The Life of Ben

I've often said that I want people to play the last 15 minutes of Monty Python's The Life of Brian at my funeral.

There is no movie or story, I've decided, that better matches the experience of my young adulthood than this clever little critique of fanatical and self-righteous left and right wing politics.

Very much like Brian, I was a kindhearted young man just looking to do good and help others. And that ambition has now turned into one long self-righteous crusade against me and anything I say or think that doesn't fall in line with any of the various dogmas. My experiences in grad school, with the Kaw Valley Living Wage Campaign, at Community Living Opportunities, and now Eisenhower Middle School have all been broadly negative in the sense that I have perpetually been bullied and aggressively pressured by those who you would presume would be in common cause.

The greatest irony of this whole experience has been that I have spent the great majority of my life identifying with, ideologically, the very kind of folks that I have been repeatedly bullied by: liberals. It has shaken my faith in liberalism in very real ways. And none of them seem to give two shits about that fact, persistently rationalizing that I am worth sacraficing to their various causes.

My contract at Eisenhower wasn't renewed this year. I was recruited by the Olathe school district within the week, who I had interviewed with halfway through this year, when I was feeling most miserable at Eisenhower. I had turned down Olathe, indicating that I was committed to Eisenhower and the kids in the lower income community I was teaching in, even though the money would have likely been better in Olathe and the kids less challenging. I only got into teaching to work in inner city school reform, so it seemed to defeat the purpose to move to a higher paying district when I could just move to a much higher paying professional field.

I will, of course, find, likely, better paying work in a more educated suburban district. And long term, I will likely get my Ph.D. in policy and who knows what I will do with education. But I'm a little bitter with Dr. Ogburn and Ms. Cowan the two liberal administrators who bullied me all year and who decided that it was easier to get rid of me than to take responsibility for the consequences of their poor handling of and mentoring for me during my first full year of teaching.

They had good reasons to be frustrated with me. My special ed paperwork has been a mess, with me trying persistently to catch up with this and that way that paperwork must be handled. Many of my problems centered around trying to make the IEP process more personal and less bureaucratic and legalese, and then losing track of the bureaucracy and legalisms (I would persistently forget to get signatures for paperwork, for whatever reasons). They thought I was too unstructured and seriously pressured me to change that. I changed it as a matter of conscience and principle, finding nicer and softer ways to actually create stronger structure rather than enforcing a principle that students persistently broke or where I established a relationship of fear with students that traded off more important qualities of a teacher/student relationship including a willingness to challenge me, a fear of being themselves in my presence, breakdowns in communication for students who become to afraid to communicate openly, and learning to hate school rather than love education because of the million fear-mongering teachers that we have all encountered but which the lowest achieving students find the most frustrating, I would imagine.

The bottom line was that on every single issue that my administrators had with me - without exception, actually - I was finding smarter ways of dealing with age-old problems that have not been sufficiently resolved by most teachers, including my administrators, no matter how much they might pretend otherwise. And invariably, I found better strategies. With raising hands and classroom structure. With the IEP paperwork and all of the responsibilities that I have as a teacher, outside and inside the classroom. With enforcing rules. Not to mention communicating with and relating to students, inspiring critical and independent thinking, inspiring value for education and dreaming big with education in mind amongst many kids who might not otherwise take education seriously or dream with education in their horizon.

The truth is that I am well on my way to becoming a really outstanding teacher. I have much room for improvement. But I make up ground quickly. And one of the more base goals I have with such an endeavor (I admit it; I'm not always so noble) is making my administrators feel kind of stupid for firing me. Not just because I'm a brilliant motherfucker. But because I am such an outstanding teacher.

Ironically, since my field is teaching, I have repeatedly remarked to friends and colleagues that this is the least supported that I have ever felt in my life doing anything for the first time. My first year of forensics in high school and especially my first year in college were difficult, but I was supported by friends and family fairly decently. First being accountable to the standards of college was not the easiest thing in the world, but my professors were fairly supportive folks.

But this is the first time that I have ever had superiors bully me my entire first year of doing something that is very difficult to learn how to do well: to be a good teacher. Nevertheless special education, which involves an enormous amount of paperwork and extra work on top of the very rigorous experience of being a quality classroom teacher.

My experience, at this point, has been very similar to Brian's, discovering the self-righteous and yet cowardly motivations of dogmatists of all stripes. Being perpetually bullied by assholes of all ideological stripes.

This year has been an enormous learning curve for me. A learning curve largely obstructed by two people who have, in the past, held the title of teacher.

And a situation that has been largely fueled by a period of self-righteous liberal and radical political action that my administrators have been lost in, as much as anyone else, these days.

It's a period that Python lampoons well in Life of Brian.

If there is anything I've learned during this period it is that bullies teach no lessons that I take seriously, anymore. At all. Ever. And this whole experience has completely reinforced that for me.

The most important consequence of this whole affair and all of my experiences with similar work, at this point, is that after everything I have been through, my commitment to the needs of others has been seriously shaken, at least temporarily. Which is appropriate, because I'm pretty clear, at this point, that none of the people I've worked with have maintained as serious a commitment to others more than too serious a commitment for too many of the people in public service to covering their asses.

And knowing that this is the philosophy that really guides so much of public service work, and that those involved have very little interest in changing that situation, I just haven't been feeling the level of commitment to teaching or inner city schools or public service, generally, that I did going in. That will likely change. But, right now, I feel no special commitment to inner city schools absent a more supportive administration.

What so many of my liberal friends have been successful in doing, this political period, is to take someone whose idealism and commitment to public service was stronger than most, by far, and to seriously shake it, out of a self-righteous commitment to beliefs that they, themselves, have not typically thought about very seriously and which they perpetually refuse to reconcile with the hypocrisy that they are more typically guilty of on this question of adhering to the law and the use of force, both of which they, like everyone, advocate for others and abhor for themselves.

The truth is that I've been treated like serious shit by a lot of people who I used to think of as friends and of similar mind. And what it has taught me is that noone can be trusted to force themselves on anyone, except in the most rare and extreme of circumstances. Liberals can be and are just as ruthless and self-righteous and absolute in their certainty in their use of force and pressure as conservatives who I had always stereotyped my entire life as having the most mean-spirited instincts in politics, religion, and life.

But I was wrong. Liberals can be just as mean-spirited and ruthless, if not more so. And those who are typically pride themselves as such. It's wrong is what it is.

And then we all sit around and wonder why kids bully and who they learn it from.

My life has been a live-action version of the Life of Brian, a kindhearted young guy who has to deal with the contradictions, self-righteous bullying, and crazy adventure of life in political circles where having one's own mind means being an obstacle to ambitious plans of power and "progress."

It is not a story that is isolated to liberals, at all. And neither is the Life of Brian, which pokes fun of right wing and left wing ideologues alike, lost in their hypocrisy and their self-righteous bluster.

But Python gives so much attention to liberals for the same reason I do: because they're liberals, and this is the self-righteous bunch they spend time with. Though I don't identify as a liberal, anymore, so completely fed up am I with the propaganistic manipulation of these group identifications and with the thorough lack of independent, critical, and deepest thought in any dogma, no matter how benign it may pose as being.

When I was in grad school, the Life of Brian was a wise and humorous observation on the foolishness of self-righteous politics and religion from every quarter. Today, Python's masterpiece is a strange parallel to my own very difficult, strange, and remarkable adventures through the world of public service and politics.

The last 15 minutes of the Life of Brian. In case any of the many friends I have informed forget.

I want the last 15 minutes of the Life of Brian played at my funeral. So people can laugh and maybe even cry at a life of a guy who has done his damndest to serve others, but whose outlook was a bit too independent and far too compassionate and caring and not nearly dogmatic enough to really be of good to anyone.

It's too bad. I had such potential. But I'm just not tough or sanctimonious enough to be any good to anyone.

I just want a nice life with a sweet, thoughtful wife and some kids and a job where I can be hassled least by dogmatists and bosses and bullies of every stripe.

I just want to be left alone, is the truth. Because the more I get bullied, the less I give two shits about your cause. You'd think that intelligent folks would wisen up about this, at some point.

But until they do, I just want them out of my hair.

Love,
Ben

Virginia Tech and gun laws

Other teachers and I have been talking a lot about the ramifications of the Virginia Tech shootings for schools. One teacher was convinced that it was a sign of the end days. Others are concerned about what it says about the culture. There is still much more to be said about the psychological dynamics that are involved with why someone feels driven to kill in a situation like this. We talked a lot, today, about students and people feeling powerless and turning to guns to have power over a life that feels out of their control and about feeling pushed too far, I think, particularly during a time when there is no point that is "too far" when it comes to pressuring and pushing and forcing the hand of others.

The debate I was waiting for was, of course, the gun debate.

This A.P. article frames this debate on terms positive to gun control advocates very well.

U.S. gun laws draw heat after massacre

But Ravenwood cites the Virginia Tech gun policy which pretty explicitly makes illegal the possession of the firearm in this situation.

"2.2 Prohibition of Weapons The university's employees, students, and volunteers, or any visitor or other third party attending a sporting, entertainment, or educational event, or visiting an academic or administrative office building or residence hall, are further prohibited from carrying, maintaining, or storing a firearm or weapon on any university facility, even if the owner has a valid permit, when it is not required by the individual's job, or in accordance with the relevant University Student Life Policies. Any individual who is reported or discovered to possess a firearm or weapon on university property will be asked to remove it immediately. Failure to comply may result in a student judicial referral and/or arrest, an employee disciplinary action and/or arrest, or arrest for trespass and/or violation of the appropriate state criminal statute."

As Ravenwood points out, this is a stricter policy than Virginia state law since it indicates that such firearms are prohibited even if they are in accordance with local and state laws and the gun owner has a valid permit.

Which really goes to the heart of my pretty straightforward critique of both gun and drug laws which is that they, as a rule, don't work. They create an obstacle to a one of many legal paths to owning a firearm and leave open any number of illegal paths to both gun and drug access. Worse, they create a taboo and cultures of folks obsessed with owning and using both, largely because of the prohibition and they're generally immature relationship to such prohibitions.

This killer violated those state, local, and university laws and policies, nevertheless the moral law against murder. That does not daunt those who say that with a new law, we could have prevented it.

There is no law that gun control advocates would consider strict enough after one of these such incidents. And the fact that the gun ownership and the murders, themselves, were illegal never deters those who look for any excuse to legally wish away a problem.

I don't even trust peoples' good intentions on such questions, anymore, because I so rarely find people who will engage in an intellectually honest discussion of whether their means are effective or not. They generally advocate regardless of the consequences. Most people engage in policy discussion without much attention to consequences, I'm learning. It almost makes such discussions fruitless, frankly.

Why do we have any freedoms at all, I wonder, when people will clearly use whatever freedom we afford them to do bad things to one another. Better to remove all that temptation and the freedom that offers it.

That's what more repressive regimes reason, at least. And given the direction of democracies, these days, maybe they have a point.

Maybe we've been going about this whole freedom thing all wrong. Perhaps, given the direction of our international discussions, generally, on such questions, at this point, we have conflict with Iran and North Korea because we envy just how pliant and submissive they have made their society. Perhaps we have come to end of the line when it comes to the expansion of freedom because we just cannot afford, anymore, to believe in our liberal values and virtues. They don't leave us as safe as more repressive regimes like Cuba and Syria. We just can't find the courage to admit that we think they're direction should be our direction.

Because we are too weak to admit just how effective repression really is to solving a cultures problems.

What we need is more of it. And soon, someday, our problems will float away with our rules and impositions.

Someone should pass a law. Come to think of it, I'm sure someone's on it.

Love,
Ben