I don’t know how many times I’ve read pieces bemoaning what young people are coming to these days. I read them thirty years ago, twenty, ten. Now people are worried that modern American 18 to 20 year olds know Madonna but not Kate Smith. I can’t say that worries me; popular culture is of the present. Madonna’s alive; the worthy and formidable Kate passed on some years ago.

There are matters of modern education that do bother me, though. For instance, textbooks tend to be uniform, with much sameness about what is available. They also tend to be produced by professors, who are, at least in the humanities, mostly politically liberal and politically correct—meaning incorrect. The quest to avoid offending people of birth other than white male leads to some exotic distortions.

And grade inflation is real. High schools award grades that misrepresent student achievement. Recent high school graduates moving to college are often startled to find that the A is no longer automatic, though colleges participate in the grade inflation trend, too. I’ve discovered that I am not immune. For many years my grades on a four point scale averaged across whole classes a slightly inflated 2.25. Last year I re-checked and found 2.8. Did everybody really get that much better? Are my enthusiasms getting away with me?

Yet the doomsayers don’t seem to be describing the students I actually face. Mostly, students I see come to first year writing courses well prepared. They know sentence structure and punctuation and the conventions of school essay form. They are reasonably fluent writers. Many already have considerable experience with writing in several modes and genres. My read is that high schools must be doing a pretty good job, at least in my areas of specialization. It might be that my 2.8 is reasonable when compared to the work of my students of twenty-five years ago.

If I were to have a suggestion about education as I see it, I would ask that it include a little more fierceness in the pursuit of truth. That political preferences not quite so overtly alter the presentation of fact; that literature be read in its own context to whatever extent possible. I think we would all be better off if we were a little more willing to offend and be offended while confronting the world and our places and purposes in it. Comfort isn’t always a good thing.

The very best way I know to develop and hold the independence of mind it takes to confront the world issue by issue is to read widely. Exposure to multiple perspectives makes it less likely that one perspective can take over. I read Newsweek and National Review, Time and the Weekly Standard. I read Playboy and Reader’s Digest. I read female authors, black authors, Indian authors, and I continue to read white male authors. I read children’s books, young adult novels, canonical literature, textbooks, and scholarly journals.

The activity of reading keeps the mind supple, if done with a willing mind. Enforced reading, such as of school assignments, has some benefit, but voluntary reading, with one book leading to another and also another is the road to intellectual, personal freedom. This means reading for idea as well as information. It means reading to notice layers of particularity and of abstraction. It means reading for the joy of it, while being intensely alive.

If I recall correctly, the first time I saw the logo BUM, it was actually B.U.M. Equipment, and it was written across the front of a sweatshirt worn by a young woman whose bosom was definitely not bum equipment. It looked like false advertising to me (the possible pun on “falsie” is terribly inviting). It reminded me of a T-shirt one of my especially busty high school students wore as a memento of her recent trip to the Grand Tetons. That, at least, seemed like truth in advertising.

The latter makes more sense to me than the former. “I’ve been to the Grand Tetons” makes a statement of autobiography. BUM doesn’t mean a vagrant, or poor quality manufacture, or broken or lame limbs. It means “I’m advertising for a company, and paying that company for the privilege.” What a great racket.

I wear shirts and sweatshirts that have the names or logos of universities I’ve attended or worked for. They remind me of my history. I wear shirts that remind me of races I have run in, charities I’ve worked for, milestones I’ve accomplished in the swimming pool. They mean something about my life, and others can notice if they wish. I do not choose clothes that advertise products.

And yet, I don’t much care if others do. I understand that brands can become codes for status. If people, especially young people, find some kind of security in the status of Gap or Levi or Guess or whatever the latest is, so be it. That is relatively harmless. It makes for good business for Gap or Levi or Guess, which is fine, too. I have no fear of capitalism or of profit, nor do I find myself very often noticing the ads. They are ubiquitous, so I don’t see them very often. When I’m on a beach, I seldom notice a single grain of sand.

This really is the arena for sociologists, who will study these matters for trends, rather than for an English teacher who is interested in the motives and choices of individuals. I’ve been aware for my whole teaching career of the hegemony of jeans. (Jeez, that sounds cool—I’m glad I thought of that phrase.) The state of “jeanness” reigns in my classrooms. When no uniform is required, the uniform is jeans. The benefit of uniforms is they demand no thought, no decisions. Jeans have become the uniform of informality. The only way to accomplish status with jeans is to choose them by brand. “Nothing comes between me and my….”—and suddenly I’m seeing a young Brooke Shields presenting her inviting rump tightly wrapped in…I’ve forgotten which brand of jeans. I remember the pose, though. The message to men: women who wear that kind of jeans are desirable; the message to women: if you wear that kind of jeans, you can be as desirable as Brooke Shields. A thought: was the use of the word “comes” offensive? Subtle?

I think that might be the whole point of advertising. In order to sell a product, you appeal to a desire, or you provoke a desire.

Just what is BUM Equipment, by the way, and why should anyone desire it? Does it have something to do with the stories of our lives?

I tend to think of people being responsible for their own actions. Violence is perpetrated by people, not by TV. People shoot people, not guns. I think it is a mistake to to blame the medium rather than the agent. I also think that mistake is common.

Cigarettes don’t kill people; smoking cigarettes does. Cars don’t kill people; driving does. Lots of research into the effects of the media does find correlations between TV viewing of violence and rates of violence on the street or of desensitization to violence. Other research also suggests that exposure to violence in TV or movie programming provides episodes of catharsis, in which violent desires are satisfied through viewing rather than acting out.

Violence is real. It is fascinating because the potential for our own personal reality resides behind our viewing of acted out violence. We imagine it involving us. Violence in the news makes us aware that it happens to real people just like us. Seeing violence is practice for the possibilities of our own lives. So is seeing kindness. We live beyond ourselves. Others affect us; we affect others. We decide how we will present ourselves to others; we also decide how we will receive the behaviors of others toward us.

More than our responsibility for our own violence, we are responsible for our own viewing. Do we see violence in principled ways? For pure recreation? For catharsis? For inspiration?

The most violent scenes I’ve ever watched live were broadcast first on the morning of September 11th, 2001. I couldn’t help thinking how much what I was seeing reminded me of a Die Hard movie. There is a point to that: TV and movie violence provide practice runs. Just as children have nightmares of their parents’ deaths as practice for what will probably be the real thing later, we practice facing violence by imagining it on the screen. We confront our fears.

The towers and the Pentagon and the field in Pennsylvania had a clarifying effect for me. It was real time viewing, unlike the after the fact viewing I’d had of embassy bombings and the attack on the USS Cole and the first attack on the World Trade Center. I didn’t really have to confront them because they were over before I knew about them. I saw the results, but I didn’t see it happen. On 9/11 I saw the bodies falling at the same time they fell.

I have a much more focused mind on matters of world affairs now. I know more of what I think. Watching the 9/11 scenes simplified life for me, and I owe that simplification to televised violence. That’s a positive thing.

On heroes:

In my childhood I wanted to be a hero. I wanted to save people’s lives, preferably in very public ways, resulting in admiration by the masses and ceremonies awarding me medals and the undying gratitude of nations, all of which I would accept with great modesty, shrugging off my exploits with a casual “it was nothing” or “I just did what anyone would” or, even better, “I didn’t really think about it, I just reacted.” Those awe-inspiring actions were just built in to my character, noble fellow that I was.

Now I don’t like ceremonies, am uncomfortable when singled out for public attention, and don’t want to be a hero. Being a hero is too big a burden. Heroes are distant, separated from other people. They do great things. Lincoln is a hero; Churchill is a hero; Gandhi is a hero.

I want to do small things. Good things, but small. “The little nameless unremembered acts of kindness and of love” is a quote I remember reading somewhere. It sums up my ambitions now. I wish I could place where I found that line, which I’ve probably quoted inaccurately. I want to live a life of small acts, so that when I die people who encountered me have positive associations that they can’t quite name or recall, but the aura around any memory they have is a positive one.

I can live with small bits of living, just as I choose to live with the Mississippi early in its journey toward the Gulf. The river is comprehensible here, meandering eastward, before it begins its long plunge south to the sea. It’s manageable. It won’t yet handle great chains of barges. I do my living day by day, my teaching class by class, my writing piece by piece. No epics for me, no larger than life achievements, no fame, no revolutions, no nourishing of continents. I prefer small, steady progress toward simple goals. Self improvement, student welfare, honest writing.

I’ll admire Lincoln and Churchill and Gandhi. I will not admire athletic criminals; I will not worship celebrities for the sake of their celebrity. I will respect accomplishments and principled lifestyles. I will try to live in accordance with principles of my own.