Closing the (grade) books: Felix in repose

In which a school year, and an experiment,
are declared complete

The Felix Chronicles #36
Kim: A (That's easy.)

Mindy: B (That's easy too.)

Mark: B- (That botched final exam really dragged down his average. He's been erratic in recent months. Gonna let the chips fall where there may there.)

Joey: B+ (The numbers say B, but would the class have been half as good without his humor? His jokes themselves were signs of engagement.)

Grading. The final act, a postmortem ritual that gets performed after everyone but the administrative staff is gone (and even their ranks are thinned and days shortened). I generally dislike assigning grades, because I think it's overly reductive to denote an entire semester's performance to a single letter. I also dislike grading because it seems to be that there's a core conflict of interest between being a coach and being a judge, and I regard a teacher's job as essentially the former. Coaches have to make judgments too, I guess, and rank their players competitively. But there's still a sense of a team, a shared enterprise, that's generally missing in grading. At least there's the factor of class participation, which typically looms large in my calculus, somewhere between 20-30% of a grade.

Of course, using a figure like that implies that in fact something like class participation is quantifiable. It isn't. And even those things that seem quantifiable, like test scores, are suspect in all kinds of ways. Grading simply can't be objective, and I really don't see too much point in trying. I've long decided that it is first and foremost a pedagogical tool -- carrot, stick, way of sending a message. There are flaws in this kind of thinking, I know. But there are flaws with the alternative, too, and in this situation as in so many others, you simply have to pick your poison. I try not to be reckless, honoring talent and punishing laxity insofar as I can perceive them. But grading seems like as good an arena as any for a child to learn that life isn't fair, at least as far as human beings can engineer it. Not that we shouldn't try.

Nate: A- (I don't really think he deserves it, but the grades say so, and I have to err on the side of disregarding personal feelings.)

Sam: A- (Part of me thinks he should get the A, but the grades aren't quite there, and I feel like there's a whiff of complacency about him that I'd like to see him prodded into overcoming, which I hope I'll get to do myself next year.)

Erica: B+ (Another late collapse. Could see this coming. Actually, B+ is a bit of a gift.)

Ellen: A (I'm simply going to disregard the 84% she got on the first test of the semester. It was an outlier. She'll obsess, fruitlessly, if I factor it in, and I told her to forget about an makeup assignment for extra credit.)

Chris: B- (He's been limping along all year. Last semester he got a B; I hope his folks will notice the deterioration.)

As far as I can tell, there are basically two grades at this school (and every other one I've worked at in the last twenty years): A and B. There are the gradations between them, and a big jump between B+ and A-. As my colleagues often say, you gotta work hard to get a semester grade of C or less, though I'll sometimes slap one on a weak essay. Students fail my exams all the time, but I can't think of a single instance where I flunked a kid for a whole course.

Alec: B+ (Love to make it higher, but can't find an excuse to do so. Again, this isn't about my affection for the kid.)

Samantha: A (if only I could make it higher!)

Beth: A (Ditto!)

Jason: B (He kinda slipped between the cracks. I feel bad about it. If I get another chance, I'd like to work a little harder to pull him in.)

Becky: B+ (She'll be mad about this, and I'm likely to hear about it. But it's what she deserves.)

Susan: A (Really shaky in terms of numbers. But she's been so reliable in class. And that research essay on Amelia Earhart was really terrific. She tells me she's already signed up for "U.S. Since 1945," and her Mom is lobbying to get me again.)

For me a class never seems to end so much as it fizzles. We get to the last week of May and we're chugging along into World War II. Then it's time for review, and we play a round of Jeopardy!, using the same set of clues every year. I give a class session over to discussing he final essay question, which I hand out in advance of the exam, but it usually runs out of steam about halfway through.. At the end of that last week we play a game of whiffle ball, which I enjoy very much -- I play very competitively and will be bragging for weeks about striking out Tom, star of the baseball team, with my curveball -- and savor the company of these kids, who will soon disperse. (It's when my team is at bat that I learn things like Becky's plans to study art at Bennington or Roy's ambitious plan to go to Antaractica.) And then I have a session where I just answer any questions they might have, a session which typically peters out. Then we have finals, and the class meets a final time on the last day of school, when I turn back exams and sign yearbooks. But it always seems anticlimatic. I always feel like a living organism is dying. I'll have many of these kids again, but never in this configuration. It makes me sad.

Lisa: A- (Pretty much a straight row of grades there.)

Liza: B+ (Never got to know her well, but academics are secondary now; she's a nationally ranked tennis player.)

Roy: B+ (Nice surge at the end there.)

Tom: B (He found Becky, and the clock, far more interesting than anything I ever said or did. Maybe he'll wake up next year.)

Unlike the seniors, all these kids will be back. As, God willing, will I. But I've decided that it's time to retire our friend Felix; the chronicle you're now reading will be the last of its kind.

There are a number of reasons for this. The first is that it's difficult to chronicle a school year during a summer vacation when there's no year to chronicle, as it were. I probably could keep this going for a while. For one thing, there's always been an element of imagination in this enterprise. I also had a backlog of pieces that I wrote before I started publishing them on this blog. You may have noticed that I've been running some of them, many of which are set in the fall months, here on the cusp of summer. But sooner or later, I'd find I had a dearth of material, real or imagined, to work with.

A more serious problem is attention of an unwanted kind. While I believe many, if not most, of the thousands of visitors I've had to my blog have kindly read my work with an understanding that I'm trying to capture aspects of everyday school life in a way that illuminates issues for consideration and reflection, there have been some indications that my posts have been fodder for gossip. Beyond that, I've always known that I've been walking a tightrope here. While I don't believe I've committed anything remotely resembling libel or slander, the possibility for misunderstanding and hurt feelings has always been a risk, one that only increases the longer I do this. I made the decision that the potential good in terms of honesty and clarity justified launching this experiment, but understood that my final responsibility is to my students and institution. I'm going to stop before I unambiguously cross a line.

I do so with some regret. I've enjoyed this project, and would like to see it continue. But I'm glad I did succeed in publishing three dozen of these pieces, and do hope they will be the foundation for further work of a similar kind in the future. Please keep an eye out for it.In any event, I do intend to try and keep this blog going with pieces about teaching as well other subjects in the realm of American history in everyday life (I recently signed on to review books for the History News Network).

I'll end here with a few words of thanks: to my students and colleagues at the Ethical Culture Fieldston School. To Felix Adler, the man who founded the institution, and in whose name these chronicles were written. And to you, dear -- and I do mean dear -- readers. Merely stopping by to say hello has been appreciated. But please know that you are welcome, now or later, to grade me on the work I did here.

And please continue to come by. I will labor to be worth your time.

JC

Coming soon: A postscript and the complete Felix Chronicles, with links, at this blog.

Gaming the system

In which we see that it's what --
and who -- we don't see that matters

The Felix Chronicles, #32

Rick is writing his final Civil War research paper on an Xbox game, which he has hooked up to the classroom Smart Board and is playing in front of his classmates. Not exactly an orthodox topic for an academic essay, but I see a real workshop opportunity here, both in terms of engaging him in something he's passionate about, and in raising intellectual issues in places and in ways they might not otherwise get raised.

But we're not off to a promising start.

"Those graphics suck," Eddie points out as Rick puts a sniper in his sights and fires away.

"And the lack of interactivity is really lame," Aaron adds. "What happens if you go off into the woods there?"

"You can't," Rick says. "It doesn't let you."

"That is lame," Darius notes. "You gotta wonder about the developers here. Did they pour all the resources into marketing? I could have probably done this on my two year old MacBook Pro!"

Hmmm.Darius has said virtually nothing all semester. Here he sounds like a management consultant critiquing an entire product line. But this isn't quite what I had in mind -- and while the class as a whole is engaged at the moment, I suspect we're going to start losing altitude soon.

"So how would you compare this game with comparable games out there are the market, Rick?" I ask.

Somewhat surprisingly, it's Darius who answers for him. "There's no comparable Civil War product," he says, "except for Blue/Gray Field Command. In that game you're a four-star general trying to supervise overall strategy."

"Well that's interesting," I reply. "Here you're an individual soldier performing a localized mission."

"That's right," Rick says. "You sometimes complete the mission only to be informed that your side has actually lost the battle."

"That in itself says a lot," I note. "This game is more like The Red Badge of Courage, Henry Fleming lost at Chancellorsville, while the game Darius is talking about is more like The Killer Angels, Lee and Longstreet debating whether to engage at Gettysburg. Am I right Caroline and Zack?"

Caroline, who's working on Red Badge, and Zack, who's doing Killer Angels (actually the lousy film version, called Gettysburg) nod. But that's all they do. I'm disappointed. I thought this would open things up a bit.

Aaron still has his eyes on the screen, tracking Rick's movements. "I see your job is now to clear that barn over to the left. So you can get a change in mission halfway through?"

"Yeah. This happens a lot when you play 'Easy.' In 'Medium' and 'Hard' you'll typically take longer or get killed before you execute the original orders."

"Don't tell me you actually get yourself killed in this game," Darius says.

"Of course he does," Aaron says. "I swear to God it took three weeks for Rick to steal his first car on Grand Theft Auto at my place after I first got it.

I see Chantel roll her eyes. I decide to seize on this.

"Oh," I say with mock solemnity, "So you're also appalled at Rick's ineptitude at Grand Theft Auto? Well tell me, Chantel, how long did it take you to steal your first car when you played it on your Xbox?"

Chantel smiles wryly, recognizing that I'm not serious. "Actually, I don't have an Xbox."

"Don't have an Xbox? Wow. Why, that means you can't play this game or Grand Theft Auto!" Laughter.

I shift my gaze sharply. "Caroline: How 'bout you? How long did it take -- "

"I don't have an Xbox, either."

"And you, Tanya?"

She shakes her head, smiling. "Nope."

I sound desperate: "Christina?"

"I don't have one either," she says. "I steal my little brother's to play Space Invaders."

A roar of laughter.

"Well thank God for that. For a minute there I was beginning to worry we were going to have a problem with gender bias there. But I guess you've saved us from that, huh, Christina?"

"I guess so," she says, smiling.

"You get my point, though," I say to the class as a whole, as a few kids nod. "One way of being to figure out what's going on with a document -- or, in this case, a game -- is to ask who it's likely to appeal to. And who it isn't. In this case, it appears the game in question has a strong appeal to boys, though our statistical sample is admittedly small."

"Actually, I'd say the appeal here is mostly young boys," Rick says. "The level of play is fairly simple compared with some others I've played."

"Yeah. And also it's less violent. I'm afraid of Grand Theft Auto 4," Christina says. "My mother won't allow my brother to get it."

"And this one is endorsed by the History Channel," Rick notes.

"Okay," I say. "I think we're beginning to get somewhere. One way Rick will be able to develop his argument in his essay will be to focus on this question of audience. But we can ask a similar question about content -- we can ask what's not there."

I pause for dramatic effect.

"I guess it's time for me to share a little secret with you, gang. You see, I've decided to quit my day job and become a video game designer myself. I've come up with something I think you'll find interesting. It's called Contraband." I adopt the voice of a movie preview announcer:

You are an officer on the Underground Railroad. In your hands is the awesome responsibility of saving human lives and striking a blow for liberty. Your mission: to blaze a path for a group of escaped slaves as they make their way from an Tennessee plantation across the Ohio River to a secret station outside Cincinnati. One wrong move and they're back in bondage -- and you're back in jail for violating the Fugitive Slave Act. Will you take the challenge?

"Whaddya think? How long you think it will take to ship a million units?" Lots of smiles. Darius is shaking his head, as if I'm an incorrigible child.

"Why not, Darius? Isn't this a good idea?"

"Sorry, Mr. Cullen. I think you should stick with your day job."

"But why?"

"Because nothing really happens."

"What do you mean nothing really happens? You have to think hard! You have to evade capture! You have to endure racial insults!"

Hearty laughter at that. (Maybe a little too hearty?)

"All right, Darius, I'll keep my day job. But I hope, Rick, and the rest of the class get my point here. Which is that sometimes figuring out what you don't have means figuring out what you don't have. It's often what isn't talked about that can be as revealing as what is."

I look up at the clock. "One thing we don't have, today at least, is more time. Caroline: You're on tomorrow, yes?"

"Yup. I'm showing a clip from Glory."

"Excellent. See you all then. Oh -- and one other thing."

A few faces look up expectantly from closing books and backpacks.

"Anybody know where Kermit was today? Field trip? Sudden illness?"

Nodding heads. "Uh -- I think he may be sick," Darius says.

Kermit missed class yesterday, too, and missed the exam we had last week. This morning I saw him playing frisbee on the lower field with his buddies. I make the appropriate notation on my attendance sheet. This isn't going to be pleasant -- tedium, for me, aggravation for Kermit, and, in all likelihood, anger for his parents, who will be getting an e-mail from me later today. In high school, at least, gaming the system tends to catch up with you.

Cheer

In which we anticipate a winter wonderland

The Felix Chronicles, # 27

The phone is ringing when I arrive in my office at 8:17 a.m. on the Thursday morning before the winter break. I pick it up while simultaneously trying to slip out of my coat.

"Hello?"

"Mr. Cullen?"

"Speaking."

"I'm so glad we've reached you. This is Ruth, Jason's mom? We met on Open School Night."

"Yes of course. How are you?" In my mind I see nothing, no name, no face. But Jason will be enough to work with. I drape my coat over my desk chair, pull my laptop out of my briefcase, and power it up.

"Well, I've been better, especially in this market. I'm calling about the History Day project. As you know, Jason's working with Tom."

"Yes.” I sort of do know that. It's on a master list somewhere in my inbox. I begin to rustle through it.

"A thoroughly depressing subject, if you ask me." Now I do remember: They're doing the decision to drop the atomic bomb. Originally, they wanted to do World War II. I told them the subject was too broad. They've narrowed it down to the bomb, and are working on a website. The first draft I saw was not too promising. Big slabs of text, relatively weak in conceptual organization. Technical glitches. Normally, one or both of them will be working with Joey. But Joey has grand plans for a tabletop reenactment of Pickett's Charge that he says he's been working on since July with Roy. Ominously, I’ve seen nothing new on Jason and Tom's project since they handed in the the first draft earlier this month, only a string of e-mails asking questions that could be answered if they studied the original assignment.

Then I realize that I've not been paying close attention to Ruth, who has been explaining the series of obstacles Jason and Tom have encountered. "It doesn't help matters any that Tom is out there somewhere in Elmsford, or maybe it's Valhalla. He never wants to come down the city, and I can't just drop everything to get Jason out there for one of their marathon sessions. Did you know that they spent all night working on this Saturday?" There's more than a hint of accusation in her query.

I'm tempted to ask how I would know that, but bite my tongue. I also imagine an empty pizza box, a Madden NFL game on a laptop, and Ludacris blaring from the port of an iPod. Still, I feel a twinge of unease. Truth is, the History Day Project has long been a sore point among some administrators and colleagues, who think it asks too much of the kids at a difficult time of year. We have revisited the subject from time to time as a department, and concluded that the pluses outweigh the minuses. For grading purposes we like to have a grade-wide substantial assessment at the end of the semester, and see bona fide value in a group undertaking in which students get to choose their topic and work on it in a planned sequence of stages. And some of the final results are truly extraordinary. Alas, that's not going to be the case here.

"I'm sorry hear that,” I say soothingly about the all-nighter. “I know that this is a difficult undertaking. That's why I always emphasize at the start of the project that students need to think carefully about with whom they're going to work and to emphasize that the quality of their collaboration is an important dimension of what this is all about. I also emphasize that they stand or fall together, and that if one kid coasts and another kid does all the work, that itself can be a valuable lesson."

"Well, I'm not sure I agree with you about that,” she says. “Don't get me wrong -- I'm not saying that Jason has handled this perfectly. He can be lazy. But I knew as soon as I heard that he was can be working with Tom were going to be problems here. Tom is a nice kid, but I don’t think he’s capable of pulling his weight, intellectually or otherwise.”

Not a kind assessment, but not an inaccurate one. I look at my computer screen. A small red box is flashing at the bottom right-hand side. It's the weather widget. That thing is always flashing red or yellow. More about drawing your eye to advertising than providing useful information. I click on it just the same.

"What I don't understand," she continues, "is the timing of this project. Why does it have to be just before the holiday break? We're leaving for St. Bart's on Friday morning. We’ve planned this trip for months, I'm pulling the kids out of school to take it.”

WINTER WEATHER ADVISORY, says the web page I’m now reading. Snow begins in the morning; six to ten inches by tomorrow night. Will she get out in time?

"Well,” I respond, “this is something we periodically have discussed going back many years. We've learned from experience that it makes more sense to have the project due before the break so that really we clear the decks for kids to have a real vacation. Nobody likes to have a big project hanging over their heads during the holidays." Actually, I have traditionally had this assignment due a week before the break, but watching my own son scramble to do his project (a documentary about strategic bombing -- the boys always seem to go for war) has led me to conclude that more time really does make a difference. He’s largely keeping me out the loop on this one, I’m happy to say. His partner’s dad is a documentary filmmaker, so that's where they're getting most of their help.

"Well I've got to tell you, an assignment like this really wreaks havoc on family life."

"Again, I'm sorry to hear that. Is there something you'd like me to do? Would you like to talk with the boys?”

“That would be good," she says. "But what would really help is giving them more time. I don't think these two really understood what they’ve gotten themselves into, and the geographic factor has really proven to be a major complication, especially because Tom has basketball practice during the week and coming up with good times to collaborate has been a major, major problem."

I can't resist a smile. Normally, I'd be in a position I really hate: having to say no. To accede to this request would not only precipitate an avalanche of similar ones -- the word would be on the street almost immediately -- but get me into trouble with my colleagues, as we've all sworn a blood oath to hold the line in the face of these pressures. I realize I'm taking a chance here, but if my bluff gets called, I can say I was certain, however mistakenly, that there was going to be a snow day.

"Well, I don't like to do this, but understand extenuating factors in this particular situation. So I'll allow Jason and Tom a little more time to finish this up. As long as I have it we get back from break, there should be no harm done."

"I really appreciate that. I want you to know that Jason loves your class.”

"Thank you. I enjoy working with him."

"The best part of this," she tells me, adopting a confiding, even conspiratorial, tone, "is that Jason will be spending the second week of the break with his father. For once in his life, the man will actually have to pay attention to his son's needs. Can't wait to see that."

"Glad to be of service," I say with a chuckle. And though I don't know why, I mean it. Though she's given me little reason to think so, I suspect her grievance with her ex, whoever he is, may well be legitimate. "Happy holidays, Ruth."

"Happy holidays to you," she replies. Pause. "Merry Christmas, Mr. Cullen.”

“Thank you,” I say. “I appreciate that. And please call me Jim.” But she’s already hung up.

Turned out to be more like a foot (and they got out in time). Thank God.

The sound of hope

in which we hear that truth is something that happens to an idea

The Felix Chronicles, # 24

I'm about to put last night's homework, the text of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's first Fireside Chat of March 12, 1933, on the Smart Board in the middle of class on a spring Friday afternoon. And then it suddenly occurs to me that there's probably an audio recording of it out there somewhere. So I do a quick Google search, and within seconds, the room is filled with the sound of FDR addressing his fellow Americans:

I want to talk for a few minutes with the people of the United States about banking -- to talk with the comparatively few who understand the mechanics of banking, but more particularly with the overwhelming majority of you who use banks for the making of deposits and the drawing of checks ....

I turn down the volume, but leave him talking as I ask: "What are you hearing? I'm not simply asking about what he's saying. I'm wondering, how does this sound to you?" A pause. The president keeps speaking.

"He sounds reassuring," Sam says.

"Yes," says Kim. "Like a father."

"He sounds kinda flat to me," Becky says. "After all I've heard about the guy, I thought he'd sound a little more inspirational."

"He sounds inspiring to me," Mindy says, and I find myself wondering whether her conviction has more to do with Becky than FDR.

"The point is, he's trying to reassure people," Sam repeats. "He's trying to explain the situation to ordinary people, who don't necessarily understand banking stuff."

"Well OK," Becky says. "But doesn't mean he can't, like, uplift them, does it?"

"It's a crisis," Lisa says, a tinge of irritation in her voice. "People need calm."

"Well it is true that it was an especially scary moment," I observe and I turn off the sound. "That long stretch of uncertainty from November of 1932, when FDR was elected, to March of 1933, when he took office, created a lot of uncertainty. (After that, lawmakers amended the Constitution to have the President take office in January, just as Obama did about 100 days ago.) The winter of '33 is probably when the nation's economy touched bottom. In part, that was not just unease about a transition, but also unease within the financial community about FDR himself. Was he really up to the job?"

"The thing that bothers me a little," Samantha says, "is that I have this sense that he's talking down to people. It's a little condescending."

"Well, yeah," Sam says, "but you're not really the target audience."

"I know," she says. "But if what Mr. Cullen just said is true, and the bankers are the ones he needs to convince, is this really the right way to do it?"

"No, it isn't. But he wants to get the rest of the country on his side. He can talk to the bankers in other ways."

"You're right, Sam," I say. "But Samantha's reaction is one that some people did have at the time. Rich people in particular were appalled by Roosevelt. They called him 'a traitor to his class,' because just like his illustrious cousin Theodore Roosevelt, he came from old money and championed the poor. And they felt he was dishonest."

"How is this dishonest?" Susan asks incredulously. "He's explaining what happens when you put money in a bank!"

"Actually, Susan, Roosevelt could be quite devious," I say. "And, in a way, he's being a little devious right at this very moment. Even as he was speaking, he had dozens of advisers -- many of them holdovers from the Hoover administration, which he attacked relentlessly when running for president -- working frantically behind the scenes to sort out good banks, bad banks, and ones that could possibly survive. But in order to that, he had to talk them up a bit. He had to make things sound better than they actually were. I wouldn't say Roosevelt lied, exactly, but let's just say he was doing a little of what politicians today call 'spin control.'"

"But he had to do that," Susan says, annoyed. "Sometimes you can't tell the whole truth."

"You speaking from experience there, Susan?"

"Mr. Cullen!" Joey interjects with exaggerated outrage. "Are you suggesting that Susan has ever been anything other than totally truthful?"

"Well, in a way, yes," I reply. (Now it's Susan's turn to exclaim "Mr. Cullen!" But I ignore that.) "Here I'm reminded of my favorite American philosopher, William James, who once said, "Truth happens to an idea." By telling people things were going to turn out fine, and acting as if things were fine, they ended up becoming so," I say. "That's one of the reasons why FDR was so powerful. You look at a picture of the guy and you see this rich man, this still good-looking man, this guy who whipped polio and you think: He's not going to fail. And he doesn't. I mean, people still debate whether the policies actually worked in the long term. But that's kind of beside the point."

I look at the clock. I've got a bus with a ten year-old on it that I've got to be at in about 20 minutes. "And so it is that I will say that I know all of you are going to do just fine when I test you on the various legislative programs of the New Deal in the final exam next month."

"Yeah, right," says Joey. As I recall, his last exam was in the mid-seventies.

"Yeah right is right," I reply. "I've got faith in you, Joey. I know this last exam is going to be real breakthrough for you.." It's a tribute him that we can have this conversation openly. His self-esteem is intact, even if his work ethic isn't.

"You're a tough bastard, Mr. Cullen, you know that?"

"Why thank you, Joey."

"You're very welcome."

"Have a good weekend, Joey. Have a good weekend, everyone."

Facebook Radio

In which we see new technology is really an old story

The Felix Chronicles, #22

"All right, Mr. Cullen," Nate says."So you've told us about movies and newspapers a hundred years ago. What about radio?"

"Yeah," Jason says. "What about radio?"

"Well, what do you want to know?"

"How did radio happen?" Jason asks. "When did people start listening to music?"

"If by 'music' you mean sound recordings, not for a long time after radio came along. Actually, the record industry hated radio. Record companies wanted no part of it."

"Really?" Lisa asks. "That's so weird."

"Well, not really. Record people thought that people would never buy music if they could get it for free."

"Well, I can kinda see that," Roy says. "My big brother tells me that there was a big fight over this company Napster a few years ago."

"Right. But that wasn't the only problem. Records also sounded lousy on early radio. Most music was live."

"That must have been cool," Joey says. "Radio today is so lame. Z-100 plays the same music over and over again."

"Actually, early radio was pretty lame," I say. "It was like local access cable today. Wayne and Garth type of stuff."

"Wayne and Garth?" Kim asks. "Who are Wayne and Garth?"

I sigh. Even pop culture that was after my time has become old. Of course I should have known when Roy referred to Napster as "this company."

"Haven't you ever seen Wayne's World?" Joey asks incredulously. He plays the air guitar and wails "Wayne'sworldWayne's world!" It's not clear whether the laughter is recognition of the riff or amusement at Joey's weirdness.

"Actually," I say, "We probably need to take a step back. The roots of radio are in telegraphy. You may remember when we talked it about that last fall: the telegraph allowed virtually instant communication between two points, connected by a wire. That was pretty amazing. But almost as soon as that happened, tinkerers and entrepreneurs began working on communication without wires -- wireless communication. By about 1900, the technology reached the point where this could happen relatively proficiently through Morse code. The big user of wireless telegraphy was the shipping business -- ports could get crowded, and accidents could happen in the dark and bad weather. Radio also had military applications that became apparent during the First World War."

"This is a little surprising," Lisa says. "That this thing we think of as entertainment was used for war."

"Not surprising at all. How do you think the Internet started?"

"What do you mean?"

"Well, the Internet was first invented by the Defense Department in the 1960s. It was made so that computers could communicate in the event of a nuclear war."

"Wow. I had no idea."

"And tape recording was invented by the Nazis so that they could give the impression that Hitler was everywhere during World War II," Tom says.

"Yup. A lot of the the things we take for granted in everyday life started out as military technologies."

"Wow," Beth says. "That's sad."

"Yes, Beth, it is. "Radio became a form of entertainment pretty quickly, if not in the way you might think. By about 1920 a new hobby had emerged of so-called "radio hams" who set up communication systems in their basements and began signalling each other. By this point, the technology had improved to the point where it was possible to transmit the human voice. These guys were often total dweebs who were obsessed with distance." Here I adopt the voice of an imagined radio ham shouting to his wife upstairs: 'Hey honey! Listen to this! I got a guy here in Cleveland! Can you believe that? He says it's raining in Ohio!' The class laughs.

"This is kind of how I imagine Bill Gates in the seventies," I say. "He was a dork, too. They may strike out with girls, but end up running the world. You can imagine he got good looking pretty fast after he started Microsoft." Some amused smiles at this.

"So how did we get from that to listening to music?" Sam asks.

"Well, it began with an engineer outside of Pittsburgh," I answer. "This guy had the bright idea of transmitting music and other information to multiple people at the same time, people who didn't need or even want to talk back. So it was that radio broadcasting was born. People started buying just receivers rather than both halves of the set."

"So that's how we got Z-100," Joey says.

"Not quite. You're making it a much more straight line than it actually was."

"Really?" Kim asks. "Why?"

"Well, " I say, "early radio was a little like Facebook or Twitter."

"This I've got to hear," Susan says.

"What's Twitter?" Mindy asks.

"You don't know Twitter?" a bunch of voices ask in unison. I must say I'm surprised as well. But I don't want to get sidetracked.

"Well, like Facebook or Twitter, early radio was this big novelty item," I explain. "People were really intrigued by it. But people didn't quite know what to do with it, either. The rules weren't really clear, if you know what I mean. Just like we try to sort out what it means to 'friend' someone, people were trying to figure out what should go on the radio. In the early days, schools, labor unions, churches, even department stores owned radio stations. You could hear lectures, or sermons, or even college lectures -- "

'"Like those podcasts you can get at the iTunes store," Nate interrupts.

"Right. You could also hear really amateur entertainment. Like your neighborhood singing group. Or a local magician."

"Oh -- so now I see what you mean by Wayne's World," Sam says.

"Yes. A lot of it was really amateurish stuff."

"Like all those tweets people send around."

"Like those tweets," I affirm, never having Twittered myself. "But still, people were excited. And more than just a bunch of lame entertainers. People sensed there was serious money in radio. Just like they do in Facebook. The people who run Facebook today are sitting on hundreds of millions of dollars from investors. But no one is sure when, or even if, it will ever make any real money. They're just hoping."

"Yeah, Facebook is like radio in that people just like to lurk," Samantha says. "I never say much on Facebook. But I like to see what other people are doing."

"I love posting to Facebook," Lisa says. "What's the point if you don't participate?"

"Well, you may be pointing out an important difference between radio and Facebook," I say. Actually, it's the interactive dimension to Facebook that makes it the reason why people refer to it and things like Twitter as 'Internet 2.0.' The second generation of the Internet. Sort of what like sound movies were to silent pictures."

"So how did radio make money?" Kim asks.

Wanna take a guess?"

"By selling radio sets?"

"Not a bad answer. Actually, there was some money in that."

"Did people pay to go on the radio?" Ellen asks.

"Well, no, if by 'people' you mean entertainers. But you're on the right track."

"You mean advertisers?" Kim asks. As always, her curiosity is consistent and focused.

"Right. Advertising. Companies like Ever Ready batteries would pay to sponsor a show. That really drove up the quality of what it was possible to do. Proctor and Gamble, for example, would pay for the production of radio plays, aimed at middle-class women, who were often stay-at-home wives and mothers. They came to be known as soap operas."

"Aaah," Becky, who has been quiet today, says. "So that's where they came from!"

"Not that everyone was happy about advertising," I note. "You're probably too young to remember" -- by this point in the class, I've recalibrated my sense of generational time -- "but when the Internet became a presence in everyday life, there were a lot of people who were afraid of, and resented, the commercialization of the web. They didn't want advertising. Of course, they lost. There were people like that in radio, too. Those churches and unions, for example. By the 1930s, the Federal Radio Commission, headed by a guy named Herbert Hoover, gave all the best wavelengths -- like the one for Z-100 -- to commercial interests, while non-profit stations literally got shoved to the side, like 87 or 90 or something. There are always winners and losers when a new technology comes along. Which is not to say that big business always wins out. In England, for example, the government kept control and used money from taxes on radio sets to create the British Broadcasting Corporation, or BBC."

"Which gave us Monty Python," Joey notes. "The Ministry of Funny Walks."

"Indeed. Bring out your dead."

"What's he talking about?" Liza whispers to Mindy.

"And what about television?" Kim asks. I look at the clock. Class is over.

"That's another story. But let me say this: the technology for TV was already in place in the early 1920s -- even before radio took off. Revenue from radio was used to develop television. But TV took much longer to arrive than anyone figured. Partly that was World War II -- a lot of the talent and energy went into radar instead. The point here being that ability to do something doesn't mean that it's going to happen quickly or in a predictable manner."

Notebooks flip; laptops close.

"So, Mr. Cullen, does this mean you'll friend me on Facebook now?" Becky asks as she gets up with everyone else to leave.

"Nope."

"Why not?"

"Because I'm an old man."

"So?" (Alas, she doesn't contest my self-description.) "What does that have to do with anything?"

"Because I'm like Moses. I see the promised land. But I won't cross over into it with you. Think of me fondly when your kid shoves a gadget in your face whose appeal, if not operation, you find utterly incomprehensible."

She smiles: she can see this. I'm so pleased. "All right then. Have a good day, Mr. Cullen."

"Have a good decade, Becky." But already out the door, she doesn't hear me. With the room now empty, I can finally check my email.

Jay's way

In which a teacher prods a class to cast a cold eye on an American Dream

The Felix Chronicles, #21

JAY GATSBY IS A PATHETIC FRAUD.

I point to the file I've just clicked open on the Smart Board. It's a document in bold type, consisting of nothing but those five words. “What do you think, folks? Is Gatsby a pathetic fraud?”

"Absolutely," say Roy without hesitation.

"He is not!" says Kim.

“He makes up his identity,” Roy says. “Gatsby pretends to be something he’s not.”

"So you think he's a fraud, Roy," I say. "And pathetic?"

Roy is nodding his assent when Jason jumps in.“No,” he says. “Because even though Gatsby makes things up Nick Carraway admires his hope and his ambition.”

“Well that’s what Nick thinks,” I say. “That’s what Jason thinks, too?”

He nods. “Yes, I do.”

Becky weighs in. “He was definitely a fraud, she says. But I’m not sure about pathetic. He did questionable things on the way up, but the fact that he was striving for something – he might not be pathetic.”

“Oh no, he’s definitely pathetic and a fraud, says Nate. "He got where he was through fraudulence, cheating and going around the law –”

I interrupt: “That’s fraud in the legal sense of the term. A crime.”

“Yes, he continues, and he’s pathetic in the desperation with which he wants Daisy Buchanan."

"Okay. But let’s step back,” I say. “When you’re confronted with a statement like 'Jay Gatsby is a pathetic fraud,' what’s the first thing you should do?”

A moment of silence. I don’t expect an instant answer – actually, I’ll feel better if it emerges after a moment of consideration – but I’ve been hammering at this point long enough in our papers and our discussions to expect at least some clarity on this point.

I hear an indistinct female voice. “Define.” A little tentative, but at least it’s an assertion, not a question.

“Right,” I say emphatically. “You’ve got to define your terms. Now let’s go back to the easier part of this: Is Jay Gatsby a fraud?”

A chorus of voices: “Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because he pretends to be someone he’s not,” Ellen says. I note that at least some of the facts are reasonably clear: the man who calls himself Jay Gatsby was actually born James Gatz, he makes inaccurate factual statements about his background (among them that he lived in San Francisco, which he describes as “the Middle West”), and so on. There are other, unverifiable claims he makes that we can regard with some suspicion, but in any event there is no empirical doubt – the man says things that aren’t true, ipso facto (I slip in a little vocabulary building here) he is a fraud. Right?

I’m expecting, even inviting, a challenge, but I don’t expect it to come from Nate. I’m not so sure, he says.

“Wait a second – didn’t you just say he was both pathetic and a fraud?”

“Well, I’m thinking about it,” he says. Noting Ellen’s observation that he created a character for himself, Nate notes that when James Gatz adopted the identity of Jay Gatsby, he invented that person and became that person. He followed all the rules of the person he invented.

“So,” I say by way of offering an example, when Gatsby describes himself as “an Oxford man,” he’s saying something that’s factually accurate – he did go to Oxford – just not in the way people customarily think of it, getting an undergraduate degree and the like.

“Exactly.”

Joey jumps in. “They’re all a bunch of frauds.”

Really? How so?

“Daisy is pretending to be a faithful wife; Myrtle is pretending to be belong in the world of Tom, with whom she’s having an affair, Jordan is pretending . . . .”

“ . . . that she cares about anyone but herself?” I offer. Joey nods. We all get the point.

“Of course,” I say after a pause, “by this standard, we’re probably all frauds.” No takers on that one.

“The point about Gatsby,” Kim says, "is that Gatsby seems to have a kind of higher purpose. That’s why Nick admires him.”

Nick Carraway again. I don’t want them to lean on him so much. At least right now.

“Okay,” I say. “You understand my real point here, which is less about whether Gatsby is or isn’t a fraud, and more about having a clear standard by which you measure the term. Now let’s move on to a term I suspect is a little less clear: pathetic. What does it mean to be pathetic?”

A long pause. I repeat the question.

“Lame, “says Nate. “That’s a word that comes to mind.”

“To get to a desperation point, says Liza. To stoop to a certain point.”

Another pause.

“I guess it’s time for me to share my secret dream with you,” I tell the class. “My secret dream – I take a suspense-building breath – is that I really think I can make it in the NBA. I want to become a professional basketball player.”

A few smiles.

“I mean, yeah, sure, it’s a long shot. Yes, I’ll have to lose a few pounds, work out a little harder. And yes, I’m not all that tall. But if I’m willing to work at it, and give it everything I’ve got, I mean, why not? I can do this! I mean, this is America, right?”

By this point in the school year, they’re used to this routine. No one is jumping to take the bait. “So I ask: Am I pathetic?”

“No,” says Kim. “You’re not pathetic.”

“Why not?”

“Because I think that having dreams is never pathetic.”

“Even my dream of playing in the NBA?”

“No matter how unattainable dreams may be.”

“Wait a second, I say in a voice of mock indignation. Are you suggesting my dream is unattainable?”

“No! NoNoNo!” The class relieves itself in collective laughter as Kim struggles to avoid giving offense. “Your problem is you’re too nice,” I tell her, as the class laughs some more – a well-known aspect of her personality is suddenly on public view, and my guess is that not all of this laughter is entirely sympathetic. Do they also see her grit? She waits for the laughter to subside to finish making her point. “Striving for a dream is never pathetic," she insists. "Even if it’s unattainable. That may be hard for a person to deal with in the end, but it’s not pathetic. Gatsby realizes that his dream is never what he made it out to be, but – "

“– are you saying Gatsby’s dream is also unattainable?”

“Well, he kind of got her, at least at first. But what I mean is that dreams and goals are what make life . . . . “

I finish her sentence: “Miserable?” The class roars with laughter. It feels like some tension is being discharged.

“No! No!” Kim shouts fruitlessly among the din. But it’s clear she’s not quite ready to yield.

This is good.

“Dreams are vicious things, Kim, are they not?”

“No.” She sounds almost contrite.

“No?”

“No.” (A little more assertive.) “You have to keep pushing. You have to deal with the pain of it, and maybe have a new dream. Because that’s how you keep going, how you keep going forward.”

I’m moved by her ingenuousness, but say nothing. Instead, I shift my gaze to Joey, who has been watching these proceedings with unfeigned amusement. “Do you endorse my dream of making it in the NBA? You think I should do it?”

He shrugs. “Sure,” he says, an affirmation of heartless indifference.

“Wow,” I reply with exaggerated indignation. “I can't tell who's more cruel. Kim for encouraging me, or you for dismissing me.”

"I'm not cruel!" Kim protests.

Ellen is more measured. “If you’re striving to better yourself, that’s fine, she says. "But if you start closing off other avenues – like if you quit your day job and waste all this money training –"

“What are you implying?”

“Well, obviously you can’t make it in the NBA.”

“Oh really? Well what if I’m a Kim guy and insist on it? That makes me pathetic?”

“In my opinion, yes.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re throwing away what you have for the sake of something that’s never going to happen.”

“Hmmm.” Silently putting aside the question of just what she’s referring to in what she thinks I have, I shake my head and say she’s given us a pretty good definition of pathetic. Does it apply to Gatsby? Is he pathetic for chasing Daisy?

“Yes. “

“Why?”

“He wants to repeat the past, he wants to take back those five years,” she says, referring to a famous line in the novel (“Can’t repeat the past? Why of course you can!”). Gatsby wants Daisy not to have married, not to have had a daughter, not to have never had feelings for her husband Tom.

“That’s pathetic.”

The clarity of Ellen’s reasoning is impressive. I wonder if she has effectively played out the string. But then Joey continues to develop his earlier point. “Actually," he says, "it’s the other characters in the book who strike me as more pathetic.”

“Really? How so?”

“They’re so bored with themselves. They don’t know what to do.”

“Why is that pathetic? I mean, maybe it’s obnoxious, or just unattractive. But pathetic?”

“I think it’s pathetic, I guess, because they don’t have dreams.” (Shades of Kim here – who would have thought?) “Because they’re already wealthy.”

I note that Liza had used the word “desperate” when we began trying to define the word “pathetic.” But the characters of Daisy, Tom, Jordan: Are they desperate?

“Yeah, I think so,” Joey replies. “Daisy is desperate to do something with her life.”

“All right then. So here’s our Spark Notes summary of The Great Gatsby” (a few chuckles as I speak): “It’s a book about desperately pathetic frauds, of whom Gatsby is the least pathetic and fraudulent.”

I’m inviting disagreement, but assume it’s going to take a moment to coalesce. So I’m particularly surprised when Ginger raises her hand with a face that suggests obvious dissent. For months now, I’ve been using every official channel (and a few unofficial ones, like a word to her advisor) to tell Ginger I’d like to hear from her more. In part this is because her exams and essays are so weak that class participation is the one avenue I see open in terms of having a discretionary lever with which to raise her grade into the relatively safe C range. The one time we had a conversation about this directly, she grew defensive to the point of hostility. I don’t think of her as especially bright – in the terminology my wife sometimes casually uses in the privacy of the dinner table, she has “a gray matter issue” – which she may know and believe independently. Alas, her pattern of diffidence may the most concrete evidence I have of relevant intelligence. I'm reminded of the old Abe Lincoln joke: it's better to be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove any doubt.

“I just don’t see him as a pathetic fraud, she says. Actually, I think he’s kind of a tragic hero.”

Not bad, Ginger, I think. Not bad at all. “Well now, that’s a term we haven’t heard in this discussion. Tragic hero? How so?”

“Well, because of stuff that people like Kim and Jason have been saying. He has something and he works hard toward it. He’s like the most developed character in the book.”

Chris, who has been quiet thus far, has raised his hand, ready to take it from there. I’m pleased. There’s something palpably sane about Chris – he’s consistently pragmatic in his commentary, while evincing a sense of sympathy for any character he’s assessing, whether real or fictional. He seems like he’d be a great friend. The thought occurs to me that he’s gay (a couple gestures, his well-known presence with the theater crowd), which, if true, is an orientation he seems to inhabit with a sense of equilibrium uncommon in adolescents. I find myself wondering to what degree his parents get credit for that. “I agree with Ginger, he’s now saying. "I think we’re putting far too much emphasis on the attainability of the dream in deciding whether it’s pathetic or not. Actually, I think Gatsby was successful on a lot of levels. He imagined a life, he lived it out, he gained a lot of respect –"

“Well OK,” I acknowledge. “That’s true. But those are means, not ends. You’re saying that if I lose twenty pounds, improve my jump shot, maybe improve my sense of athletic fashion, I’m not pathetic, even if I don’t make it to the NBA, right?”

“Right. Because you’ve moved toward your goal –"

“ – as long,” Ellen chimes in, “as you don’t let it define your life.”

I nod, considering this approvingly. “All right. I’ll buy that. But let me ask you this: To what degree does the goal itself matter? Maybe it’s not pathetic to devote, or even lose, your life in a quest for world peace or to defeat racism. But Gatsby had a dream of winning the heart of Daisy. Here I gotta ask: Daisy? Like me in the NBA, no? More to the point: What kind of dream is Daisy? I’ll tell you what makes Gatsby pathetic: It’s that Daisy is what he wants!” Here I make feminine gestures with my hands and adopt the most ridiculous voice I can muster, quoting her inane reaction to Gatsby’s wardrobe when getting a tour of his house: “Oh the shirts! I don’t think I’ve ever seen such beautiful shirts before!” I know that the laughter that ensues is as much for how foolish I look in mocking Daisy than in the foolishness of Daisy herself.

Kim’s not interested in a cheap laugh. “I don’t think it’s really about Daisy, she says, as if she hadn’t heard anything but my question. It’s more that Daisy is a symbol of a larger dream.”

“Yes,” says Chris. “I mean even when he was a kid, Gatsby was making that list of things to do.”

“Like ‘Be Nicer to Parents,’” I quote, part of an inventory that included “study needed inventions” and “practice elocution,” suggesting that Gatsby was a kind of warped Benjamin Franklin from the very beginning. “Be nicer to parents: Now there’s a moron for you.”

Kim is still working through her idea. “Daisy represents everything that Gatsby wants, she’s saying. It’s the house, the pool, the status.”

“So Gatsby objectifies her? She’s a status symbol?

Yeah.

“Unlike all of you, who when you fall in love are actually in love with the authentic person, not some notion of what they appear to be. I’m almost sneering here. But we don’t make that mistake now, do we?”

Kim is trying to sidestep the question. “Well, that’s what he does, seeing her as the missing piece to a puzzle.”

“But that’s pretty shallow, isn’t it?”

“I guess so.”

“I mean, you wouldn’t make a mistake like that, now would you, Kim?” Kim clearly doesn’t like this line of questioning. I don’t blame her. Fortunately for her, class is just about over.

“I guess not, she says.” Books are closing. The classroom door has opened slightly; kids waiting to get in are sending a not-so-subtle signal. With a wry smile, I gesture toward the door. “All right then. See you tomorrow.” Class has ended on a discordant note. I’m satisfied.

“I guess not,” I repeat aloud to no one in particular as I gather my notes. Eduardo, the ethics teacher who has the class next, makes a gesture of hello as he tinkers with the Smart Board behind me, making the question of Gatsby’s pathetic fraudulence disappear. I guess not, too. Kim’s a pretty level-headed kid – diligent, committed, maybe a streak of melancholy. Then again, plenty of smart people have done plenty of dumb things when it comes to matters of the heart.

But that’s where we are: in the realm of educating guesses. In wonder how many of these kids were aware that for most of the last fifty minutes this was only nominally a History class. The interdisciplinary reach into English could be justified relatively easily; the move into judging Gatsby’s dream is more of a stretch. That’s not only because the discussion was conducted on ahistorical terms – we treated Gatsby’s dream as if it was a current event when in fact there are all kinds of ways it was historically determined – but because the line of discussion led me to query the ingenuous Kim about a matter that’s none of my business. I claim no special expertise in measuring the legitimacy or basis of love (though I perhaps illegitimately count the fact that I’ve managed to stay married for twenty years as among my most substantial accomplishments), and even if I did, the notion that a lively discussion in history class might avoid a broken heart is a conceit that . . . well, that’s exactly what it is: a conceit. I am the true pathetic fraud here, acting as if any of this really makes a difference.

Very well then. Let the dream begin again.