December 22, 2005
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Topic: Bloody Hands
I went for a morning run, doing about 4-5 miles. My mind was set to do the whole run, so I didn’t have to do battle w/ the usual “I’m tired, let’s walk,” I was set on just moving the whole time. So…my mind began to wander, and it thought about how I might leave a mark on the world, as other idealists have.
I feel as though my efforts last year to promote my book College Daze, and to promote my ideas for revolutionizing higher education, were pre-mature. I was like a high school basebally player put up to bat against the likes of Roger Clemens. I surprised myself by making contact a few times, but in the end, I went down swinging.
At the time, I was both proud and disappointed. I had found a community of people hungry for change…students, professors, deans, alumni, community members, and others. I was a bit blinded by the goal of a complete academic shut-down, a campus wide strike of sorts, followed by negotiations that would lead to a new learning environment, to the point that after I moved on following the 2-3 months I spent on the St. Louis campus, I failed to appreciate the base of supporters I had built.
Turn now, a year later, in NYC. I have come to recognize my blind passion of last year, and how that passion nearly drove me mad, and certainly failed to reach my desired goals. However, I still have some of those general goals in site, to be a major league influence, not simply a fan on the sidelines screaming “You guys stink!” I do intend to get out there and show people that there is a way we can all play this game better.
So…I was running on started thinking about an idea Dara told me when she was helping me to edit College Daze. She told me to write more of a “manifesto,” something short, that could be quickly and easily digested, and quickly and easily distributed amongst people. I also spoke w/ someone who works w/ John Taylor Gotto (one of the most outspoken school critics alive today), who suggested I simply print up copies of my writings and distribute them. Don’t try to get a book published or anything else that might be costly…do it on the cheap, and that way you can be creative, make a scene, and get your word out in a bigger way than trying to have people pay for books.
Well, my mind was playing things through, and I was still running along my quiet suburban Long Island town. Next thing I know, my shoulder is planted in the concret. My right foot had snagged a piece of raised tar and I had stumbled. Luckily, my biologically wired instincts kicked in and my hands hit the ground first (had it been 10 degrees instead of 30, I’d have been wearing gloves, oh well). I came up w/ 2 nice bloody palms, or at least, the base part of the hand.
I stood for a while, more in shock then pain. The run had been going well, and I wanted to continue, so I decided to run to the nearby deli, where I got some napkins, and the woman at the counter got me some water and ice. I cleaned up, and finished my run. Back at home, I tried my best to doctor myself, to look objectively at my wounds, to lightly wash them and bandage them. To try to understand the nature of the pain, rather than turn around and flinch.
So…now I have 2 wounded hands as a reminder of this morning’s run, but also, a newly inspired idea. In 5-10 yrs. time, I hope to put together a revolutionary pamphlet to give out to 1000s of high school students, the content of which will be suitable to teens and their parents. I want this thing to spread like wildfire, like so many other random things manage to spread. I want this to gain attention from all sorts of media, and all sorts of professionals. And, the goal won’t necessarily be a passionate revolution, but, just as Bono has done w/ global poverty, to raise awareness in a way that requires the type of push that I want to bring…..hands hurt, will more write later.
-dan
Comments (8)
Beward of teaching like Gatto. He got fired.
(Or quit before he was fired. I don’t remember now. But he made a lot of enemies in the schools by letting kids do what was meaningful to them rather than following traditional educational procedure.)
Two years, and your passion never quits.
It continually amazes me.
ryc: i was raised in ny… haha. I love ny. i love england too…. but dang. I want to spend the holidays with my family and friends. ct
How do expect people to listen to you if you haven’t listened to those who have come before you? And I’m not talking about John Taylor Gotto.
“by substituting the notion of Bildung (education, self-formation) for that of ‘knowledge’ as the goal of thinking.”
“Revolution turned to Terror, Hegel believed, because French culture lacked liberal traditions and the French people had not experienced the moral renewal that was necessary to true political reform. This moral renewal would come through a particular type of education, that is, through Bildung.16 Only a people of Bildung could form a social fabric in which the social and political institutions adequate to the principles of the Revolution could be established and sustained. In addition to well-formed institutions, Hegel believed that a stable, progressive society required its own art and civic religion to help individual members internalize the society’s common moral values.”
http://www.thoemmes.com/american/journal_intro.htm
More: Schopenhauer’s Essays, Freud’s Civilization and Its Discontents, Montaigne’s Essays, Aristotle’s Ethics.
Can it be? A direct link from Dewey and the Progressives in early 20th century America to the so-called St. Louis Hegelians in the 19th, themselves kin to Emerson in New England, who traces almost the whole of his thought to the European Romantics (ie. Goethe, Schiller, Hegel in Germany and Carlyle and Coleridge in Britain):
“Davidson’s work in New York City and at Glenmore provides a splendid, concrete example of what the St. Louis Hegelians hoped to accomplish. Wintering in New York City, Davidson devoted his time to reaching young immigrants like Cohen. Each summer, for the last ten years of his life, Davidson took groups of these young men and women to Glenmore, in effect, alienating them from ghetto life, and gave them a vision, in the scenic beauty of Mt. Hurricane, of what society could be through study of the great works of the Western tradition. When these young men and women returned to their homes in the ghetto at the end of the summer, they had been utterly transformed and many of them went on to lead various reform movements of the Progressive Era. Elizabeth Flower and Murray Murphey correctly note that Davidson’s “Students grew into professionals and teachers, and the list of those associated with the college reads like a Who’s Who of the next generation’s intelligentsia and reformers.”38
Shortly after Davidson’s death in 1900, however, American philosophy changed in ways that obscured the American Bildung tradition. After the founding of the American Philosophical Association in 1901, American philosophy focused on issues much more narrowly conceived than the meaning of life. Despite important exceptions, philosophers in America no longer viewed philosophy as an antidote to suicide. The philosophers who were exceptions to this trend, for example, Morris Cohen and John Dewey, were old enough to have been profoundly influenced by the St. Louis Hegelians. A deeper understanding of this transformation of American philosophy can be gained through a study of the JSP and the thought of those who founded it.”
First of all, thanks for the lovely long post to my blog. Second, thank god for idealists of any age. So many people under 40 are too pessimistic and disengaged to be of any use to society to the point that they don’t even vote in elections. Kind of endearing that you stumbled because you were so engrossed in something you care about. An idea that crosses my mind for your project is to hook up with a few of the very bright teenage xangans we have in this community and run some of your ideas past them. One I would suggest is Supreme Spleen. I forget exactly how he spells that for his blog. You could go to his mom’s site – skanickadee and find him from there because he has a blogring that she subscribes to. Another kid I’ve noticed is quite unusual and unique is called I’m_Moses. Hope that’s the right spelling for that too. Anyway, they’re out there. If your eventual audience is going to be teenagers why not include them for feedback as you go along. Glad to stay in touch.
A friend has read all of John Taylor Gatto and is really taken with his work I have been going to read it as the talks we have had have been really interesting.
Sorry to hear about your hands.
Have a very happy Christmas. My son visited Long Island last week, he was visiting the parents of the people he stayed with. He had a lovely time helping with festive cooking and decorating. Something he is not enamoured with at home. heheeee. cheers
I bought myself a copy of College Daze… you better not dissappoint me. Haha. Ciao! ct
Hah, I know the feeling of tripping over my own feet/the sidewalk all too well, and I have the scars to prove it.
Just keep plugging away. Real change often takes longer than expected and happens in more subtle ways than we plan for, esp. change on the scale you’re working towards. I suspect you’ve made more of a difference than you think.
~Bethany