Brief Intervals of Horrible Sanity: One Season in a Progressive School.BRIEF INTERVALS OF HORRIBLE SANITY Reasonable understanding; sound mind; possessing mental faculties that are capable of distinguishing right from wrong so as to bear legal responsibility for one's actions. SANITY, med. jur. The state of a person who has a sound understanding; the reverse of insanity. : ONE SEASON IN A PROGRESSIVE SCHOOL By Elizabeth Gold. Tarcher/Penguin, $14 One of my Freshman English students hates this book. He hates that the author resorts to humor humor, according to ancient theory, any of four bodily fluids that determined man's health and temperament. Hippocrates postulated that an imbalance among the humors (blood, phlegm, black bile, and yellow bile) resulted in pain and disease, and that good health was for dealing with an impossible set of ninth grade English classes that she took over in March for the rest of the school year in a progressive high school in New York City New York City: see New York, city. New York City City (pop., 2000: 8,008,278), southeastern New York, at the mouth of the Hudson River. The largest city in the U.S. . He hates that Gold is a woman who has an active imagination outside of (and inside) the classroom. He hates that Gold poses questions about education and American society that are not reducible to correct positions. "It is foolish to criticize a school system as an entity separate from the society that made it," she says, and then explains: Schools don't exist separately from our culture. They are our culture. They reflect what we value, disdain, honor, ignore.... the American school ... tells our stories. Our secrets, if you will. I love the book and most of my students liked it, troubled though they were by, of all things, their not-so-distant memories of their own high schools. There is no getting around it, teaching and learning in high school is harder than in college. In Gold's classes there were seventeen-year-olds in ninth grade ripping (1) Converting an audio CD from its native CD-DA format to MP3, AAC or some other compressed audio format. When the term was coined, it had a perverse meaning. Many loved the idea they were "ripping off" the music industry by making copyrighted works available in a compact format up exams and refusing an offer of extracurricular help in poetry and writing; fourteen-year-old boys playing with dinosaurs at the back of the classroom; immigrant girls terrorizing another immigrant girl for being too conspicuously oblivious of their resentment and hatred. High school, Gold decides, leaves little room for students who carry the burden of maintaining or achieving popularity. There is, however, freedom, as we all know (and yet I for one hate to admit it because it sounds prejudiced), in books, in being a nerd, being outside any of the cool groups. There is so much forced inclusion, pressured from outside and inside schools, that we forget that one of the greatest experiences we can have is the realization that we don't have to belong, that we can imagine life elsewhere: Adam lives in a bad neighborhood. Drugs are sold in the vacant lots, and at night, a curious boy like Adam has to stay in, because of the guns going off. Adam is of this neighborhood. He knows things I cannot even imagine knowing. But he is also not of this neighborhood. Because he reads, and he knows that this is not the only place there is. And to know that is to change everything. I had read an unfavorable review of this book, where the critic lambasted Gold for her egotism Egotism See also Arrogance, Conceit, Individualism. Baxter, Ted TV anchorman who sees himself as most important news topic. [TV: “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” in Terrace, II, 70] cat , so it was only by chance that I was later assigned to review it myself. From the first page I knew Gold was the real deal. Her rhythmical, wonderful prose and her nervy and funny insights make this episodic episodic sporadic; occurring in episodes. e. falling a paroxymal disorder described in Cavalier King Charles spaniels in which affected dogs, starting at an early age, experience episodes of extensor rigidity, possibly brought on by stress. e. and vivid memoir lively and entertaining, all the while challenging any complacency com·pla·cen·cy n. 1. A feeling of contentment or self-satisfaction, especially when coupled with an unawareness of danger, trouble, or controversy. 2. An instance of contented self-satisfaction. I might have had about teaching high school English: Every child has a voice. That's what Leon [the principal] likes to say. Sometimes as I walk through the halls, head pounding, it seems every child has two voices, four voices. Burbling up in the classrooms. By the lockers. In the gym, especially the gym. The stairwells. In the principal's office. Outside the school, where Vincent stands, sophisticated in army jacket and blue eye shadow, smoking a cigarette. There's the I know the answer voice. The I don't care voice. The Fuck you voice. The Listen, could you help me? voice. The Could I trust you, could I tell you a secret? voice. The Please don't call my parents voice. The Fuck you, I don't care, call my parents voice. The I'm going to beat the fucking shit out of you voice. The Watch me lie to the principal voice. Every child has a voice. My students who liked the book and Gold's voice wondered, in response journals, at her incompetence in·com·pe·tence or in·com·pe·ten·cy n. 1. The quality of being incompetent or incapable of performing a function, as the failure of the cardiac valves to close properly. 2. , however, in teaching impossible ninth-graders, and then we met her one day, when she visited at my invitation. The students didn't know she was coming, and my student who hated her seemed to me to be disturbed and disarmed dis·arm v. dis·armed, dis·arm·ing, dis·arms v.tr. 1. a. To divest of a weapon or weapons. b. at her descent into our scholastic garden. He laughed at her jokes; he blushed when she asked him, at his steady, perplexed per·plexed adj. 1. Filled with confusion or bewilderment; puzzled. 2. Full of complications or difficulty; involved. [Middle English, from perplex, confused gaze, what he was thinking, and stammered, "Nnn-othing!" She had most of us wrapped around her little finger: quizzing us, teasing teasing the act of parading a male before a female to see if she displays estrus, and is therefore in a state where mating is likely to be fertile. us, soliciting questions, posing questions, making us excited and delighted to think about and remember the many details of the little dramas of high school classrooms. Gold teaches college English now, and she's a fine teacher. And this is the best memoir I've ever read about teaching. It shouldn't be funny, but it is; it shouldn't be so unpretentiously ambitious and provocative in its commentary on the state of American education--based as it is on four months in one small school in Queens--but it is. --Bob Blaisdell Kingsborough Community College Kingsborough Community College, part of the City University of New York (CUNY) system, is a community college in Brooklyn, New York. The campus is located at the eastern end of the Manhattan Beach peninsula. City University of New York The City University of New York (CUNY; acronym: IPA pronunciation: [kjuni]), is the public university system of New York City. |
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