-reviewed, contemporary non-fiction books about topics that might be interesting to them (affordability of college, parenting, consumerism, how the brain works, etc.), and they voted on which ones they would be interested in reading. The book that got the most votes was The Practicing Mind by Thomas Lerner. I'm hoping this book will help students become more "meta-cognitive", or aware of their own thinking patterns, and that the practical advice offered in the book will be applicable to the intellectual challenges they will meet with in college.
Yuriko and I went to dinner last night at the Bistro on Bridge (good pizza and duck risotto), and we ended up having an interesting conversation about the relationship between stress/anxiety and learning. We both acknowledge that many college students today show up with a nearly paralyzing fear of failure. Yet, what can teachers and advisors do to help such students (short of lowering expectations)? I made the case that, to some degree, college should make students feel somewhat uncomfortable. Pushing people out of their comfort zone is part of the learning process. If there is no risk--if one is not being asked to do something one has never done before--then what, truly, is being learned? Without a significant challenge, there cannot be significant growth.
However, for a student to respond favorably to such challenges, she has to believe that she is capable of learning new, complex skills. Many students, unfortunately, lack that kind of self-confidence? How can teachers show students that, just because you've struggled with math or writing in the past, this doesn't mean you are incapable of improving? It doesn't mean you don't have what it takes. I hate to use cliches, but this one's true: It's not where you start that matters; it's where you end up. Actually, it is not where you end up that matters, either. It's about how you change along the way. It's about becoming the kind of person who says, "Just because I'm not so good at this now, doesn't mean I'm not going to be good at it in three months (or a year, or 4 years)." It's about learning that you are capable of learning, and taking that confidence into every challenge ahead. This, more than anything, is what I want my students to learn.
Wednesday, October 16, 2013
Vows
On October 12th, 2013, I married the most amazing woman on planet Earth. Below you will find the vows I read during the ceremony.
Yuriko, the Republicans in Congress might be able to shut down the government, but they'll never be able to shut down my love for you.
The federal government might need to raise its debt ceiling in order to pay its bills, but I have no need to ask such favors from creditors in order to give you my love. My love for you operates with a stunning surplus. Investors should want to invest in our love. We could, perhaps, pay for this entire wedding by selling Brophy/Beaman love bonds.
Because our love inspires such faith, sometimes people say that we are meant to be together. When I hear this, although I appreciate the sentiment, I groan at the use of the passive voice. (There is nothing passive about my love for you.) If we are meant to be together, I wonder, by whom? God? I don't know what God intends—nor have I reached that level of hubris, yet, when one pretends to know.
But what I do know is that I mean to be with you, and you mean to be with me. We are meant to be together by us. Or to put it more simply, we mean to be together. Our love exists because of choice—because we choose, every day, to love one another.
Half of that equation makes perfect sense to me. Of course I choose to love you. The intersection of our paths has been the single most transformative event in my life. It has brought me a wealth of happiness and joy that I never thought would be possible for me. Choosing to love you every day is the easiest of decisions, because the rewards of saying “Yes” to loving you are limitless, and living without your love is simply unthinkable.
The other half of that equation strikes me as nothing short of a miracle. That every day, you, a beautiful, thoughtful, caring woman—who could give your love to anyone—that every day, you choose to give your love to a strange, undersized man like me, is truly miraculous. I vow to never take that daily miracle for granted. I vow to do everything I can to make sure you never regret your wildly improbable decision to love me. And I vow, with all my heart, simply to love you in every way I know how, and should those methods fall short, I will invent new ways to love you. This I promise you—a lifetime of love, nothing less.
Amen.
Sunday, April 14, 2013
My First Half Marathon
This morning I ran the Bucks County Half Marathon in 2 hours, 6 minutes, and 43 seconds. It was my first half marathon; actually, it was my first race of any kind. I had been training for it since February, and at that point, I really didn't think I'd be able to do better than 2 and a half hours, if I would finish at all. I was running very slowly, and I had never run more than 7 miles. But I was able to do so well today because I am lucky to have some great people in my life.
My friend Liz, whom I went to college with, was the one who suggested doing a race. She ran her first half marathon last year, in Brooklyn, and her second earlier this year, in Los Angeles. When I told her I had been trying to get into running since last summer, she said we should do a race together at some point this year. The Bucks County race is about halfway between where we both live (she in Brooklyn, I in Reading), and the course looked beautiful (Tyler State Park--quite lovely).
My friends Tim and Michael, who have been running for years and years, gave me all sorts of advice over the past months about what gear to wear, how to avoid injury, how to build my endurance, and how to improve my pace. Tim's tip about some fancy socks (Feetures!) proved particularly useful, as I had been getting some annoying blisters on my toes. (Stealthily, Tim also snuck onto the course around mile 9 and ran the last 4 miles with me--he was great company.)
Here's a picture Tim took of me at some point during those final 4 miles:
(Please forgive my bad form, goofy headband, and mittens. I hope I wasn't landing heel first too often!)
Finally, Yuriko, the love of my life, sat around in the cold waiting for me to loop back around, just to cheer me on and congratulate me. She also got up at 6am on a Sunday for this. I can't imagine a less exciting sport to be a spectator of (oh wait: golf), so I deeply appreciate her love and support.
With such wonderful people in my life, running 13.1 miles feels just like a walk in the park.
My friend Liz, whom I went to college with, was the one who suggested doing a race. She ran her first half marathon last year, in Brooklyn, and her second earlier this year, in Los Angeles. When I told her I had been trying to get into running since last summer, she said we should do a race together at some point this year. The Bucks County race is about halfway between where we both live (she in Brooklyn, I in Reading), and the course looked beautiful (Tyler State Park--quite lovely).
My friends Tim and Michael, who have been running for years and years, gave me all sorts of advice over the past months about what gear to wear, how to avoid injury, how to build my endurance, and how to improve my pace. Tim's tip about some fancy socks (Feetures!) proved particularly useful, as I had been getting some annoying blisters on my toes. (Stealthily, Tim also snuck onto the course around mile 9 and ran the last 4 miles with me--he was great company.)
Here's a picture Tim took of me at some point during those final 4 miles:
(Please forgive my bad form, goofy headband, and mittens. I hope I wasn't landing heel first too often!)
Finally, Yuriko, the love of my life, sat around in the cold waiting for me to loop back around, just to cheer me on and congratulate me. She also got up at 6am on a Sunday for this. I can't imagine a less exciting sport to be a spectator of (oh wait: golf), so I deeply appreciate her love and support.
With such wonderful people in my life, running 13.1 miles feels just like a walk in the park.
Monday, April 8, 2013
Three Tales of Dreams Deferred
On Saturday, Yuriko and I went to see a production of Lorraine Hansberry's 1959 play, A Raisin in the Sun, at the Arden Theatre in Old City, Philadelphia. My viewing of the play just happened to coincide, thematically, with two texts that I am teaching this week. Today, my American Lit students and I will be finishing up our discussion of Chester Himes's 1945 novel, If He Hollers Let Him Go. In ENG 100, we will be looking at the introduction to Michelle Alexander's study of mass incarceration in contemporary America, The New Jim Crow.
The protagonist of If He Hollers, Bob Jones, is driven to the brink of madness by the day-to-day prejudice he encounters in 1940s Los Angeles. After being demoted for cursing out a white woman at work who called him a "n****r", he feels emasculated, and desperate to reassert his manhood in some way such that the white world must recognize it. While much of this desperation ends up expressing itself in fantasies of violence and sexual domination, Himes shows his reader that these destructive impulses are a result of Bob's thwarted ambition. He wanted to be somebody, and America told him "No" because of his race.
A Raisin in the Sun features a similar male lead (though not nearly as extreme), Walter Younger, who works as a chauffeur and lives in a crowded, roach-infested apartment with his wife, son, sister, and mother. He dreams of being a business owner and a better provider for his family, and his failure to do so makes him feel like a failure as a man. In a reckless move to try to realize his dream, he invests $6,000 of his family's money--half of which is supposed to go toward paying for medical school for his sister, who wants to be a doctor--with a "business partner" who turns out to be con-man. While this dream is lost, Walter manages to reclaim his manhood at the play's end, by standing up to a white man who wants to pressure him not to move into a white neighborhood in Chicago, and by acknowledging and supporting the professional ambition of his sister.
In The New Jim Crow (which I've taught and blogged about previously), Alexander argues that although the explicit racism highlighted in works such as Raisin and Hollers is no longer common or accepted in American society, there still exists a system of racialized social control: the system of mass incarceration. By labeling a vast subset of people of color--especially black men--as "criminals," our so-called "justice system" effectively enables profound legal discrimination, creating a permanent "under-caste" of individuals who are unable to find a place in mainstream society: people whose dreams are permanently deferred. What can we do to pull this system apart--before it explodes?
The protagonist of If He Hollers, Bob Jones, is driven to the brink of madness by the day-to-day prejudice he encounters in 1940s Los Angeles. After being demoted for cursing out a white woman at work who called him a "n****r", he feels emasculated, and desperate to reassert his manhood in some way such that the white world must recognize it. While much of this desperation ends up expressing itself in fantasies of violence and sexual domination, Himes shows his reader that these destructive impulses are a result of Bob's thwarted ambition. He wanted to be somebody, and America told him "No" because of his race.
A Raisin in the Sun features a similar male lead (though not nearly as extreme), Walter Younger, who works as a chauffeur and lives in a crowded, roach-infested apartment with his wife, son, sister, and mother. He dreams of being a business owner and a better provider for his family, and his failure to do so makes him feel like a failure as a man. In a reckless move to try to realize his dream, he invests $6,000 of his family's money--half of which is supposed to go toward paying for medical school for his sister, who wants to be a doctor--with a "business partner" who turns out to be con-man. While this dream is lost, Walter manages to reclaim his manhood at the play's end, by standing up to a white man who wants to pressure him not to move into a white neighborhood in Chicago, and by acknowledging and supporting the professional ambition of his sister.
In The New Jim Crow (which I've taught and blogged about previously), Alexander argues that although the explicit racism highlighted in works such as Raisin and Hollers is no longer common or accepted in American society, there still exists a system of racialized social control: the system of mass incarceration. By labeling a vast subset of people of color--especially black men--as "criminals," our so-called "justice system" effectively enables profound legal discrimination, creating a permanent "under-caste" of individuals who are unable to find a place in mainstream society: people whose dreams are permanently deferred. What can we do to pull this system apart--before it explodes?
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