english essays writing course for advanced students

OUR SON MARK Hoagland, Edward ON ESSAYS Jones, LeRoi Amiri Baraka CITY OF HARLEM Kingston, Maxine Hong THE MISERY OF SILENCE Kuh, Katherine MODERN ART Lakoff, Robin YOU ARE WHAT YOU

Complex Systems

in Education

ESSAYS Writing

COURSE

Complex Course on Writing English and American Essays for

Advanced Students

English Language Programs Division

Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs

United States Information Agency,

How to Use this Complex Course

Preface

Some years ago, a visitor to our office, a professor of English at a large foreign university, asked if the English Language Programs Division had published a book of American essays for foreign students – especially students at the advanced level Having to respond in the negative, I was, nonetheless, “intrigued” by the idea of a collection of essays that would form

a source of stimulating ideas or thoughts that could be thoroughly examined

in the EFL classroom, discussed and debated in free conversation, and perhaps, ultimately, lead to a significant growth in the exchange of information between cultures – via the printed page

From this rationale, then, there issues an explanation for the title, Mind Speaks to Mind, which itself is an “exchange of information” between the editor and Edward Hoagland in his essay, “On Essays”! And, readers are encouraged to study this essay first as a type of guideline concerning the nature/purpose of the essay It is found on page 26

For ease of reference, the essays are presented in alphabetical order according to the last name of the author This does not mean, however, that teachers should adhere strictly to this order of presentation Given the varied scope and subject matter of the essays, teachers should feel free to establish their own order of presentation within the classroom in accord with the needs and interests of their students

The reader who enjoys pursuing ideas into the realm of discussion and philosophical concert will find in this short collection ample proof that the liveliness of the essay is still an inspirational key to the unlocking of communication – that continually desired goal of every teacher of language the world around!

Contents

Author Title of Essay Page

Bettelheim, Bruno THE ART OF MOTION PICTURES

Buckley, William F Jr UP FROM MISERY

Calandra, Alexander ANGELS ON A PIN

Carnegie, Andrew HOW I SERVED MY APPRENTICESHIP

Epstein, Joseph THE VIRTUES OF AMBITION

Hayakawa, S I OUR SON MARK

Hoagland, Edward ON ESSAYS

Jones, LeRoi (Amiri Baraka) CITY OF HARLEM

Kingston, Maxine Hong THE MISERY OF SILENCE

Kuh, Katherine MODERN ART

Lakoff, Robin YOU ARE WHAT YOU SAY

Morrow, Lance THE VALUE OF WORKING

Postman, Neil SILENT QUESTIONS

Rodriguez, Richard AN EDUCATION IN LANGUAGE

Ryan, William MINE, ALL MINE

Seattle, Chief MY PEOPLE

Thompson, W Furness WHY DO NOT SCIENTISTS ADMIT

THEY ARE HUMAN?

Viorst, Judith FRIENDS, GOOD FRIENDS

AND SUCH GOOD FRIENDS

BRUNO BETTELHEIM

Bruno Bettelheim was born in Vienna in 1903 and emigrated to the United States from Austria in 1939 A psychologist, Bettelheim, for thirty years, was on the faculty of the University of Chicago where he also was director of the Orthogenic School for Disturbed Children The latter experience helped to provide him with subject matter for a number of books concerning the inner lives of children, of which The Informed Heart, published in 1960, is one of the most well-known Bettelheim, however, has not limited his writings to the field of child psychology but has written on subjects ranging porn social change to fairy tales

Whether we like it or not – and many may disagree with my thesis because painting, or music, or some other art is more important to them – the art of the moving image is the only art truly of our time, whether it is in the form of the film or television The moving picture is our universal art, which comprises all others, literature and acting, stage design and music, dance and the beauty of nature, and, most of all, the use of light and of colour It is always about us, because the medium is truly part of the message and the medium of the moving image is uniquely modern Everybody can understand it, as everyone once understood religious art in church And as people used

to go to church on Sundays (and still do), so the majority today go to the movies on weekends But while in the past most went to church only on some days, now everybody watches moving images every day All age groups watch moving pictures, and they watch them for many more hours than people have ever spent in churches Children and adults watch them separately or together; in many ways and for many people, it is the only experience common to parents and children It is the only art today that appeals to all social and economic classes, in short, that appeals to everybody, as did religious art in times past The moving picture is thus by far the most popular art of our time, and it is also the most authentically American of arts

When I speak here of the moving picture as the authentic American art of our time,

I do not think of art with a capital A, nor of “high” art Putting art on a pedestal robs it of its vitality When the great medieval and Renaissance cathedrals were erected, and decorated outside and in with art, these were popular works, that meant something to everybody

Some were great works of art, others not, but every piece was significant and all took pride in each of them Some gain their spiritual experience from the masterpiece, but many more gain it from the mediocre works that express the same vision as the masterpiece but in a more accessible form This is as true church music or the church itself as for paintings and sculptures This diversity of art objects achieves a unity, and

1 Copyright © 1990 by Bruno Bettelheim From FREUD'S VIENNA AND

OTHER ESSAYS by Bruno Bettelheim Reprinted by permission of Alfred

A Knopf, Inc

differences in quality are important, prove e t ey a represent, each in its own way, the overarching vision and experience of a larger, important cosmos Such a vision confers meaning and dignity on our existence, and is what forms the essence of art

So among the worst detriments to the health development of the art of the moving pictures are efforts by aesthetes and critics to isolate the art of m from popular movies and television Nothing could be more contra to the true spirit of art Whenever art was vital, it was always equally popular with the ordinary man an the most refined person Had Greek drama and comedy meant nothing to most citizens, the majority of the population would not have sat all day long entranced on hard stone slabs, watching the events on the stage; nor would the entire population have conferred prizes on the winning dramatist The medieval pageants and mystery plays out of which modern drama grew were popular entertainments, as were the plays of Shakespeare Michelangelo’s David stood at the most public place in Florence, embodying the people's vision that tyranny must be overthrown, while it also related to their religious vision, as it represented the myth of David and Goliath Everybody admired the statue; it was simultaneously popular and great art, but one did not think of it in such disparate terms Neither should we To live well we need both: visions that i t us up, and entertainment that is down to earth, provided both art and entertainment, each in its different form and way, are embodiments of the same visions of man If art does not speak to all of us, common men and elites alike, it fails to address itself to that true humanity that is common to all of us A different art for the elites and another one for average man tears society; it offends what we most need: visions that bind us together

in common experiences that make life worth living

When I speak of an affirmation of man, I do not mean the presentation of fake images of life as wonderfully pleasant Life is best celebrated in the form of a battle against its inequities, of struggles, of dignity in defeat, of the greatness of discovering oneself and the other

Quite a few moving pictures have conveyed such visions In Kagemusha, the great beauty of the historical costumes, the cloak-and-dagger story with its beguiling Oriental settings, the stately proceedings, the pageantry of marching and fighting armies, the magnificent rendering of nature, the consummate acting – all these entrance us and convince us of the correctness of the vision here: the greatness of the most ordinary of men The hero, a petty thief who turns impostor, grows before our eyes into greatness, although it costs him his life The story takes place in sixteenth-century Japan, but the hero is of all times and classes: he accepts a destiny into which he is projected by church and turns a false existence into a real one At the end, only because he wants to

be true to his new self, he sacrifices his life and thus achieves the acme of suffering and human greatness Nobody wants him to do so Nobody but he will ever know that he did

it Nobody but the audience observes it He does it only for himself – it has no consequences whatsoever for anybody or anything else He does it out of convict; this

is his greatness Life that permits the lowest of men to achieve such dignity is life worth living; even if in the end it defeats him, as it will defeat all who are mortal Two other films, very different, render parallel visions that celebrate life, a celebration in which we,

as viewers, vicariously participate although we are saddened by the hero’s defeat

The first was known in the United States by its English name, The Last Laugh, although its original title, The Last Man, was more appropriate It is the story of the doorman of a hotel who is demoted to cleaning washrooms

The other movie is Patton In one of these films the hero stands on the lowest rung

of society and existence; in the other, he is on society's highest level In both pictures

we are led to admire a man's struggle to discover who he really is, for, in doing so, he achieves tragic greatness These three films, as do many others, affirm man and life, and so inspire in us visions that can sustain us My choice of these three films out of many is arbitrary What I want to illustrate is their celebration of life in forms appropriate

to an age in which self-discovery may exact the highest possible price Only through incorporating such visions can we achieve satisfaction with our own life, defeat and transcend existential despair

What our society suffers from most today is the absence of consensus about what

it and life in it ought to be Such consensus cannot be gained from society’s present stage, or from fantasies about what it ought to be For that the present is too close and too diversified, and the future too uncertain, to make believable claims about it A consensus in the present hence can be achieved only through a shared understanding

of the past, as Homer's epics informed those who lived centuries later what it meant to

be Greek, and by what images and ideals they were to live their lives and organise their societies

Most societies derive consensus from a long history, a language all their own, a common religion, common ancestry The myths by which they live are based on all of these But the United States is a country of immigrants, coming from a great variety of nations Lately, it has been emphasised that an asocial, narcissistic personality has become characteristic of Americans, and that it is this type of personality that makes for the malaise, because it prevents us from achieving a consensus that would counteract a tendency to withdraw into private worlds In his study of narcissism, Christopher Lasch says that modern man, "tortured by self-consciousness, turns to new cults and therapies not to free himself of his personal obsessions but to find meaning and purpose in life, to find something to live for." There is widespread distress because national morale has declined, and we have lost an earlier sense of national vision and purpose

Contrary to rigid religions or political beliefs, as are found in totalitarian societies, our culture is one of great individual differences, at least in principle and in theory But this leads to disunity, even chaos Americans believe in the value of diversity, but just because ours is a society based on individual diversity, it needs consensus about some over-arching ideas more than societies based on the uniform origin of their citizens Hence, if we are to have consensus, it must be based on a myth – a vision – about

a common experience, a conquest that made us Americans, as the myth about the conquest of Troy formed the Greeks Only a common myth can offer relief from the fear that life is without meaning or purpose Myths permit us to examine our place in the world by comparing it to a shared idea Myths are shared fantasies that form the tie that binds the individual to other members of his group Such myths help to ward off feelings

of isolation, guilt, anxiety, and purposelessness in short, they combat isolation and anomie

We used to have a myth that bound us together; in The American Adam, R.W.B Lewis summarises the myth by which Americans used to live:

God decided to give man another chance by opening up a new world across the sea Practically vacant, this glorious land had almost inexhaustible natural resources Many people came to this new world They were people of special energy, self-reliance, intuitive intelligence, and purity of heart… This nation’s special mission in the world would be to serve as the moral guide for all other nations

The movies used to transmit this myth, particularly the westerns, which presented the challenge of bringing civilisation to places where before there was none The same movies also suggested the danger of that chaos; the wagon train symbolised the community men must form on such a perilous journey into the untamed wilderness, which in turn became a symbol for all that is untamed within ourselves Thus the western gave us a vision of the need for co-operation and civilisation, because without it man would perish Another symbol often used in these westerns was the railroad, which formed the link between wilderness and civilisation The railroad was the symbol of man’s role as civiliser

Robert Warshow delineates in The Immediate Experience how the hero of the western – the gunfighter – symbolises man’s potential: to become either an outlaw or a sheriff In the latter role, the gunfighter was the hero of the past, and his opening of the West was our mythos, our equivalent of the Trojan War Like all such heroes, the sheriff experienced victories and defeats, but, through these experiences, he grew wiser and learned to accept the limitations that civilisation imposes

This was a wonderful vision of man – or the United States – in the New World; it was a myth by which one could live and grow, and it served as a consensus about what

it meant to be an American But although most of us continue to enjoy this myth, by now

it has lost most of its vitality We have become too aware of the destruction of nature and of the American Indian part of the reality of opening the West – to be able to savour this myth fully; and, just as important, it is based on an open frontier that no longer exists But the nostalgic infatuation with the western suggests how much we are

in need of a myth about the past that cannot be invalidated by the realities of today We want to share a vision, one that would enlighten us about what it means to be an American today, so that we can be proud not only of our heritage but also of the world

we are building together

Unfortunately, we have no such myth, nor, by extension, any that reflects what is involved in growing up The child, like the society, needs such myths to provide him with ideas of what difficulties are involved in maturation Fairy tales used to fill this need, and they would still do so, if we would take them seriously But sugar-sweet movies of the Disney variety fail to take seriously the world of the child – the immense problems with which the child has to struggle as he grows up, to make himself free from the bonds that tie him to his parents, and to test his own strength Instead of helping the child, who wants to understand the difficulties ahead, these shows talk down to him, insult his intelligence, and lower his aspirations

While most of the popular shows for children fall short of what the child needs most, others at least provide him with some of the fantasies that relieve pressing anxieties, and this is the reason for their popularity Superman, Wonder Woman, and the Bionic Woman stimulate the child's fantasies about being strong and invulnerable, and this offers some relief from being overwhelmed by the powerful adults who control his existence The Incredible Hulk affords a confrontation with destructive anger

Watching the Hulk on one of his rampages permits a vicarious experience of anger without having to feel guilty about it or anxious about the consequences, because the Hulk attacks only bad people As food for fantasies that offer temporary relief, such shows have a certain value, but they do not provide material leading to higher integration, as myths do

Science-fiction movies can serve as myths about the future and thus give us some assurance about it Whether the film is 2001 or Star Wars, such movies tell about progress that will expand man's powers and his experiences beyond anything now believed possible, while they assure us that all these advances will not obliterate man or life as we now know it Thus one great anxiety about the future – that it will have no place for us as we now are – is allayed by such myths They also promise that even in the most distant future, and despite the progress that will have occurred in the material world, man’s basic concerns will be the same, and the struggle of good against evil – the central moral problem of our time will not have lost its importance Past and future are the lasting dimensions of our lives: the present is but a fleeting moment So these visions about the future also contain our past; in Star Wars, battles are fought around issues that also motivated man in the past There is good reason that Yoda appears in George Lucas’s film: he is but a reincarnation of the teddy bear of infancy, to which we turn for solace; and the Yedi Knight is the wise old man, or the helpful animal, of the fairy tale, the promise from our distant past that we shall be able to rise to meet the most difficult tasks life can present us with Thus, any vision about the future is really based on visions of the past, because that is all we can know for certain

As our religious myths about the future never went beyond Judgement Day, so our modern myths about the future cannot go beyond the search for life's deeper meaning The reason is that only as long as the choice between good and evil remains man’s paramount moral problem does life retain that special dignity that derives from our ability to choose between the two A world in which this conflict has been permanently resolved eliminates man as we know him It might be a universe peopled by angels, but

it has no place for man

What Americans need most is a consensus that includes the idea of individual freedom, as well as acceptance of the plurality of ethnic backgrounds and religious beliefs inherent in the population Such consensus must rest on convictions about moral values and the validity of overarching ideas Art can do this because a basic ingredient

of the aesthetic experience is that it binds together diverse elements But only the ruling art of a period is apt to provide such unity: for the Greeks, it was classical art; for the British, Elizabethan art; for the many petty German states, it was their classical art Today, for the United States, it has to be the moving picture, the central art of our time, because no other art experience is so o n and accessible to eve one

The moving picture is a visual art, based on sight Speaking to our vision, it ought

to provide us with the visions enabling us to live the good life; it ought to give us insight into ourselves About a hundred years ago, Tolstoy wrote, “Art is a human activity having for its purpose the transmission to others of the highest and best feelings to which men have risen” Later, Robert Frost defined poetry as “beginning in delight and ending in wisdom” Thus it might be said that the state of the art of the moving image can be assessed by the degree to which it meets the mythopoetic task of giving us myths suitable to live by in our time – visions that transmit to us the highest and best feelings to which men have risen – and by how well the moving images give us that

delight which leads to wisdom Let us hope that the art of the moving image, this most authentic American art, will soon meet the challenge of becoming truly the real art of our age

Questions for Discussion:

1 Why does Bettelheim believe that, in the United States, the movie picture is the central art of our time? How does he feel that the moving picture can give Americans

“myths suitable to live by”?

2 How does Bettelheim support his thesis that the moving picture is the “only true art

of our time”?

3 How does the author view art? Why does he consider the moving picture “the most authentically American of arts”?

4 What does Bettelheim mean by the word myth? What caused the decline of the myth

in the American West?

5 According to the author, what does American society lack the most? What can movies do to help overcome this deficiency?

6 What is the relationship of Bettelheim’s mention of the films, Kagemusha, The Last Laugh, and Patton to the thesis of his essay?

7 Does the author give reasons for his statement in paragraph 12 that Americans

“have lost an earlier sense of national vision and purpose”?

8 According to Bettelheim, what was the role of the American western film in promulgating the “myth” that bound Americans together?

9 What are the weaknesses of Disney movies in the author’s opinion?

10 What function can science fiction movies play with regard to the American myth?

Exploring Ideas

1 How is your idea of art similar or different from that of the author?

2 Bettelheim says that in giving us myths to live by movies give us “visions that transmit to us the highest and best feelings to which men have risen” Apply this criterion to some movie you have seen recently What criterion of your own have you established for judging movies? To what extent do you agree or disagree with Bettelheim's criterion?

3 How do you react to the following observations made by the author? Discuss

them with your classmates

(a) “Only as long as the choice between good and evil remain man’s paramount moral problem does life retain that special dignity that derives from our ability to choose between the two”

(b) “This diversity of art objects achieves a unity, and differences in quality are important, provided they all represent, each in its own way, the overarching vision and experience of a larger, important cosmos”

(c) "If art does not speak to all of us, common man and elites alike, its fails to address itself to that true humanity that is common to all of us."

(d) "Life is best celebrated in the form of a battle against its inequities, of struggles, of dignity in defeat, of the greatness of discovering oneself and the other."

WILLIAM F BUCKLEY, JR

William F Buckley, Jr was born in New York City in 1925 He graduated from Yale University in 1950; while there he wrote his first book, God and Man at Yale (1951) For many years Buckley has gained fame as an articulate spokesman for the political right in the United States For thirty years he has edited the National Review, the U.S leading conservative magazine Buckley also is well-known for his interview program on television The following essay is one of his syndicated newspaper columns, which are published thrice weekly

A friend of long standing who has never asked me to devote this space to advertising any enthusiasm of his has now, diffidently, made the exception He does not want to do anything less than what he can do, through his own efforts and those of his friends, to pass along the word that, within walking distance of the great majority of Americans, there is help waiting which can lead them out of the darkness, as indisputably as an eye surgeon, restoring sight, can lead someone into the sunlight Kenneth (we'll call him) is a cocky fellow, something of a sport, tough-talking, an ace in his individualistic profession, who remembers getting drunk at college in the late 20’s on the night he won an important boxing match, but at no other time during his college career Emerging from college into the professional world, he revved up slowly, hitting in his late 30's his cruising speed: two or three martinis per day These he was dearly attached to, but not apparently dominated by: He would not, gladly, go a day without his martinis, but neither, after the third, did he require a fourth

Then in the spring of 1972 his gentle, devoted (teetotaling) wife had a mastectomy, the prognosis optimistic; but with a shade of uncertainty So, to beef up his morale, he increased the dosage just a little When, later that year, the doctor called to tell him the worst, he walked straightaway to the nearest bar After she died, he began buying a fifth each of bourbon and gin on Saturdays, a week’s supply to eke out the several martinis he had been drinking at and after lunch Fascinated, he watched himself casually making minor alterations: “Make that quarts” was the modest beginning Then the resupplying would come on Friday; then Thursday In due course it was a quart a day

In the morning he would begin; one, then up to five snorts before leaving for the office – later and later in the morning Before reaching the door he would rinse out his mouth But always – this fascinated him, as gradually he comprehended the totality of I his servitude – he would, on turning the door handle, go back: for just one more

At night he would prepare himself dinner, then lie down for a little nap, wake hours later, go to the kitchen to eat dinner - only to find he had already eaten it Once he

2 Copyright © 1977 by William F Buckley, Jr Used by permission of the Wallace Literary Agency, Inc

returned to a restaurant three hours after having eaten his dinner: he forgot he had been there Blackouts, he called the experiences On the crucial day it was nothing special He walked home from the office, full of 6 gin, and vomited in the street (this often happened), struggling to do this with aplomb in the posh backdrop of the East 60’s On reaching his apartment he lurched gratefully for the bottle, sipped from the glass and was clapped by the hand of Providence as unmistakably as any piece of breast was ever struck by a lance

He heard his own voice say, as if directed by an outside force: “What the hell am I doing to myself?” He poured his martini into the sink, emptied the gin bottle, then emptied the bourbon bottle, then went to the telephone and, never in his life having given a second's conscious thought to the organisation, fumbled through the directory and dialed the number for Alcoholics Anonymous

One must suppose that whoever answered that telephone call was as surprised as

a 8 fireman excitedly advised that a house was ablaze Kenneth would like to inquire – but perhaps AA was too busy tonight, perhaps next week sometime? What? Come today? How about tomorrow? Do you have a meeting every week? You have 800 meetings in New York a week?… Scores every night?… Okay Tomorrow

Tomorrow would be the first of 250 meetings in ninety days with Alcoholics Anonymous AA advises at least ninety meetings in the first ninety days Kenneth had assumed he would be mixing with hoi polloi Always objective, he advises now that “on

a scale of 1 – 10" – incorporating intelligence, education, success, articulateness – “I would rank around six or seven” He made friends And he made instant progress during those first weeks, quickly losing the compulsion for the morning drinks But for the late afternoon martinis he thirsted, and he hungered, and he lusted He dove into a despair mitigated only by his thrice-daily contacts with AA His banked-up grief for his wife raged now, and every moment, every long afternoon and evening without her, and without alcohol, were endless bouts with the haunting question: What is the point in living at all?

And then, suddenly, as suddenly as on the day he poured the booze into the sink Twenty-seven weeks later, he had been inveigled into going to a party Intending to stay one dutiful hour, he stayed five On returning, he was exhilarated He had developed anew the capacity to talk with people, other than in the prescribed ritualisms of his profession, or in the boozy idiom of the tippler He was so excited, so pleased, so elated, he could not sleep until early morning for pleasure at re-experiencing life

That was two months ago, and every day he rejoiced at his liberation, and prays that others who suffer will find the hand of Alcoholics Anonymous And – one might presumptuously add – the hand of the Prime Mover, Who was there in that little kitchen

on the day the impulse came to him; and Who, surely, is the wellspring of the faith of Alcoholics Anonymous, as of so many other spirits united to help their fellow man

Questions for Discussion

1 What kind of picture do you get of Kenneth as a person?

2 What is the importance of the spring of 1972 in Kenneth's life? How did his wife’s death compound his drinking problem?

3 What happened to turn Kenneth around, so to speak?

4 In the beginning what effect did Alcoholics Anonymous have on Kenneth’s drinking habits? What is the significance of ninety days?

5 What were the results of 27 weeks in AA?

6 What does the author mean by the Prime Mover in the last paragraph? How does the last sentence relate to the rest of the essay?

ALEXANDER CALANDRA

Alexander Calandra is a professor of physics at Washington University

in St Louis, Missouri In the following essay he shares an experience with a college student who refused to give the expected answer to a question on a physics examination Instead, the student insisted on giving a number of answers other than the conventional one

Some time ago, I received a call from a colleague who asked if I would be the referee on the grading of an examination question He was about to give a student a zero for his answer to a physics question, while the student claimed he should receive a perfect score and would if the system were not set up against the student The instructor and the student agreed to submit this to an impartial arbiter, and I was selected I went to my colleague's office and read the examination question: “Show how

it is possible to determine the height of a tall building with the aid of a barometer” The student had answered: “Take the barometer to the top of the building, attach a long rope to it, lower the barometer to the street, and then bring it up, measuring the length

of the rope The length of the rope is the height of the building” I pointed out that the student really had a strong case for full credit, since he had answered the question completely and correctly On the other hand, if full credit were given, it could well contribute to a high grade for the student in his physics course A high grade is supposed to certify competence in physics, but the answer did not confirm this I suggested that the student have another try at answering the question I was not surprised that my colleague agreed, but I was surprised that the student did

I gave the student six minutes to answer the question, with the warning that his answer should show some knowledge of physics At the end of five minutes, he had not written anything I asked if he wished to give up, but he said no He had many answers

to this problem; he was just thinking of the best one I excused myself for interrupting him, and asked him to please go on In the next minute, he dashed off his answer, which read: "Take the barometer to the top of the building and lean over the edge of the roof Drop the barometer, timing its fall with a stopwatch Then, using the formula S = 'le at', calculate the height of the building."

At this point, I asked my colleague if he would give up He conceded, and I gave the student almost full credit In leaving my colleague's office, I recalled that the student had said he had other eight answers to the problem, so I asked him what they were

"Oh, yes," said the student

"There are many ways of getting the height of a tall building with the aid of a barometer For example, you could take the barometer out on a sunny day and measure the height of the barometer, the length of its shadow, and the length of the

3 Copyright © Alexander Calandra First published in SATURDAY REVIEW, December

26, 1968

shadow of the building, and by the use of a simple proportion, determine the height of the building."

"Fine," I said "And the others?"

-Yes,- said the student -There is a very basic measurement method that you will like In this method, you take the barometer and begin to walk up the stairs As you climb the stairs, you mark off the length of the barometer along the wall You then count the number of marks, and this will give you the height of the building in barometer units

A very direct method

"Of course, if you want a more sophisticated method, you can tie the barometer to the end of a string, swing it as a pendulum, and determine the value of 'g' at the street level and at the top of the building From the difference between the two values of 'g,' the height of the building can, in principle, be calculated."

Finally he concluded, there are many other ways of solving the problem “Probably the best”, he said, “is to take the barometer to the basement and knock on the superintendent's door When the superintendent answers, you speak to him as follows: 'Mr Superintendent, here I have a fine barometer If you will tell me the height of this building, I will give you this barometer”

At this point, I asked the student if he really did not know the conventional answer

to this question He admitted that he did, but said that he was fed up with high school and college instructors trying to teach him how to think, to use the "scientific method," and to explore the deep inner logic of the subject in a pedantic way, as is often done in the new mathematics, rather than teaching him the structure of the subject With this in mind, he decided to revive scholasticism as an academic lark to challenge the Sputnik - panicked classrooms of America

Questions for Discussion

1 What point does the essay illustrate?

2 What was the examination question supposed to test? Was it a "bad" question in that it failed to get the expected response? Can you restate the question so that it will elicit the expected answer?

3 The student says that the answer he gives in paragraph 12 is probably the best one Why does he say this? What motivated him to avoid the conventional answer? Do you agree with his position?

4 Why do you think Professor Calandra did not give the student full credit for his answer in paragraph 6?

5 Do you agree with the professor’s judgment?

6 How would you characterise all of the student's answers? What qualities did they possess?

7 The conventional answer to the physics question is never given Is it important for the reader to know it? Do you think author Calandra leaves it out on purpose? If so, why?

Exploring Ideas

1 During the Middle Ages, scholastic philosophers would debate questions dealing with theological minutiae that seem pointless to the modern reader One such question was how many angels could dance on the head of a pin, hence the source

of the title of the essay With this in mind, to what extent does the title contribute to the overall effect of the essay?

2 Keeping in mind the scholasticism of the Middle Ages, what did the student have in mind when he decided to revive it as an “academic lark” as mentioned in the last sentence of the essay?

3 The student mentioned in the essay is obviously not a conventional thinker in many respects Do you admire him for taking that approach to problem solving?

4 Have you ever exercised this type of approach to a problem? What role should imaginative thinkers play in a society?

5 What is the basic purpose of tests and examinations? How can one tell the difference between a good and a bad examination?

ANDREW CARNEGIE

Carnegie was one of several, famous, self-made American millionaires

of the late 19th century His public philanthropy reflected his idealism and a sense of noblesse oblige and responsibility toward the welfare of society Carnegie's philosophy of business ethics was well-known and admired by many The huge Carnegie fortune, made in the steel industry, provided the funds for the establishment of public libraries in various parts of the United States, as well as the philanthropic Carnegie Foundation The following essay is the first chapter of his book, The Gospel of Wealth, published in 1900, in which he expounded the idea that the accumulation of riches was stewardship of wealth that ultimately should benefit society

How I Served My Apprenticeship

It is a great pleasure to tell how I served my apprenticeship as a businessman But there seems to be a question preceding this: Why did I become a business man? I am sure that I should never have selected a business career if I had been permitted to choose

The eldest son of parents who were themselves poor, I had, fortunately, to begin

to perform some useful work in the world while still very young in order to earn an honest livelihood, and was thus shown even in early boyhood that my duty was to assist

my parents and, like them, become, as soon as possible, a bread-winner in the family What I could get to do, not what I desired, was the question

When I was born my father was a well-to-do master weaver in Dunfermline, Scotland He owned no less than four damask-looms and employed apprentices This was before the days of steam-factories for the manufacture of linen A few large merchants took orders, and employed master weavers, such as my father, to weave the cloth, the merchants supplying the materials

As the factory system developed, hand-loom weaving naturally declined, and my father was one of the sufferers by the change The first serious lesson of my life came

to me one day when he had taken in the last of his work to the merchant, and returned

to our little home greatly distressed because there was no more work for him to do I was then just about ten years of age, but the lesson burned into my heart, and I resolved then that the wolf of poverty should be driven from our door some day, if I could do it

The question of selling the old looms and starting for the United States came up in the family council, and I heard it discussed from day to day It was finally resolved to

take the plunge and join relatives already in Pittsburg I well remember that neither father nor mother thought the change would be otherwise than a great sacrifice for them, but that "it would be better for the two boys." In after life, if you can look back as I

do and wonder at the complete surrender of their own desires which parents make for the good of their children, you must reverence their memories with feelings akin to worship

On arriving in Allegheny City (there were four of us: father, mother, my younger brother, and myself), my father entered a cotton factory I soon followed, and served as

a "bobbin-boy," and this is how I began my preparation for subsequent apprenticeship

as a business man I received one dollar and twenty cents a week, and was then just about twelve years old

I cannot tell you how proud I was when I received my first week's own earnings One dollar and twenty cents made by myself and given to me because I had been of some use in the world! No longer entirely dependent upon my parents, but at last admitted to the family partnership as a contributing member and able to help them! I think this makes a man out of a boy sooner than almost anything else, and a real man, too, if there be any germ of true manhood in him It is everything to feel that you are useful

I have had to deal with great sums Many millions of dollars have since passed through my hands But the genuine satisfaction I had from that one dollar and twenty cents outweighs any subsequent pleasure in money-getting It was the direct reward of honest, manual labour; it represented a week of very hard work – so hard that, but for the aim and end which sanctified it, slavery might not be much too strong a term to describe it

For a lad of twelve to rise and breakfast every morning, except the blessed Sunday morning, and go into the streets and find his way to the factory and begin to work while it was still dark outside, and not be released until after darkness came again

in the evening, forty minutes' interval only being allowed at noon, was a terrible task But I was young and had my dreams, and something within always told me that this would not, could not, should not last I should some day get into a better position Besides this, I felt myself no longer a mere boy, but quite a little man, and this made

me

A change soon came, for a kind old Scotsman, who knew some of our relatives, made bobbins, and took me into his factory before I was thirteen But here for a time it was even worse than in the cotton factory, because I was set to fire a boiler in the cellar, and actually to run the small steam-engine which drove the machinery The firing

of the boiler was all right, for fortunately we did not use coal, but the refuse wooden chips; and I always liked to work in wood But the responsibility of keeping the water right and of running the engine, and the danger of my making a mistake and blowing the whole factory to pieces, caused too great a strain, and I often awoke and found myself sitting up in bed through the night, trying the steam-gauges But I never told them at home that I was having a hard tussle No, no! everything must be bright to them

This was a point of honour, for every member of the family was working hard, except, of course, my little brother, who was then a child, and we were telling each other only all the bright things Besides this, no man would whine and give up – he would die

first There was no servant in our family, and several dollars per week were earned by the mother by binding shoes after her daily work was done! Father was also hard at work in the factory And could I complain?

My kind employer, John Hay peace to his ashes! soon relieved me of the undue strain, for he needed some one to make out bills and keep his accounts, and finding that I could write a plain school-boy hand and could "cipher," he made me his only clerk But still I had to work hard upstairs in the factory, for the clerking took but little time You know how people moan about poverty as being a great evil, and it seems

to be accepted that if people had only plenty of money and were rich, they would be happy and more useful, and get more out of life

As a rule, there is more genuine satisfaction, a truer life, and more obtained from life in the humble cottages of the poor than in the palaces of the rich I always pity the sons and daughters of rich men who are attended bv servants and have governesses

at a later age, but am glad to remember that they do not know what they have missed They have kind fathers and mothers, too, and think that they enjoy the sweetness

of these blessings to the fullest: but this they cannot do; for the poor boy who has in his father his constant companion, tutor, and model, and in his mother – holy name! – his nurse, teacher, guardian angel, saint, all in one, has a richer, more precious fortune in life than any rich man's son who is not so favoured can possibly know, and compared with which all other fortunes count for little

It is because I know how sweet and happy and pure the home of honest poverty

is, how free from perplexing care, from social envies and emulations, how loving and how united its members may be in the common interest of supporting the family, that I sympathise with the rich man's boy and congratulate the poor man's boy; and it is for these reasons that from the ranks of the poor so many strong, eminent, self-reliant men have always sprung and always must spring

If you will read the list of the immortals who "were not born to die," you will find that most of them have been born to the precious heritage of poverty

It seems, nowadays, a matter of universal desire that poverty should be abolished

We should be quite willing to abolish luxury, but to abolish honest, industrious, self-denying poverty would be to destroy the soil upon which mankind produces the virtues which enable our race to reach a still higher civilisation than it now possesses

Questions for Discussion

1 What did Carnegie feel to be his duty toward his parents?

2 What kind of family life did Carnegie have while growing up in Scotland? Why did his family emigrate to the United States?

3 What effect did his first week's salary have on Carnegie?

4 What dreams did Carnegie have as a young boy of twelve?

5 How did Carnegie's work of firing the boiler in a factory affect him?

6 What does Carnegie have to say about poverty's being an evil? Are there benefits from poverty?

7 How did Carnegie regard his parents?

Exploring Ideas

1 Compare Carnegie's "ambitions" to some of the ideas expressed by Joseph Epstein

in his essay on ambition

2 Epstein mentions Carnegie's special generosity toward Lord Acton Do some of Carnegie's comments help explain this act of philanthropy?

3 Do you agree with Carnegie's "philosophy" concerning work and poverty? Explain

JOSEPH EPSTEIX

Born in 1937, Joseph Epstein is a professor of English at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois He is also the editor of The American Scholar, a quarterly journal of essays published by the Phi Beta Kappa society The essay below is taken from Ambition: The Secret Passion, published in 1980

The Virtues of Ambition

Ambition is one of those Rorschach words: define it and you instantly reveal a great deal about yourself Even that most neutral of works, Webster's, in its Seventh New Collegiate Edition, gives itself away, defining ambition first and foremost as "an ardent desire for rank, fame, or power." Ardent immediately assumes a heat incommensurate with good sense and stability, and rank, fame, and power have come under fairly heavy attack for at least a century One can, after all, be ambitious for the public good, for the alleviation of suffering, for the enlightenment of mankind, though there are some who say that these are precisely the ambitious people most to be distrusted

Surely ambition is behind dreams of glory, of wealth, of love, of distinction, of accomplishment, of pleasure, of goodness What life does with our dreams and expectations cannot, of course, be predicted Some dreams, begun in selflessness, end

in rancor; other dreams, begun in selfishness, end in large-heartedness The unpredictability of the outcome of dreams is no reason to cease dreaming

To be sure, ambition, the sheer thing unalloyed by some larger purpose than merely clambering up, is never a pretty prospect to ponder As drunks have done to alcohol, the single-minded have done to ambition – given it a bad name Like a taste for alcohol, too, ambition does not always allow for easy satiation Some people cannot handle it; it has brought grief to others, and not merely the ambitious alone Still, none of this seems sufficient cause for driving ambition under the counter

What is the worst that can be said – that has been said – about ambition? Here is

a (surely) partial list:

To begin with, it, ambition, is often antisocial, and indeed is now out-moded, belonging to an age when individualism was more valued and useful than it is today The person strongly imbued with ambition ignores the collectivity; socially detached, he

is on his own and out for his own Individuality and ambition are firmly linked The ambitious individual, far from identifying himself and his fortunes with the group, wishes

to rise above it The ambitious man or woman sees the world as a battle; rivalrousness

is his or her principal emotion: the world has limited prizes to offer, and he or she is determined to get his or hers Ambition is, moreover, jesuitical; it can argue those possessed by it into believing that what they want for themselves is good for everyone – that the satisfaction of their own desires is best for the commonweal The truly ambitious believe that it is a dog-eat-dog world, and they are distinguished by wanting

to be the dogs that do the eating

From here it is but a short hop to believe that those who have achieved the common goals of ambition – money, fame, power – have achieved them through corruption of a greater or lesser degree, mostly a greater Thus all politicians in high places, thought to be ambitious, are understood to be, ipso facto, without moral scruples How could they have such scruples – a weighty burden in a high climb – and still have risen as they have?

If ambition is to be well regarded, the rewards of ambition – wealth, distinction, control over one's destiny – must be deemed worthy of the sacrifices made on ambition’s behalf If the tradition of ambition is to have vitality, it must be widely shared; and it especially must be esteemed by people who are themselves admired, the educated not least among them The educated not least because, nowadays more than ever before, it is they who have usurped the platforms of public discussion and wield the power of the spoken and written word in newspapers, in magazines, on television In an odd way, it is the educated who have claimed to have given up on ambition as an ideal What is odd is that they have perhaps most benefited from ambition – if not always their own then that of their parents and grandparents There is a heavy note of hypocrisy in this; a case of closing the barn door after the horses have escaped – with the educated themselves astride them

Certainly people do not seem less interested in success and its accoutrements now than formerly Summer homes, European travel, BMWs – the locations, place names and name brands may change, but such items do not seem less in demand today than a decade or two years ago What has happened is that people cannot own

up to their dreams, as easily and openly as once they could, lest they be thought pushing, acquisitive, vulgar Instead we are treated to fine pharisaical spectacles, which now more than ever seem in ample supply: the revolutionary lawyer quartered in the

$250,000 Manhattan condominium; the critic of American materialism with a Southampton summer home; the publisher of radical books who takes his meals in three-star restaurants; the journalist advocating participatory democracy in all phases of life, whose own children are enrolled in private schools For such people and many more perhaps not so egregious, the proper formulation is, “Succeed at all costs but refrain from appearing ambitious”

The attacks on ambition are many and come from various angles; its public defenders are few and unimpressive, where they are not extremely unattractive As a result, the support for ambition as a healthy impulse, a quality to be admired and inculcated in the young, is probably lower than it has ever been in the United States This does not mean that ambition is at an end, that people no longer feel its stirrings and promptings, but only that, no longer openly honored, it is less often openly professed Consequences follow from this, of course, some of which are that ambition is driven underground, or made sly, or perverse It can also be forced into vulgarity, as witness the blatant pratings of its contemporary promoters Such, then, is the way things stand: on the left angry critics, on the right obtuse supporters, and in the middle,

as usual, the majority of earnest people trying to get on in life

Many people are naturally distrustful of ambition, feeling that it represents something intractable in human nature Thus John Dean entitled his book about his involvement in the in the Watergate affair during the Nixon administration Blind Ambition, as if ambition were to blame for his ignoble actions, and not the constellation

of qualities that make up his rather shabby character Ambition, it must once again be

underscored, is morally a two-sided street Place next to John Dean Andrew Carnegie, who, among other philanthropic acts, bought the library of Lord Acton, at a time when Acton was in financial distress, and assigned its custodianship to Acton, who never was told who his benefactor was Need much more be said on the subject than that, important though ambition is, there are some things that one must not sacrifice to it? But going at things the other way, sacrificing ambition so as to guard against its potential excesses, is to go at things wrongly To discourage ambition is to discourage dreams of grandeur and greatness All men and women are born, live, suffer, and die; what distinguishes us one from another is our dreams, whether they be dreams about worldly or unworldly things, and what we do to make them come about It may seem an exaggeration to say that ambition is the linchpin of society, holding many of its disparate elements together, but it is not an exaggeration by much Remove ambition and the essential elements of society seem to fly apart Ambition, as opposed to mere fantasising about desires, implies work and discipline to achieve goals, personal and social, of a kind society cannot survive without Ambition is intimately connected with family, for men and women not only work partly for their families; husbands and wives are often ambitious for each other, but harbour some of their most ardent ambitions for their children Yet to have a family nowadays – with birth control readily available, and inflation a good economic argument against having children – is nearly an expression of ambition in itself Finally, though ambition was once the domain chiefly of monarchs and aristocrats, it has, in more recent times, increasingly become the domain of the middle classes Ambition and futurity –a sense of building for tomorrow – are inextricable Working, saving, planning – these, the daily aspects of ambition – have always been the distinguishing marks of a rising middle class The attack against ambition is not incidentally an attack on the middle class and what it stands for Like it or not, the middle class has done much of society's work in America; and it, the middle class, has from the beginning run on ambition

It is not difficult to imagine a world shorn of ambition It would probably be a kinder world: without demands, without abrasions, without disappointments People would have time for reflection Such work as they did would not be for themselves but for the collectivity Competition would never enter in Conflict would be eliminated, tension become a thing of the past The stress of creation would be at an end Art would no longer be troubling, but purely celebratory in its functions The family would become superfluous as a social unit, with all its former power for bringing about neurosis drained away Longevity would be increased, for fewer people would die of heart attack or stroke caused by tumultuous endeavor Anxiety would be extinct Time would stretch on and on, with ambition long departed from the human heart

Ah, how unrelievedly boring life would be!

There is a strong view that holds that success is a myth, and ambition therefore a sham Does this mean that success does not really exist? That achievement is at bottom empty? That the efforts of men and women are of no significance alongside the force of movements and events? Now not all success, obviously, is worth esteeming, nor all ambition worth cultivating Which are and which are not is something one soon enough learns on one's own But even the most cynical secretly admit that success exists; that achievement counts for a great deal; and that the true myth is that the actions of men and women are useless To believe otherwise is to take on a point of

view that is likely to be deranging It is, in its implications, to remove all motive for competence, interest in attainment, and regard for posterity

We do not choose to be born We do not choose our parents We do not choose our historical epoch, the country of our birth or the immediate circumstances of our upbringing We do not, most of us, choose to die; nor do we choose the time or conditions of our death But within all this realm of choicelessness, we do choose how

we shall live: courageously or in cowardice, honorably or dishonorably, with purpose or

in drift We decide what is important and what is trivial in life We decide that what makes us significant is either what we do or what we refuse to do But no matter how indifferent the universe may be to our choices and decisions, these choices and decisions are ours to make We decide We choose And as we decide and choose, so are our lives formed In the end, forming our own destiny is what ambition is about

Questions for Discussion

1 According to the author, what are some of the negative aspects of ambition?

2 What can cause ambition to be well-regarded?

3 What has caused ambition to the less admired in the United States in recent years?

4 The author states that “ambition … is morally a two-sided street” What does he mean?

5 To a great extent the author believes that “ambition is the linchpin of society” How does he support that belief?

6 What would characterise a world without ambition according to Epstein?

7 Does the author believe that the quality of life would be improved without ambition? Explain

Exploring Ideas

1 The concluding statement of the essay observes that "forming our own destiny is what ambition is about." Do you agree or disagree? Give your reasons

2 Do you think that people are hypocritical about ambition? If so, in what ways?

3 Do you agree with the author that ambition holds society together?

4 How does ambition manifest itself in your society? How does it compare with some

of Epstein's observations vis-a-vis American society?

5 Discuss or debate the following statements found in the essay

(a) “Surely ambition is behind dreams of glory, of wealth, of love, of distinction, of accomplishment, of pleasure, of goodness”

(b) “Individuality and ambition are firmly linked”

(c) “To discourage ambition is to discourage dreams of grandeur and greatness”

(d) “Ambition, as opposed to mere fantasising about desires, implies work and discipline to achieve goals, personal and social, of a kind society can not survive without”

SAMUEL ICHIYE I HAYAKAWA

Born in Vancouver, Canada, in 1906, Samuel Ichiye Hayakawa has been president of San Francisco State College and a United States Senator

As a professor of English, he has been most influential as a scholar and teacher of general semantics Author of several books, Prof Hayakawa’s Language in Thought and Action (1941) has been widely used in writing and philosophy courses He has also written many articles on a wide range of social and personal issues “Our Son Mark” is one of those articles, written originally for McCall’s magazine

Our Son Mark

It was a terrible blow for us to discover that we had brought a retarded child into the world My wife and I had had no previous acquaintance with the problems of retardation not even with the words to discuss it Only such words as imbecile, idiot, and moron came to mind And the prevailing opinion was that such a child must be “put away”, to live out his life in an institution

Mark was born with Down's syndrome, popularly known as mongolism The prognosis for his ever reaching anything approaching normality was hopeless Medical authorities advised us that he would show some mental development, but the progress would be painfully slow and he would never reach an adolescent’s mental age We could do nothing about it, they said They sympathetically but firmly advised us to find a private institution that would take him To get him into a public institution, they said, would require a waiting period of five years To keep him at home for this length of time, they warned, would have a disastrous effect on our family

That was twenty-seven years ago In that time, Mark has never been “put away”

He has lived at home The only institution he sees regularly is the workshop he attends,

a special workshop for retarded adults He is as much a part of the family as his mother, his older brother, his younger sister, his father, or our longtime housekeeper and friend, Daisy Rosebourgh

Mark has contributed to our stability and serenity His retardation has brought us grief, but we did not go on dwelling on what might have been, and we have been rewarded by finding much good in things the way they are From the beginning, we have enjoyed Mark for his delightful self He has never seemed like a burden He was

an “easy” baby, quiet, friendly, and passive; but he needed a baby's care for a long time It was easy to be patient with him, although I must say that some of his stages, such as his love of making chaos, as we called it, by pulling all the books he could reach off the shelves, lasted much longer than normal children’s

Mark seems more capable of accepting things as they are than his immediate relatives; his mental limitation has given him a capacity for contentment, a focus on the present moment, which is often enviable His world may be circumscribed, but it is a happy and bright one His enjoyment of simple experiences – swimming, food, birthday

candles, sports-car rides, and cuddly cats – has that directness and intensity so many philosophers recommend to all of us

Mark’s contentment has been a happy contribution to our family, and the challenge

of communicating with him, of doing things we can all enjoy, has drawn the family together And seeing Mark's communicative processes develop in slow motion has taught me much about the process in all children

Fortunately Mark was born at a time when a whole generation of parents of retarded children had begun to question the accepted dogmas about retardation Whatever they were told by their physicians about their children, parents began to ask:

“Is that so? Let’s see” For what is meant by “retarded child”? There are different kinds

of retardation Retarded child No 1 is not retarded child No 2, or 3, or 4 Down's syndrome is one condition, while brain damage is something else There are different degrees of retardation, just as there are different kinds of brain damage No two retarded children are exactly alike in all respects Institutional care does turn out to be the best answer for some kinds of retarded children or some family situations The point

is that one observes and reacts to the specific case and circumstances rather than to the generalisation

This sort of attitude has helped public understanding of the nature and problems of

8 retardation to become much deeper and more widespread It is hard to believe now that it was “definitely known” twenty years ago that institutionalisation was the “only way” We were told that a retarded child could not be kept at home because “it would not be fair to the other children” The family would not be able to stand the stress

“Everybody” believed these things and repeated them, to comfort and guide the parents

of the retarded

We did not, of course, lightly disregard the well-meant advice of university neurologists and their social-worker teams, for they had had much experience and we were new at this shattering experience But our general semantics, or our parental feelings, made us aware that their reaction to Mark was to a generalisation, while to us

he was an individual They might have a valid generalisation about statistical stresses

on statistical families, but they knew virtually nothing about our particular family and its evaluative processes

Mark was eight months old before we were told he was retarded Of course we had known that he was slower than the average child in smiling, in sitting up, in responding to others around him Having had one child who was extraordinarily ahead

of such schedules, we simply thought that Mark was at the other end of the average range

In the course of his baby checkups, at home and while travelling, we had seen three different pediatricians None of them gave us the slightest indication that all was not well Perhaps they were made uncertain by the fact that Mark, with his part Japanese parentage, had a right to have “mongolian” features Or perhaps this news is

as hard for a pediatrician to tell as it is for parents to hear, and they kept putting off the job of telling us Finally, Mark’s doctor did suggest a neurologist, indicating what his fears were, and made an appointment

It was Marge who bore the brunt of the first diagnosis and accompanying advice, given at the university hospital at a time when I had to be out of town Stunned and crushed, she was told: “Your husband is a professional man You cannot keep a child like this at home”

“But he lives on love”, she protested

“Do not your other children live on love, too?” the social worker asked

Grief-stricken as she was, my wife was still able to recognise a non sequitur One does not lessen the love for one’s children by dividing it among several “What can I read to find out more about his condition and how to take care of him?”

Marge asked “You cannot get help from a book”, answered the social worker

“You must put him away”

Today this sounds like dialogue from the Dark Ages And it was the Dark Ages Today professional advice runs generally in the opposite direction: “Keep your retarded child at home if it is at all possible”

It was parents who led the way: They organised into parents’ groups; they pointed out the need for pre-schools, schools, diagnostic centres, work-training centres, and sheltered workshops to serve the children who were being cared for at home; they worked to get these services, which are now being provided in increasing numbers But the needs are a long way from being fully met

Yet even now the cost in money – not to mention the cost in human terms – is much less if the child is kept at home than if he is sent to the institutions in which children are put away And many of the retarded are living useful and independent lives, which would never have been thought possible for them

But for us at that time, as for other parents who were unknowingly pioneering new ways for the retarded, it was a matter of going along from day to day, learning, observing, and saying, “Let’s see”

There was one more frightening hurdle for our family to get over On that traumatic day Marge got the diagnosis, the doctor told her that it was too risky for us to have any more children, that there was a fifty percent chance of our having another mongoloid child In those days, nothing was known of the cause of mongolism There were many theories Now, at least, it is known to be caused by the presence of an extra chromosome, a fault of cell division But the question “Why does it happen?” had not yet been answered

Today, genetic counseling is available to guide parents as to the probabilities of recurrence on a scientific basis We were flying blind With the help of a doctor friend,

we plunged into medical books and discovered that the doctor who gave us the advice was flying just as blind as we were No evidence could be found for the fifty percent odds Although there did seem to be some danger of recurrence, we estimated that the probabilities were with us We took the risk and won

Our daughter, Wynne, is now twenty-five She started as Mark's baby sister, soon passed him in every way, and really helped bring him up The fact that she had a

retarded brother must have contributed at least something to the fact that she is at once delightfully playful and mature, observant, and understanding She has a fine relationship with her two brothers

Both Wynne and Alan, Mark's older brother, have participated, with patience and delight, in Mark’s development They have shown remarkable ingenuity in instructing and amusing him On one occasion, when Mark was not drinking his milk, Alan called him to his place at the table and said, “I’m a service station What kind of car are you?” Mark, quickly entering into the make-believe, said, “Ford”

Alan: “Shall I fill her up?”

Mark: “Yes”

Alan: “Ethyl or regular?”

Mark: “Regular”

Alan (bringing the glass to Mark’s mouth): “Here you are”

When Mark finished his glass of milk, Alan asked him, “Do you want your shield cleaned?” Then, taking a napkin, he rubbed it briskly across Mark’s face, while Mark grinned with delight This routine became a regular game for many weeks

wind-Alan and Wynne interpret and explain Mark to their friends, but never once have I heard them apologise for him or deprecate him It is almost as if they judge the quality

of other people by how they react to Mark They think he is “great”, and expect their friends to think so too

Their affection and understanding were shown when Wynne flew to Oregon with Mark to visit Alan and his wife, Cynthea, who went to college there Wynne described the whole reunion as “tremendous” and especially enjoyed Mark’s delight in the trip

“He was great on the plane”, she recalls “He didn’t cause any trouble except that

he rang the bell for the stewardess a couple of times when he didn't need anything He was so great that I was going to send him back on the plane alone He would have enjoyed that” But she didn’t, finally, because she didn't trust others to be able to understand his speech or to know how to treat him without her there to give them clues Mark looks reasonably normal He is small for his age (about five feet tall) and childlike Anyone who is aware of these matters would recognise in him some of the characteristic symptomatic features, but they are not extreme His almost incomprehensible speech, which few besides his family and teachers can understand, is his most obvious sign of retardation

Mark fortunately does not notice any stares of curiosity he may attract To imagine how one looks in the eyes of others takes a level of awareness that appears to be beyond him Hence he is extremely direct and totally without self-consciousness

I have seen him come into our living room, walk up to a woman he has never seen before, and kiss her in response to a genuinely friendly greeting Since few of us are accustomed to such directness of expression – especially the expression of affection – the people to whom this has happened are deeply moved Like other children, Mark

responds to the evaluations of others In our family, he is accepted just as he is Because others have always treated him as an individual, a valued individual, he feels good about himself, and, consequently, he is good to live with In every situation between parent and child or between children, evaluations are involved – and these interact on each other Certainly, having Mark at home has helped us be more aware and be more flexible in our evaluations

This kind of sensitivity must have carried over into relations between the two normal children, because I cannot remember a single real fight or a really nasty incident between Alan and Wynne It is as if their readiness to try to understand Mark extended into a general method of dealing with people And I think Marge and I found the same thing happening to us, so that we became more understanding with Alan and Wynne than we might otherwise have been If we had time and patience for Mark, why not for the children who were quick and able? We knew we could do serious damage to Mark

by expecting too much of him and being disappointed But how easy it is to expect too much of bright children and how quickly they feel your disappointment! Seeing Mark’s slow, slow progress certainly gave us real appreciation of the marvelous perception and quick learning processes of the other two, so that all we had to do was open our eyes and our ears, and listen and enjoy them

I do not want to sound as if we were never impatient or obtuse as parents We were, of course But parents need to be accepted as they are, too And I think our children – bless their hearts – were reasonably able to do so

With Mark, it was easy to feel surprise and delight at any of his accomplishments

He cannot read and will never be able to But he can pick out on request almost any record from his huge collection Fleetwood Mac, or the Rolling Stones, or Christmas carols – because he knows so well what each record looks like Once we were discussing the forthcoming marriage of some friends of ours, and Mark disappeared into his playroom to bring out, a few minutes later, a record with the song “A House, a Car, and a Wedding Ring”

His love of music enables him to figure out how to operate almost any record changer or hi-fi set He never tries to force a piece of machinery because he cannot figure out how it works, as brighter people often do And in a strange hotel room, with a

TV set of unknown make, it is Mark – not Marge or I – who figures out how to turn it on and get a clear picture As Alan once remarked: “Mark may be retarded, but he’s not stupid!”

Of course, it has not all been easy – but when has easiness been the test of the value of anything? To us, the difficult problems that must be faced in the future only emphasise the value of Mark as a person

What does that future hold for Mark? He will never be able to be independent; he will always have to live in a protected environment His below IQ reflects the fact that he cannot cope with unfamiliar situations

Like most parents of the retarded, we are concentrating on providing financial security for Mark in the future, and fortunately we expect to be able to achieve this Alan and his wife and Wynne have all offered to be guardians for Mark It is wonderful to

know they feel this way But we hope that Mark can find a happy place in one of the new residence homes for the retarded

The residence home is something new and promising and it fills an enormous need It is somewhat like a club, or a family, with a house-mother or manager The residents share the work around the house, go out to work if they can, share in recreation and companionship Away from their families, who may be overprotective and not aware of how much the retarded can do for themselves (are we not guilty of this, too!), they are able to live more fully as adults

An indication that there is still much need for public education about the retarded here in California is that there has been difficulty in renting decent houses for this kind

of home Prospective neighbours have objected In some ways the Dark Ages are still with us; there are still fear and hostility where the retarded are concerned Is Mark able

to work? Perhaps He thrives on routine and enjoys things others despise, like clearing the table and loading the dishwasher To Mark, it is fun It has been hard to develop in him the idea of work, which to so many of us is “doing what you do not want to do because you have to” We do not know yet if he could work in a restaurant loading a dishwasher In school, he learned jobs like sorting and stacking scrap wood and operating a delightful machine that swoops the string around and ties up a bundle of wood to be sold in the supermarket That’s fun, too

He is now in a sheltered workshop where he can get the kind – the one kind – of

50 pleasure he doesn't have much chance for That's the pleasure of contributing something productive and useful to the outside world He does various kinds of assembling jobs, packaging, sorting, and simple machine operations He enjoys getting

a pay-check and cashing it at the bank He cannot count, but he takes pride in reaching for the check in a restaurant and pulling out his wallet And when we thank him for dinner, he glows with pleasure

It is a strange thing to say, and I am a little startled to find myself saying it, but often I feel that I wouldn't have had Mark any different

Questions for Discussion

1 In what ways did Mark contribute to the stability and serenity of the Hayakawa family?

2 What are some of Mark's commendable qualities that his father observes?

3 How has public understanding of retardation changed in recent years?

4 What advice did the Hayakawas receive about Mark's possible negative effect upon their family?

5 When the author refers to the Dark Ages, how were they symbolic relevant to the counsel they received about Mark?

6 How do the other children of the Hayakawa family show sensitivity to Mark and his retardation?

7 What are some of the positive effects of Mark upon the Hayakawa family?

8 What are residence halls for the retarded?

9 Why do you think Dr Hayakawa wrote the essay?

Exploring Ideas

1 Explain your overall reaction to the essay

2 If you have experience with retarded persons, give some of your own observations

or conclusions regarding their place in society

3 How important was it for Mark to be accepted as he was? for the family to accept him as he was?

4 Alan remarked once: “Mark may be retarded, but he’s not stupid?” What does he mean by that statement?

EDWARD HOAGLAN

Born in New York City in 1932, Edward Hoagland is a confirmed city dweller who still lives in the city of his birth After graduating from Harvard College in 1954, Hoagland served in the Army for two years and published his )karst novel, Cat Man, in 1956 He is especially interested in the North American wilderness and has written books of essays concerning the animals of the wild as well as the wilderness itself Hoagland has also written a number of short stories although he is probably best known as an essayist During his professional career, he has, on occasion, taught writing at various colleges in the New York area as well as in the well-known creative writing program at the University of Iowa “On Essays” was first published in 1976 and is included in Hoagland’s book, The Tugman’s Passage (1982)

On Essays

We sometimes hear that essays are an old-fashioned form, that so-and-so is the

“last essayist”, but the facts of the marketplace argue quite otherwise Essays of nearly any kind are so much easier than short stories for a writer to sell, so many more see print, it is strange that though two fine anthologies remain that publish the year's best stories, no comparable collection exists for essays Such changes in the reading public's taste aren't always to the good, needless to say The art of telling stories predated even cave painting, surely; and if we ever find ourselves living in caves again,

it (with painting and drumming) will be the only art left, after movies, novels, photography, essays, biography, and all the rest have gone down the drain – the art to build from

One has the sense with the short story as a form that while everything may have been done, nothing has been overdone; it has a permanence Essays, if a comparison

is to be made, although they go back four hundred years to Montaigne, seem a mercurial, newfangled, sometimes hockey affair that has lent itself to many of the excesses of the age, from spurious autobiography to spurious hallucination, as well as

to the shabby careerism of traditional journalism It is a greased pig Essays are associated with the way young writers fashion a name – on plain, crowded newsprint in hybrid vehicles like the Village Voice, Rolling Stone, the New York Review of Books, instead of the thick paper stock and thin readership of Partisan Review

Essays, however, hang somewhere on a line between two sturdy poles: this is what I think, and this is what I am Autobiographies which aren’t novels are generally extended essays, indeed A personal essay is like the human voice talking, its order the

by Edward Hoagland Reprinted by permission of' Random House, Inc Mind’s natural Row, instead of a systematised outline of ideas Though more wayward or informal than

an article or treatise, somewhere it contains a point which is its real centre, even if the point couldn't be uttered in fewer words than the essayist has used

Essays do not usually boil down to a summary, as articles do, and the style of the writer has a “nap” to it, a combination of personality and originality and energetic loose ends that stand up like the nap on a piece of wool and cannot be brushed flat Essays belong to the animal kingdom, with a surface that generates sparks, like a coat of fur, compared with the flat, conventional cotton of the magazine article writer, who works in the vegetable kingdom, instead But, essays, on the other hand, may have fewer

“levels” than fiction, because we are not supposed to argue much about their meaning

In the old distinction between teaching and storytelling, the essayist, however cleverly

he camouflages his intentions, is a bit of a teacher or reformer, and an essay is intended to convey the same point to each of us

This emphasis upon mind speaking to mind is what make essays less universal in their appeal than stories They are addressed to an educated, perhaps a middle-class, reader, with certain presuppositions, a frame of reference, even a commitment to civility that is shared not the grand and golden empathy inherent in every man or woman that a storyteller has a chance to tap

Nevertheless, the artful “I” of an essay can be as chameleon as any narrator in fiction; and essays do tell a story quite as often as a short story stakes a claim to a particular viewpoint Mark Twain's piece called “Corn-pone Opinions”, for example, which is about public opinion, begins with a vignette as vivid as any in Huckleberry Finn Twain says that when he was a boy of fifteen, he used to hang out a back window and listen to the sermons preached by a neighbour’s slave standing on top of a woodpile: “He imitated the pulpit style of the several clergyman of the village, and did it well and with fine passion and energy To me he was a wonder I believed he was the greatest orator in the United States and would some day be heard from But it did not happen; in the distribution of rewards he was overlooked… He interrupted his preaching now and then to saw a stick of wood, but the sawing was a pretense – he did it with his mouth, exactly imitating the sound the bucksaw makes in shrieking its way through the wood

But it served its purpose, it kept his master from coming out to see how the work was getting along A novel would go on and tell us what happened next in the life of the slave – and we miss that But the extraordinary flexibility of essays is what has enabled them to ride out rough weather and hybridise into forms that suit the times And just as one of the first things a fiction writer learns is that he needn’t actually be writing fiction to write a short story – that he can tell his own history or anybody else’s as exactly as he remembers it and it will be “fiction” if it remains primarily a story – an essayist soon discovers that he doesn’t have to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth; he can shape or shave his memories, as long as the purpose is served of elucidating a truthful point

A personal essay frequently is not autobiographical at all, but what it does keep in common with autobiography is that, through its tone and tumbling progression, it conveys the quality of the author's mind Nothing gets in the way Because essays are directly concerned with the mind and the mind’s idiosyncrasy, the very freedom the mind possesses is bestowed on this branch of literature that does honour to it, and the fascination of the mind is the fascination of the essay

Questions for Discussion

1. What does the author mean by the following statements:

(a) “A personal essay is like the human voice talking, it orders the mind’s natural flow, instead of a systematised outline of ideas” (Paragraph 3)

(b) “But, essays on the other hand, may have fewer “levels” than fiction, because we are not supposed to argue much about their meaning” (Paragraph 3)

(c) “…an essayist soon discovers that he doesn't have to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth; he can shape or shave his memories” (Paragraph 6)

2. How does the author distinguish between essays and works of fiction?

According to Hoagland, what is the main purpose of all essays?

What advantages, if any, does the essayist have over the short story writer?

Exploring Ideas

1 Do you agree with the author that essays cannot be reduced to a summary, as in a single sentence? Give reasons for your answer

2 How would you define the essay? What makes an essay good or bad?

3 The author says that “essays are directly concerned with the mind and the mind's idiosyncrasy” How have you found this to be true in your reading of essays?

4 Agree or disagree with the statements discussed in question one of “Questions for Discussion”

of middle-class toads (black and white)”

City of Harlem

In a very real sense, Harlem is the capital of Black America And America has always been divided into black and white, and the substance of the division is social, economic, and cultural But even the name Harlem, now, means simply Negroes (even though some other peoples live there too) The identification is international as well: even in Belize, the capital of predominantly Negro British Honduras, there are vendors who decorate their carts with flowers and the names or pictures of Negro culture heroes associated with Harlem like Sugar Ray Robinson Some of the vendors even wear T-shirts that say "Harlem, U.S.A.," and they speak about it as a black Paris In Havana a young Afro-Cuban begged me to tell him about the “big leg ladies” of Lenox Avenue, hoping, too, that I could provide some way for him to get to that mystic and romantic place

There are, I suppose, contained within the central mythology of Harlem, almost as many versions of its glamour, and its despair, as there are places with people to make them up (In one meaning of the name, Harlem is simply a place white cab drivers will not go.) And Harlem means not only Negroes, but, of course, whatever other associations one might connect with them So in one breath Harlem will be the pleasure-happy centre of the universe, full of loud, hippy mamas in electric colours and their fast, slick-head papas, all of them twisting and grinning in the streets in a kind of existential joyousness that never permits of sadness or responsibility But in another breath this same place will be the gathering place for every crippling human vice, and the black men there simply victims of their own peculiar kind of sloth and childishness But perhaps these are not such different versions after all; chances are both these stereotypes come from the same kinds of minds

But Harlem, as it is, as it exists for its people, as an actual place where actual humans live – that is a very different thing Though, to be sure, Harlem is a place – a city really – where almost anything any person could think of to say goes on, probably does go on, or has gone on, but like any other city, it must escape any blank generalisation simply because it is alive, and changing each second with each breath any of its citizens take

When Africans first got to New York, or New Amsterdam as the Dutch called it, they lived in the farthest downtown portions of the city, near what is now called the Bowery Later, they shifted, and were shifted, as their numbers grew, to the section known as Greenwich Village The Civil War Draft Riots in 1863 accounted for the next move by New York's growing Negro population

After this violence (a few million dollars' worth of property was destroyed, and a Negro orphanage was burned to the ground) a great many Negroes moved across the river into Brooklyn But many others moved farther uptown to an area just above what was known as Hell's Kitchen The new Negro ghetto was known as Black Bohemia, and later, after the success of an all black regiment in the Spanish-American war, this section was called San Juan Hill And even in the twenties when most Negroes had made their move even further uptown to Harlem, San Juan Hill was still a teeming branch office of black night life

Three sections along the east side of Manhattan, The Tenderloin, Black Bohemia, and San Juan Hill or The Jungle featured all kinds of “sporting houses”, cabarets,

“dancing classes”, afterhours gin mills, as well as the Gumbo Suppers, Fish Fries, Egg Nog Parties, Chitterlin’ Struts, and Pigfoot Hops, before the Negroes moved still farther uptown

The actual move into what is now Harlem was caused by quite a few factors, but there are a few that were particularly important as catalysts First, locally, there were more race riots around the turn of the century between the white poor (as always) and the Negroes Also, the Black Bohemia section was by now extremely overcrowded, swelled as it was by the influx of Negroes from all over the city The section was a notorious red light district (but then there have only been two occupations a black woman could go into in America without too much trouble: the other was domestic help) and the overcrowding made worse by the moral squalor that poverty encourages meant that the growing local black population had to go somewhere The immigrant groups living on both sides of the black ghetto fought in the streets to keep their own ghettos autonomous and pure, and the Negro had to go elsewhere

At this time, just about the turn of the century, Harlem (an area which the first Africans had helped connect with the rest of the Dutch city by clearing a narrow road – Broadway – up into the woods of New Harlem) was still a kind of semi-suburban area, populated, for the most part, by many of the city's wealthiest families The elaborate estates of the eighteenth century, built by men like Alexander Hamilton and Roger Morris, were still being lived in, but by the descendants of wealthy merchants (The Hamilton house still stands near Morningside Heights, as an historic landmark called The Grange The Morris house, which was once lived in by Aaron Burr, is known as The Jumel House, and it still stands at the northern part of Harlem, near the Polo

Grounds, as a museum run by the D.A.R George Washington used it as his headquarters for a while during the Revolutionary War.) So there was still the quiet elegance of the nineteenth century brownstones and spacious apartment buildings, the wide drives, rolling greens, and huge-trunked trees

What made the area open up to Negroes was the progress that America has always been proud of an elevated railway went up in the nineties, and the very rich left immediately and the near rich very soon after Saint Philips Church, after having its

old site bought up by a railroad company, bought a large piece of property, with large apartment buildings, in the centre of Harlem, and, baby, the panic was on Rich and famous Negroes moved into the vacated luxury houses very soon after, including the area now known as “Strivers Row”, which was made up of almost one hundred brick mansions designed by Stanford White The panic was definitely on but still only locally

What really turned that quiet suburb into “Black Paris”, was the coming of the First World War and the mass exodus of Negroes from the South to large urban centres At the turn of the century most Negroes still lived in the South and were agricultural labourers, but the entrance of America into the War, and the desperate call for cheap unskilled labour, served to start thousands of Negroes scrambling North The flow of immigrants from Europe had all but ceased by 1914, and the industrialists knew immediately where to turn They even sent recruiters down into the South to entice the Negroes North In 1900 the Negro population of New York City was 60,000; by 1920 it was 152,467; by 1930 it was 227,706 And most of these moved, of course, uptown

It was this mass exodus during the early part of the century that was responsible for most of the black cities of the North – the huge Negro sections of New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Detroit, etc It was also responsible for what these sections would very shortly become, as the masses of Southern Negroes piled into their new Jordans, thinking to have a go at an innocent America

The twenties are legend because they mark America’s sudden insane entrance into the 20th century The war had brought about a certain internationalism and prosperity (even, relatively speaking, for Negroes) During the twenties Harlem was the mecca of the good time and in many ways even came to symbolise the era called the Jazz Age

Delirious white people made the trip uptown to hear Negro musicians and singers, and watch Negro dancers, and even Negro intellectuals It was, I suppose, the black man’s debut into the most sophisticated part of America The old darkies of the plantation were suddenly all over the North, and making a whole lot of noise

There were nightclubs in Harlem that catered only to white audiences, but with the best Negro entertainers White intellectuals made frequent trips to Harlem, not only to find out about a newly emerging black America, but to party with an international set of swinging bodies It was the era of Ellington at The Cotton Club for the sensual, and The New Negro' for the intellectual Everyone spoke optimistically of the Negro Renaissance, and The New Negro, as if, somehow, the old Negro wasn't good enough Harlem sparkled then, at least externally, and it took the depression to dull that sparkle, and the long lines of unemployed Negroes and the longer lines at the soup kitchens and bread queues brought reality down hard on old and new Negroes alike So the tourist trade diminished, and colourful Harlem became just a social liability for the white man, and an open air jail for the black

The cold depression thirties, coupled with the decay of old buildings and ancient neighbourhoods, and, of course, the seeming inability of the “free enterprise” system to provide either jobs or hope for a great many black people in the city of Harlem, have served to make this city another kind of symbol For many Negroes, whether they live in

Harlem or not, the city is simply a symbol of naked oppression You can walk along

125th Street any evening and meet about one hundred uniformed policemen, who are there, someone will tell you, to protect the people from themselves

For many Negroes, Harlem is a place one escapes from, and lives in shame about for the rest of his life But this is one of the weirdest things about the American experience, that it can oppress a man, almost suck his life away, and then make him so ashamed that he was among the oppressed, rather than the oppressors, that he will never offer any protest

The New Negro: a collection of essays published in 1925 by Alain Locke, which attempted to define the culture of the American Negro

The legitimate cultural tradition of the Negro in Harlem (and America) is one of wild happiness, usually at some black man’s own invention – of speech, of dress, of gait, the sudden twist of a musical phrase, the warmness or hurt of someone’s voice

But that culture is also one of hatred and despair Harlem must contain all of this and be capable of producing all of these emotions

People line the streets in summer – on the corners or hanging out the windows –

or head for other streets in winter Vendors go by slowly and crowds of people from movies or church (Saturday afternoons, warm or cold, 125th is jammed with shoppers and walkers, and the record stores scream through loudspeakers at the street.)

Young girls, doctors, pimps, detectives, preachers, drummers, accountants, gamblers, labour organisers, postmen, wives, Muslims, junkies, the employed, and the unemployed: all going someplace – an endless stream of Americans, whose singularity

in America is that they are black and can never honestly enter into the lunatic asylum of white America

Harlem for this reason is a community of nonconformists, since any black American, simply by virtue of his blackness, is weird, a nonconformist in this society A community of nonconformists, not an artists’ colony – though blind “ministers” still wander sometimes along 137th Street, whispering along the strings of their guitars – but

a colony of old-line Americans, who can hold out, even if it is a great deal of the time in misery and ignorance, but still hold out, against the hypocrisy and sterility of big-time America, and still try to make their own lives, simply because of their colour, but by now, not so simply, because that colour now does serve to identify people in America whose feelings about it are not broadcast every day on television

Questions for Discussion

1 According to the author, what is the mythology of Harlem? What is its “reality”?

2 Describe how Harlem came into being, historically

3 What caused the area known as Harlem to open up to settlement by Negroes?

4 What effect did World War I have upon Harlem? the twenties?

5 According to the author, what is the Negro’s “legitimate cultural tradition?”

6 Why is Harlem a “community of nonconformists?”

Exploring Ideas

1 The author calls New York City “a symbol of naked oppression” What does he mean

by such an observation? How would you define oppression? What kinds of oppression are there?

2 How would you describe the “legitimate cultural tradition” of your people or nation? How important is it for people to have a cultural tradition?

3 What, to you, is a nonconformist?