It’s the first day of school for yours portly. I’m excited to start the new school year, and the whirlwind first day back is in the books.
I’m teaching three sections of United States History this year (Advanced Placement), a semester of Economics (followed in the spring semester with US Government), and my middle and high school music courses. I’m particularly excited about the High School Music Ensemble, which is a good group of music program veterans, young and old.
I’ve been fan-boying a great deal lately about Richard Weaver. He’s one of my favorite authors, even though I’ve read comparatively little of his work. Weaver died during the prime of his academic career, but before his premature death he managed to bequeath a rich heritage of scholarly works about literature, religion, and his beloved Dixie.
As I’ve written again and again, I always enjoy rereading the introduction to Weaver’s Ideas Have Consequences, and hope to reread the entire book again soon. The introduction sums up the modern West’s maladies starkly and clearly, tracing their origins to the nominalism of William of Occam.
I found one podcast in which two conservative commentators summarize and discuss the book, chapter-by-chapter; it’s a good, quick overview if you’ve got fifty minutes in the car:
That said, while I reference Weaver quite a bit, I actually have not written as many posts about him and his work as I thought. Nevertheless, while I’m in the midst of my annual Weaver Fest, I thought it would be the perfect time to give the great academic his own Lazy Sunday:
1.) “Capitalism Needs Social Conservatism” – a #TBT post from the TPP 2.0 era, this post was part of a series on social conservatism, which I dubbed the “red-headed stepchild” of modern conservatism. The post is more inspired by Weaver than it is about him, but I mention the paradox of prosperity near the end when I discuss Weaver’s drunk.
That’s my phrase for a metaphor Weaver employs near the end of the introduction to Ideas Have Consequences in which he compares modern society to a drunk. The more inebriated and alcoholic the drunk becomes, the less capable he is of doing the work necessary to feed his addiction. So it is with modern man—the more he luxuriates in excess and comfort, the less willing he is to do the uncomfortable work necessary to sustain his opulence.
2.) “Back to School with Richard Weaver” – the subject of last Thursday’s TBT, this little piece was from a 2014 Facebook post in which I quoted from “The South and the American Union,” an essay from Weaver’s Southern Essays. It contrasts the Southerner’s “Apollonian” worldview of fixed limits and “permanent settlement” to the ceaseless striving and progression of the Northern, “Faustian” worldview. It’s a fascinating dichotomy that, while controversial, certainly rings true to Southerners like yours portly.
3.) “The Portly Politico Summer Reading List 2016” – my classic, original reading list; naturally, Ideas Have Consequences tops the list! As I wrote at the time, if you’re going to read just one book this summer, make it Ideas Have Consequences!
4.) “Ideas Have Consequences – Introduction” – I wrote this little summary for my History of Conservative Thought course. It’s my quick rundown to help breakdown the main ideas from the introduction to high school juniors. Hopefully it worked!
Well, that’s it. Enjoy Weaver Fest 2019! It’s back to school for me tomorrow.
–TPP
Other Lazy Sunday Installments:
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Back in February, I wrote about the “The State of Education” in the United States today. The post detailed the travails of a New York City public school French teacher, Mary Hudson, and her often horrifying experiences trying to mold young minds in the worst of conditions.
Fortunately, I do not teach in corrupt, inner-city New York City public and magnet schools helmed by incompetent administrators; nevertheless, some of the underlying problems Ms. Hudson faced are universal for educators in all settings and all across the country. I teach at a small private school in rural South Carolina—about as distant from the bustling, crammed schools of urban America as one can get—and still see some of the same issues that faced Ms. Hudson at work.
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Every year I try to reread the introduction to Ideas Have Consequences, Richard Weaver’s masterful work of analysis and prophecy.
With school starting back in just FOUR DAYS—may God have mercy on us all—it seemed germane to bring back this post from 2018, itself a contextualization of a Facebook post from 2014.
Here is “Back to School with Richard Weaver“:
Every year, I try to sit down and re-read at least the introduction to Richard Weaver’s seminal Ideas Have Consequences, probably the most powerful book I’ve ever read. I tend to undertake this re-reading around the time school resumes, as it helps remind me why I teach.
In addition to Ideas Have Consequences, Weaver wrote some of the most eloquent essays on the South—and what it means to be Southern—in the twentieth century. In 2014, I posted the following quotation on Facebook; I will allow it to speak for itself[:]
I’m undertaking my annual baptism in the works of Richard Weaver to focus my philosophical thinking for a rapidly approaching school year, and, as always, I’m presented with an embarrassment of riches. Few thinkers cram so many nuggets of truth into so little space. Every paragraph of Weaver’s writings yields insights that speak to the very heart of humanity.
Here’s an excerpt from “The South and the American Union,” an essay from _The Southern Essays of Richard Weaver_, published posthumously in 1987. It might clarify a few things for some of my Yankee friends who have expressed a certain bafflement with Southern mores and attitudes…:
“The Southern world-outlook was much like that which [Oswald] Spengler describes as the Apollonian. It knew nothing of infinite progressions but rather loved fixed limits in all things; it rejected the idea of ceaseless becoming in favor of ‘simple accepted statuesque becomeness.’ It saw little point in restless striving, but desired a permanent settlement, a coming to terms with nature, a recognition of what is in its self-sustaining form. The Apollonian feeling, as Spengler remarks, is of a world of ‘coexistent individual things,’ and it is tolerant as a matter of course. Other things are because they have to be; one marks their nature and their limits and learns to get along with them. The desire to dominate and proselytize is foreign to it. As Spengler further adds, ‘there are no Classical world-improvers.’ From this comes the Southern kind of tolerance, which has always impressed me as fundamentally different from the Northern kind. It is expressed in the Southerner’s easy-going ways and his willingness to things grow where they sprout. He accepts the irremediability of a certain amount of evil and tries to fence it around instead of trying to stamp it out and thereby spreading it. His is a classical acknowledgment of tragedy and of the limits of power.
“This mentality is by nature incompatible with its great rival, the Faustian. Faustian man is essentially a restless striver, a yearner after the infinite, a hater of stasis, a man who is unhappy unless he feels that he is making the world over. He may talk much of tolerance, but for him tolerance is an exponent of power. His tolerance tolerates only the dogmatic idea of tolerance, as anyone can discover for himself by getting to know the modern humanitarian liberal. For different opinions and ways of life he has no respect, but hostility or contemptuous indifference, until the day when they can be brought around to conform to his own. Spengler describes such men as torn with the pain of ‘seeing men be other than they would have them be and the utterly un-Classical desire to devote their life to their reformation.’ It happened that Southern tolerance, standing up for the right to coexistence of its way of life, collided at many points with the Faustian desire to remove all impediments to its activity and make over things in its own image. Under the banner first of reform and then of progress, the North challenged the right to continue of a civilization based on the Classical ideal of fixity and stability….”
There are so many great passages I could cite (“Man [to the Southerner] is a mixture of good and evil, and he can never be perfected in this life. The notion of his natural goodness is a delusive theory which will blow up any social order that is predicated upon it. Far from being a vessel of divinity, as the New England Transcendentalists taught, he is a container of cussedness.”), for almost all of Weaver is quotable.
Today, I resume my teaching duties for the remainder of the 2018-2019 academic year. In the spirit of that return from two weeks of glorious holiday loafing (and the prolific blogging it enabled, however briefly), the Wall Street Journal ran a piece over break about teachers quitting their jobs in record numbers.
I don’t plan on quitting education anytime soon—I rather enjoy teaching kids useful trivia and getting paid for it—but I would like to offer an “insider’s perspective” on the education field. Granted, I teach in private school, but many of the issues teachers face are similar (albeit thankfully muted in a private school setting).
Generally, there seem to be two approaches to looking at the massive problems of education: one is that we should spend more on education; the other is to pile more responsibilities onto teachers, and even to blame them for children’s lackluster performance. Both of these approaches are, to different extents, flawed.
I’ll consider the second perspective first. Conservative politicians will occasionally scapegoat teachers, sometimes fairly (as in the egregious examples from New York public schools with pedophiles on permanent, paid leave and the like), but usually without a solid understanding of what teaching entails.
I commonly see teachers—who get very prickly when people start noting the profession’s many perks—post online about how we don’t just get out at 3 everyday, etc. There’s some truth to that; if you really do your job right, you’re spending a good bit of your time either before or after school, not to mention the weekends, grading or planning. That’s especially true for first- and second-year teachers, who really have to do everything from scratch.
That said, if you stick with it—and if you don’t fall for the perennial educational fads that circulate every five years or so, all of which claim the previous fad was fatally incorrect, but that this one is the Brave New World of Education and is inerrant—you can pretty much tweak your lesson plans and approaches at the margins, rather than reinvent the wheel, from year to year. I’ve known (and been taught by) many teachers that are overzealous about totally rebuilding their courses on a regular basis, but the perceived gains they see in the classroom are probably due more to their own passion than to whatever bold new system they’ve conjured up.
Which brings me to the other perspective mentioned above. Progressives, who have an overly romantic view of education—and who see it as a means to indoctrinate generations to spew Leftist pabulum uncritically—think the education system can solve all of society’s ills if we just invest in it more. Part of it comes from a desire to create more government jobs (and loyal Democratic voters) for people dubiously qualified to do anything productive. Part of it comes from a sincere belief that they can save underprivileged kids.
That clearly doesn’t work. So what is the truth when it comes to education, and how can we begin solving some of its problems?
For one, the complaints from those outside of the profession about our hours and summer vacation are not without merit, but they miss the point, too. As noted above, good teachers—by which I mean teachers who will do their jobs as they should—will put in time over and beyond the classroom time. You have to if you’re actually going to be prepared for class.
Summer vacation is a perk—we shouldn’t pretend otherwise. Many teachers use it as an opportunity for professional development, but, c’mon, it’s also a time to hit the beach (I might be an exception to both—I do maintenance and grounds work at my school to make extra money, because I want to retire someday). But it’s a big draw for many to the profession, especially women (and particularly mothers), who make up a huge portion of the teaching population. As with the perennial debates about the mythical wage gap, teachers should acknowledge that less months worked = less pay. The counterargument, one that I’ve made frequently, is that many of us put in twelve months’ worth of work in nine or ten.
As far as putting more money into schools, that’s all well and good—but where does the money go? If it’s going to build some needless Mall of America school complex, or to hire another Assistant Vice-Principal of Islamic Outreach, it’s not doing much beyond feathering the nests of over-credentialed M.Ed. holders who took a couple of online classes in between naps and diversity seminars.
New technology and facilities are great, but they don’t teach kids. All I need to teach history or music is some kind of board, something to write on, and some dog-eared notes. I could probably get by without the board. Jesus taught multitudes without a SmartBoard. Aristotle taught Alexander the Great, probably with nothing more than some tablets and scrolls, and that guy conquered the known world.
More importantly, teachers need administrators to give us the space to do our jobs. We all have little duties that cut into prep time, and that’s the nature of the beast. But when politicians start decreeing ever-more tasks for schools to take on, they inevitably fall to the teachers. The aforementioned AVP of Islamic Outreach isn’t the one writing the lesson plans about Muhammad’s views on marrying nine-year olds, even if xyr is forcing the Social Studies Department to add it; the Social Studies teachers are the ones figuring out how to make it happen, all the way complying with a thicket of misguided federal and State “guidelines.”
Ultimately, there are some behavioral issues that drive teachers from the biz, too; these are problems that, in part, begin at home (or, sadly, the lack thereof). Those are social and cultural problems that are, frankly, beyond the power of educators and administrators to solve on the macro level. We all do our part, to the extent we can, at the micro level. I fear that some teachers overdo it, but that’s a topic I’d have to cover separately.
To summarize these stream-of-consciousness reflections, here are some things that would help aid retention in the field—and align educational goals more with reality:
That’s a short, incomplete list of some possible proposals. It’s not exhaustive, and as every teacher and wag will point out, there’s always an exception (I can’t tell you how many faculty meetings I’ve endured where some new policy has been discussed, and immediately dozens of exceptions or unique scenarios arise, to which I would say either a.) figure it out yourself or b.) just follow the policy as best you can, knowing weird exceptions will crop up—ask forgiveness, not permission).
If nothing else, I hope these reflections are useful (and, for any of my parents, colleagues, or school administrators who might be reading, know that I love my job and all of you, and that our little school is the best in South Carolina) and can spark some discussion. Education is hugely important to the future of South Caroline and our nation; it deserves to be discussed frankly and dispassionately.
Two years ago, during the Second Era of Portliness, I wrote one of my most popular posts ever: my recommended must-reads for conservatives (and everyone, for that matter). With school starting back—yesterday!—I decided it was a good time to look back to this classic—nay, timeless—list. Pick these up as soon as possible, and enjoy some end-of-summer reading. –TPP
I’m at the beach–at the very desk at which I re-launched this blog after a six-year hiatus–and I figure it’s the perfect occasion to unveil the “Portly Politico Summer Reading List 2016.”
The books listed here are among some of my favorites. I’m not necessarily reading them at the moment, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t! These books have shaped my thinking about the many issues I’ve covered over the past two months. I highly encourage you to check them out.
So, without further ado, and in no particular order, here are some of my all-time favorites:
1.) Richard Weaver, Ideas Have Consequences (1948) – I just wrote about this book in my last post (which I encourage you to read), and I’m including it on this list because it’s pretty much required reading, especially if you’re putting yourself through Conservatism 101. The edition linked here is right around 100 pages, and while it’s a dense read, it’s not so overwhelming that you can’t finish it, making it perfect for long days at the beach.
Weaver’s writing is prophetic, especially if you’ve studied conservative thought, or even if you’ve just experienced a vague, gnawing sense of dislocation in the modern world. It’s packed–nearly on every page–with brilliant, quotable gems. I re-read the introduction to the book every August right before school starts back, because it reminds me why I teach, and helps to align my thinking morally and spiritually.
If you read just one book this summer—or even this year—make it Ideas Have Consequences.
2.) Dennis Prager, Still the Best Hope: Why the World Needs American Values to Triumph (2012) – Few books have shaped my thinking about American values—what they are, why they matter, and why they’re worth defending—more thoroughly than this effort from conservative talk-radio host Dennis Prager. Prager, a devout Jew with an Ivy League education and rich love of learning, outlines the so-called “American Trinity”—easily found on any coin—and argues that Americans are losing a three-sided battle against the Left and Islamism due to an inability to articulate why American values matter.
The “American Trinity”—liberty, trust in God, and e pluribus unum—is a brilliant and easy-to-digest device for understanding core American values. In fact, I owe a huge debt to Prager; Still the Best Hope almost directly inspired two of my earliest come-back posts: the much-read “American Values, American Nationalism,” and the follow-up “Created by Philosophy.”
Prager splits the book into three major sections: outlines of the threats of radical Islamism and modern progressive Leftism, then an unpacking of the “American Trinity.” By far, the largest chunk of the book is the second section, which is one of the most effective eviscerations of Leftist assumptions ever written. It’s so long because it’s extremely thorough and well-documented.
At around 450 pages, it can be a longer read, but it’s written in a pleasing, engaging style. Prager isn’t a blow-hard like so many talk-radio show hosts, and his inquisitive, inviting voice comes through on the page. I also love Prager’s mind and the way he approaches topics; check out his other works here.
3.) Roger Kimball, The Long March: How the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s Changed America (2001) – If you’ve got some time—and are prepared to be terrified by the excesses of 1960s radicalism and its heroes—you must read this excellent, damning collection of essays. In fact, everything Kimball writes is required reading (I also recommend The Fortunes of Permanence: Culture and Anarchy in an Age of Amnesia and The Survival of Culture: Permanent Values in a Virtual Age, both from 2012; the latter is edited by Kimball and includes the works of other writers).
“[E]verything Kimball writes is required reading.”
Long March strips away the romantic facade of 1960s folk heroes and “radical chic” academics, exposing their fraudulent, dangerous theories and their continued influence on American society and institutions. Kimball isn’t aiming for the easy targets or to satisfy the Sean Hannity crowd; he brings thorough research and intellectual heft to the proceedings. As an art historian and critic, he offers a perspective that’s often lacking from conservative scholarship, serious or otherwise.
My only real beef with the book is that he takes a very dim view of rock ‘n’ roll. That being said, his argument against it makes sense, and I can’t help but experience a twinge of introspection now whenever I listen to my beloved classic rock.
Regardless, Kimball is a strong, eloquent writer, and I can almost feel myself getting smarter when I read his works. I’m currently reading The Rape of the Masters: How Political Correctness Sabotages Art from 2005, and it’s a linguistic delight.
“If you read just one book this summer–or even this year–make it Ideas Have Consequences.”
Honorable Mention: Greg Gutfeld, Not Cool: The Hipster Elite and Their War on You (2015) – if you want a summer read that’s quick, digestible, and absolutely hilarious, pick up Not Cool. Greg Gutfeld, co-host of Fox News’s The Five and former host of the excellent late-late-late-night round-table discussion show Red Eye with Greg Gutfeld, offers an unusual thesis: everything awful that’s ever been done—such as adopting wasteful, inefficient, and redistributive government programs—for the past fifty years or so has been because people are afraid to look uncool.
It’s oddly compelling. When you think about it, no one wants to be left out, and the Left constantly bludgeons society with the idea that if you don’t uncritically accept that the government should solve all of our problems through coercion (“compassion”), then you’re a mean, stingy racist. If the parade of A-list celebrities at the Democratic National Convention last week (and the smaller cavalcade of B-list celebrities at the Republican National Convention the week before) is any indication, then it’s clear that it’s “cool” to be a progressive, but lethally uncool to be a conservative. After all, what’s “cool” about saying no to “free” stuff?
Not Cool is a quick read, and Gutfeld’s humor and insight crackle on every page. Sometimes you won’t know whether you should laugh or cry.
***
So, there’s your summer reading for 2016. We’ve still got about a month of summertime fun left (although I’ll be heading back to the classroom in just a couple of weeks), so grab some of these books before you head out of town. You’ll be glad you did.
Every year, I try to sit down and re-read at least the introduction to Richard Weaver’s seminal Ideas Have Consequences, probably the most powerful book I’ve ever read. I tend to undertake this re-reading around the time school resumes, as it helps remind me why I teach.
In addition to Ideas Have Consequences, Weaver wrote some of the most eloquent essays on the South—and what it means to be Southern—in the twentieth century. In 2014, I posted the following quotation on Facebook; I will allow it to speak for itself.
I’m undertaking my annual baptism in the works of Richard Weaver to focus my philosophical thinking for a rapidly approaching school year, and, as always, I’m presented with an embarrassment of riches. Few thinkers cram so many nuggets of truth into so little space. Every paragraph of Weaver’s writings yields insights that speak to the very heart of humanity.
Here’s an excerpt from “The South and the American Union,” an essay from _The Southern Essays of Richard Weaver_, published posthumously in 1987. It might clarify a few things for some of my Yankee friends who have expressed a certain bafflement with Southern mores and attitudes…:
“The Southern world-outlook was much like that which [Oswald] Spengler describes as the Apollonian. It knew nothing of infinite progressions but rather loved fixed limits in all things; it rejected the idea of ceaseless becoming in favor of ‘simple accepted statuesque becomeness.’ It saw little point in restless striving, but desired a permanent settlement, a coming to terms with nature, a recognition of what is in its self-sustaining form. The Apollonian feeling, as Spengler remarks, is of a world of ‘coexistent individual things,’ and it is tolerant as a matter of course. Other things are because they have to be; one marks their nature and their limits and learns to get along with them. The desire to dominate and proselytize is foreign to it. As Spengler further adds, ‘there are no Classical world-improvers.’ From this comes the Southern kind of tolerance, which has always impressed me as fundamentally different from the Northern kind. It is expressed in the Southerner’s easy-going ways and his willingness to things grow where they sprout. He accepts the irremediability of a certain amount of evil and tries to fence it around instead of trying to stamp it out and thereby spreading it. His is a classical acknowledgment of tragedy and of the limits of power.
“This mentality is by nature incompatible with its great rival, the Faustian. Faustian man is essentially a restless striver, a yearner after the infinite, a hater of stasis, a man who is unhappy unless he feels that he is making the world over. He may talk much of tolerance, but for him tolerance is an exponent of power. His tolerance tolerates only the dogmatic idea of tolerance, as anyone can discover for himself by getting to know the modern humanitarian liberal. For different opinions and ways of life he has no respect, but hostility or contemptuous indifference, until the day when they can be brought around to conform to his own. Spengler describes such men as torn with the pain of ‘seeing men be other than they would have them be and the utterly un-Classical desire to devote their life to their reformation.’ It happened that Southern tolerance, standing up for the right to coexistence of its way of life, collided at many points with the Faustian desire to remove all impediments to its activity and make over things in its own image. Under the banner first of reform and then of progress, the North challenged the right to continue of a civilization based on the Classical ideal of fixity and stability….”
There are so many great passages I could cite (“Man [to the Southerner] is a mixture of good and evil, and he can never be perfected in this life. The notion of his natural goodness is a delusive theory which will blow up any social order that is predicated upon it. Far from being a vessel of divinity, as the New England Transcendentalists taught, he is a container of cussedness.”), for almost all of Weaver is quotable.
The Portly Politico 