The Unfortunately Fulfilled Prophecy, Part I: The Abolition of Man and Contemporary Higher Education

CS Lewis does not write The Abolition of Man as a crusty old man wishing for bygone days, nor as a hardened academic who cannot allow for shifts in pedagogical theory. Furthermore, he does not address these thoughts (originally lectures, which my students claim they would rather have heard than read) to those especially interested in literary criticism or orthodox theology. Rather, this book contains a general ontological critique: how we are in society and how we read society. Therefore, his claims should not merely concern those of us who claim to have walked uphill both ways through the snow to school, or those of us who teach; they ought to concern us all.

After all, Lewis proves himself a prophet of the postmodern age in his first lecture, entitled "Men Without Chests." When he describes men without the Tao, the practical principles known to all by Reason (32), it is as though he somehow read today's newspapers 60 years early. Tao-less men have no moral innards, but they like to act moral; their hearts stripped out, society nevertheless expects them to pump blood.

Lewis claims that we get such men when we deconstruct value judgments, suggesting (however subtly) that statements like "I think that landscape is lovely" are quite illegitimate, or at least useless, for what we really need to know is fact. Thus, we often teach "truths" while refusing to suggest how students might respond or think critically about or value such truths. In the world of composition pedagogy, this means we ask students to write "argumentative essays" but exclude any topics addressing religious or political values. Now, to be sure, most first-year college students are (in my experience) rather incapable of making good religious or political arguments, which is why I too avoid assignments about such topics. The incapability presents itself in two ways: they either resort to radical positions too abstract and complex to even start tackling in fewer than 100 pages (which means the students depend on generalizations and incomplete presentation of facts), or they resort to blind and blanket statements of belief that have no appeal except for "I think so, therefore it is." The postmodern mantra.

So is the contemporary educational problem how I choose essay assignments for first-year rhetoric? or is the real problem the educational milieu that bred those brains in the first place? Indeed, I believe Lewis has foreseen a philosophical problem that has pervaded our postmodern society: first-year college students are men (and women) without chests. And they don't even know it.

I spend a lot of time in English 101 every fall convincing my students that using first-person pronouns in argumentative essays is okay, because in the ninth grade, Mrs. Henderson told them they never could write "I" anything, especially "I think" any position. Of course, this led to a whole lot of onerous "one believes this" kinds of phrases because Mrs. Henderson never taught them (perhaps Mrs. Henderson did not know this) that the reason ninth-graders should shy from claiming "I think something" is because human beings brought up on "Sesame Street" tend to assume that when they think something, they do not need evidence to back up their beliefs. That is, when they claim "I think that landscape is lovely," they should have some reasons for such a value statement: for example, "The trees are dropping all manner of bright-colored leaves, and I (along with a whole host of other people throughout history) think that the display of autumnal transformation has some objective aesthetic value, not to mention the fact that it just makes me feel more alive to see it."

However, Mrs. Henderson does not really care whether or not her students have reasonable evidence for their beliefs. She does not even have some nuanced concern that the inability to articulate such evidence invalidates the value statement. Rather, when Mrs. Henderson tells her ninth-grade students they cannot use "I" in an essay, she is operating on the belief that the value statement itself does not matter. Now, just because some ninth-grade student "thinks" something does not make the statement automatically relevant to the real world, but when we act like it is not ever relevant and never will be, we create a world of grade-grubbing non-thinkers who nevertheless make policies that run our world.

That is, we craft a society of voters and consumers who do not ask themselves "What belief has led him or her to assume that is true" when a politician or CEO says "This shall be." Rather, they just agree or disagree without any semblance of critical thinking about how someone might make such a claim. Here is the postmodern dilemma: high schoolers are not allowed to write value statements, so they never learn how to make good arguments about belief or policy that actually have evidence to back up those statements. Thus, they (and all the rest of us) talk like the individual has all power and authority from coffee shops to Congress.

More on The Abolition of Man soon. . . .

Eros et Orca

Thanks (I think) to Kathryn for alerting me to Amy Sutherland's "What Shamu Taught Me About a Happy Marriage," published in yesterday's edition of The New York Times. Now, maybe I'm particularly sensitive because I have just just finished reading The Four Loves for the third time (not including the time Lindsay Terrel and I listened to CS Lewis' recording of the book en route home from Tulsa). After all, when I sit on my couch and muse on the nexus of affection, friendship, and eros in my marriage, I just smile.

Should I should chill out? Maybe Sutherland is writing with tongue firmly planted in cheek. Doubt it. Some knotty excerpts:

I also began to analyze my husband the way a trainer considers an exotic animal. Yes, this will do wonders for the marriage union, as though your mate is just some appendage to domestic life that needs to be let out at lunchtime. Even those wives who regard their husbands as "another child" do not yet regard their husbands as pets.

Later, Sutherland delights in applying the "least reinforcing syndrome" or LRS: animal trainers do this when they refuse to respond to animals that do something wrong. In human communication, we call that "ignoring the man you love" and "manipulating through silent treatment." IML. MST. Sutherland has a vocabulary problem here: LRS might work with husbands as well as it works with dolphins, but husbands are not dolphins and deserve better respect.

Problem is, Sutherland testifies that it works. Ah, the postmodern gospel of pragmatism: if it works, it must be right. And then she concludes:

After two years of exotic animal training, my marriage is far smoother, my husband much easier to love. I used to take his faults personally; his dirty clothes on the floor were an affront, a symbol of how he didn't care enough about me. But thinking of my husband as an exotic species gave me the distance I needed to consider our differences more objectively.

I adopted the trainers' motto: "It's never the animal's fault." When my training attempts failed, I didn't blame Scott. Rather, I brainstormed new strategies, thought up more incompatible behaviors and used smaller approximations. I dissected my own behavior, considered how my actions might inadvertently fuel his. I also accepted that some behaviors were too entrenched, too instinctive to train away. You can't stop a badger from digging, and you can't stop my husband from losing his wallet and keys.

Instead of "thinking of my husband as an exotic species," what about "thinking of my husband of another human being while thinking of myself as a human with faults too. A little humility gave me the distance I needed to consider our differences more objectively."

Instead of "the trainers' motto" how about this motto for wives: "I share some at least blame here because I am not yet perfect."

And instead of taking the "this didn't work" data as motivation to change the procedure, how about taking it as motivation to change the hypothesis to something more like "Maybe treating my husband like an exotic animal wasn't where I should have started. Maybe the problem is more in my own heart and my inability to love him sacrificially, practicing longsuffering when faced with his idiosyncrasies."

This is the scientific method gone bad wrong. Evidence suggests that my husband is perhaps better than average: he contributes to the household economy (perhaps more than I do) and is characterized by real meekness. Still, wherever he can, he leaves piles of unexplained papers and clothes and old things that clearly should be thrown away while he fritters away down time playing Gamecube football. Does this mean I should try to train him like a killer whale? Heaven forbid. Let us live together in love, not manipulation.

Morning Reading

The recent issue of Christianity Today features two articles that particularly caught my attention, one for good reasons and the other for bad ones.

Tim Keller wrote the good-reason article, called "A New Kind of Urban Christian" and there exhorts readers to just live real Christianity in the real world. Not exactly the pious mentality we often see where folks remove themselves from the big, bad world in order to become more holy all by their lonesomes; no, we actually become truly holy when we become truly practical about faith and truly loving of other people, and Keller suggests that we might best learn that in cities. Brilliant notion.

The bad-reason article is a magazine editorial entitled "Sex Isn't a Spectator Sport." Proceed with caution, preparing to mourn over how bent the world has become, setting up prostitution huts like portable potties so that soccer fanatics can get some without going far.

Fun with Jacks

If ever there is a summer class more fun to be teaching than The Fiction and Nonfiction of C. S. Lewis, I would like to know. We have only had one day of it, but I am already convinced that every morning should start by telling stories about Jack Lewis (everyone should get the infinitely readable biography by A. N. Wilson right now) and then hearing letters from Screwtape aloud to elicit mild (okay, this part could be better) conversation about reason vs emotion. Thanks to Myles Roberts for playing along with me and the undergrads.

Easter Triduum

We'll need a few brief words on the Stranges' long weekend here:

1. On Maundy Thursday, we decided to buy a CR-V instead a Rav4 because Toyota and I don't have the same supply-and-demand curve.
2. On Good Friday, we actually bought said CR-V. Randy's early-morning offer almost let us cave into Toyota's demands--thanks, again--but we were resolved. After 6 weeks (seriously) of begging various Toyota dealers to have mercy on us and struggling (not very successfully) against frustration, we easily negotiated a below-invoice sale on a moonroof, "Sahara Sand Metallic" car attached. Also on Good Friday, we had fun hibachi with my entire family and the true Bachmans spoke a little gracious Japanese to our chef. Happy birthday, Aunt Vicki, with belated greetings again to Mom and Emily.
3. On Resurrection Sunday, we decided we'd really gotten a grand vehicle. We showed the CR-V to the last member of my family who hadn't yet seen it: Dr. Phifer (Grandma Esther had already spun it to Wal-Mart the day before). After a veritable Easter feast (scrumptious roasted chickens, primo citrus cream pasta, crunchy green-bean salad, bread, and chocolate cake) with the family, Micah and I hardly knew what to do with ourselves. Go look at cars, we wondered? Nah. Just sat around and read instead.

And what does one read on Easter? As if you had to ask. The only thing that's right for the season:

The dripping blood our only drink,
The bloody flesh our only food:
In spite of which we like to think
That we are sound, substantial flesh and blood--
Again, in spite of that, we call this Friday good.

Why, TS Eliot's "East Coker" from Four Quartets, of course (that being its fourth movement's final stanza). After all, the Easter season is not for car buying but for worship. This Lord's Day reminds us we will one day rise from the dead with Jesus and everyone else who belongs to Him. "That will be fun," as Myles Roberts said (litotes, ha, litotes). Yes, I think it will.