Nothing Common About the Common Core

I recently got a call from a parent looking for help in math for their child. In the past, I have said that math was one of the academic areas I was qualified to tutor. Now  I have to qualify that assertion to say that I tutor “old school math.”  My experience is invalid because "old school math" is only taught in 8 of the 50 states. The other 42, as well as 4 territories and the District of Columbia, have chosen to follow the Common Core.

Common Core is a teaching methodology that is based on standardizing math and English instruction across the country. The idea was to ensure that all high school graduates had the same knowledge so there were no competency gaps. Standards were also developed for each grade level. Every state decides whether or not to implement the Common Core standards in their curriculum. When it was first introduced in 2009, 48 states adopted the standards, motivated by federal funding for education through Obama’s Race To The Top Initiative.

The NAEP (National Assessment of Educational Progress), is an evaluation system administered by a federal agency under the Department of Education that has been testing 4^th, 8^th and 12^th grade students in public and private schools across the nation in different academic areas every two years since 1969. In 2015, it found that the performance of high school seniors in math had not improved since Common Core had been implemented and had even gotten worse than their performance in 1992 when the tests were first used, according to a blog in the Huffington Post last May entitled, “Results Are in: Common Core Fails Tests and Kids.”  There was a similar decline in reading performance with the implementation of Common Core. 

The author concluded that Common Core is designed in such a way that the majority of students are doomed to failure, especially if those students are poor, or have learning disabilities or are non-native speakers of English. What was ironic about the call I received was that both parents were engineers. They were both highly educated, native English speakers from an upper middle class neighborhood yet neither was able to help their child because they couldn’t understand the math.  Judging from the comments on the Internet, it is a “common” problem. Clearly there is something at fault in the way math and reading are currently being taught in the US from grades K-12 if the majority of graduating high school students are unprepared for college level work.

Math and English are both primarily “language” based academic subjects. Each has its own specific vocabulary, grammar and syntax. Understanding and solving a math problem is similar to reading and analyzing a literary passage or novel.  At higher grade levels math requires a conceptual understanding,  but in the beginning, it’s simply about acquiring competency with the fundamentals. The why is less important than the what and how. One of the problems with the current math curriculum is that material that was typically taught at higher grade levels is being introduced much earlier in Common Core before the foundation is laid.

An acquaintance who teaches math in high school compared solving such problems to building an automobile engine. It’s not enough to be given the engine block and the component parts and told to build the engine.  Knowing what the part looks like and what parts connect with it, along with knowing where it should be in the engine, and what order it must be put in is important in the assembly process. One of the algebra problems in the NY curriculum has students in Algebra I solving quadratic equations by completing the square. Before Common Core, working with quadratic equations was a skill that was  typically taught in an Algebra 2/Trigonometry course or higher, as it is in many other countries.

Reading works the same way. In earlier grades, the process of reading begins with visual recognition of words and their proper pronunciation. Later, students learn to define and use the words in simple sentences. When I was in 7^th grade I had a very strict but comprehensive English teacher.  I learned the essentials of language composition from a book called English 3200. It gave me practice naming the part of speech of each word in a sentence, the definition or function of that word, and the syntax, or its proper position in a sentence. Those were the building blocks of language. From there, it was simply a matter of acquiring the necessary vocabulary to create interesting and engaging prose and poetry pieces, and that is a matter of experience, in other words, spending a lot of time reading. The students I knew who were skilled writers were also voracious readers across all types of literature, and if I have to define what voracious means, there is already a problem.

Common Core focus the bulk of its reading curriculum in the higher grades on nonfiction, according to an article by Joy Pullman, writing for the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal. The language of nonfiction or informational literature is colloquial so it can be easily understood by a broad audience. Studying the text of Shakespeare or Chaucer or any of the Romantic poets, on the other hand, requires annotation and translation to modern English through the use of SparkNotes or similar supplemental sources. Pullman quotes a study by Sandra Stotsky and Mark Bauerlein claiming that “college readiness will likely decrease when the secondary English curriculum prioritizes literary nonfiction or informational reading and reduces the study of complex literary texts and literary traditions” to prove her assertion that the classics help students with higher level thinking and analysis.

A Wall Street Journal article by Jillian Kay Melchior earlier this year talked about the resistance to studying classical texts on college campuses across the country, including at such bastions of higher education as Yale. The students’ main objection appears to be the fact that classical literature is not applicable to the issues of the current population demographic. Yet the central concerns of humanity have not changed over time. Reynaldo Martinez, a student at  Hostos Community College, part of City University of New York in the Bronx says, “These works open your eyes to the way morality and education and equality are still needed in our society.”

A letter to the editor about the article draws an analogy to a course on U.S. presidents to say that “the ones studied would include those who had the greatest impact, served during challenging times, or made difficult decisions that are still felt by us today. The course wouldn’t select one president from a northern state and one from a southern state, one who was right-handed and one who was left-handed, one who was tall and one who was short, to ensure representation of all demographics.”  

An online comment to the article continues, “I am reminded of a certain football coach from some years back  whose name escapes me at the moment who called his team together after a lopsided loss to tell his players that we are getting back to basics and at the same time picked up a football and displayed for  all to see and said; "this is a football". He ends by saying, ”Maybe that's what we need to do with the education system in our country, get back to basics.” We can’t run before we learn to walk and a Race To The Top won’t be won if our competitors are stumbling to get their balance.

The Problem With The Shape of Water

Guillermo del Toro won the Oscar this past Sunday for The Shape of Water.  Del Toro is a fan of classic cinema, and has used them for inspiration, especially The Creature from The Black Lagoon (1954). He is also adept at the use of visual effects such as light and color and strategic camera angles to create a movie that is impressive for its technical features.  The movie reverses the  roles of the characters in Hans Christian Andersen’s The Little Mermaid with the male protagonist as the merman and the female, Elisa Esposito as "the princess." I haven’t seen the movie, nor do I plan to, since what I have read about it so far doesn't exactly thrill me.

A review by Christopher Orr in The Atlantic Magazine bills the Shape of Water as an adult fairy tale, a claim which is based on an incomplete premise.  In the Disney version, Ariel voluntarily gives up her voice to the sea witch in exchange for legs so that she can marry the human prince and get her HEA (happily ever after) ending. A study of literature provides a different perspective on the film.The mermaid in Andersen's story is told that when she dies, she will become "foam on the surface of the water."  Although she does eventually  fall in love with the prince, her main objective is to attain an immortal soul and avoid dying, which she can only do by being human, winning the prince's love and getting him to marry her. Andersen's description of the immortal soul seems to be derived from Hindu philosophy. Her grandmother tells the little mermaid: "Human beings, on the contrary, have a soul which lives forever, lives after the body has been turned to dust. It rises up through the clear, pure air beyond the glittering stars. As we rise out of the water, and behold all the land of the earth, so do they rise to unknown and glorious regions which we shall never see.”

A common theme in literature is that the desire for material objects is a dual edged sword.The Bhagavad Gita says that attachment to the fruits of our actions, or desire, brings us pleasure as well as pain.The sea witch in Andersen's story tries to warn the mermaid of the consequences of her actions: "it is very stupid of you, but you shall have your way, and it will bring you to sorrow, my pretty princess."  When the mermaid gets her legs, it will not be a pleasant experience. The sea witch tells her, "you will feel great pain, as if a sword were passing through you. But all who see you will say that you are the prettiest little human being they ever saw. You will still have the same floating gracefulness of movement, and no dancer will ever tread so lightly; but at every step you take it will feel as if you were treading upon sharp knives, and that the blood must flow." She also cuts off the mermaid’s tongue as the price of her humanity. 

Elisa was found near the water as a baby. She too has no voice, like the mermaid, and must communicate through sign language. Elisa has lost her voice due to an an injury sustained in childhood. She has no family and very few friends. Elisa's disability isolates her, limiting her communication to the few people who understand her method of communication like her co-worker Zelda and  her neighbor Giles. She works as a janitor in a government factory during the 1960s, so she doesn't have money either. Along with her muteness, this makes her lonely and vulnerable. 

In my last post, I discussed the topic of loneliness and identified Jane Eyre as a character who has similar obstacles: lack of physical beauty, family or money but triumphs over them, managing to achieve a happy and fulfilling life.  Mr. Rochester, her romantic interest, is a man who starts out healthy and able bodied but has become crippled by circumstance. Near the end of Jane Eyre, he has been severely scarred in a fire that destroys his family home, losing a hand and the sight in one eye. 

Rochester's deformities cause him to hide away from the world and go into self imposed exile. Played by Doug Jones, the creature, or Asset, as he is called, is similar to Rochester and the title characters in Frankenstein and the Phantom of the Opera in many respects. He shares their intelligence, emotional depth and sensitivity and their desire to fit into the society that rejects them for their appearance. Jane Eyre voluntarily chooses Rochester as her husband because they are soulmates, equals both intellectually and economically who completely understand each other. The movie tries to make a case for the fact that the relationship between Elisa and the humanoid fish is similar, when Elisa says, “The way he looks at me. He doesn’t know what I lack... Or how I am incomplete. He just sees me for what I am. As I am.” 


Elisa wants to be loved for herself and is desperate to find that connection. She becomes attracted to the one male who also cannot communicate in the human world. Elisa and the creature are outsiders and prisoners of their circumstances and it is this similarity that draws them together. Mutual alienation, however, is an insufficient basis for a strong and stable relationship. 

 Moviegoers may remember last year’s live action remake of the Disney classic Beauty and the Beast as well as 2004's Shrek 2. Both are films in which the male protagonist attains a human form by magical intervention, the former through the reversal of a curse, and the latter by drinking a magical potion. There is no such ameliorating influence in this movie: the creature never changes its form. The audience is asked to accept him the way he is. Director Del Toro says that “love is not transformation. Love is acceptance and understanding.” The movie makes the premise of attraction between Elisa and Jones' character more palatable by making him more physically appealing. Designer Mark Hill discloses on Broadly.com that his features include, “a perfect nose, appropriately-spaced eyes, and gills that didn’t look out of place.” Del Toro specifically requested that the creature have big expressive eyes, “kissable” lips, broad shoulders...and a nice butt. 

Carli Velocci, the author of the article “Why We're So Obsessed with Sexy Monsters” on Broadly.com writes that the movie “presents a story in which the woman chooses the monster, and the monster remains monstrous.” But Elisa has little choice. Del Toro's film portrays the human men in his film as either hyperaggressive and violent, like Strickland, Elisa's boss, or powerless and emasculated like Giles.  The Asset is the best representation of positive masculinity, even though he himself is not a man in the strictest sense of the term.

The #MeToo movement has drawn attention to the sexual harassment and intimidation of women by powerful men, men like Strickland. In a December 24, 2017 article on the Hollywood Reporter.com, writer Kristin Lopez notes that Elisa's handicap, which sets her apart from others, actually attracts Strickland to her. He assumes she will consent to a sexual relationship with him because she has no other options and would welcome his attention. 

In Andersen’s story, the mermaid has the choice to kill the prince and to become a mermaid again,  but she refuses to exercise that option. She instead achieves an immortal soul through a complicated plot device called a deus ex machina (literally god from machine) in which an unexpected event resolves a tragic situation. In Andersen's The Little Mermaid, the Daughters of the Air, spirits who lack an immortal soul but gain one through doing good deeds, rescue the mermaid to become one of them. 

Elisa never intends to be with the creature permanently. She only wanted to release the creature back into the water where he came from, out of compassion, so that he can be free from exploitation by the humans. Just as the sea witch does in the Little Mermaid, Zelda tries to warn Elisa of the consequences of her decision, before she helps her. In the final scene, Elisa is shot and on the brink of death. The creature has seemingly magical healing powers and creates gills out of the marks on her throat. In a deus ex machina ending, he supposedly saves her life so that she can live underwater with him since he is unable to live on land. 

Some might see the ending as romantic.  As a male director, Del Toro doesn't seem to consider the implications of a movie that glamorizes denying the female protagonist the ability to choose for herself out of strength rather than weakness, as Jane Eyre does. In A Streetcar Named Desire, American playwright Tennessee Williams depicts the story of Blanche DuBois. She is a young woman from a formerly wealthy family of the Old South who visits her sister in the hedonistic environment of New Orleans. She has pursued pleasure in the form of alcohol and numerous sexual liaisons to escape her guilt and the tragedy of her life. Her behavior and her unequal status ultimately contributes to the subjugation of her will and destruction of her sanity at the hands of Stanley Kowalski, her sister's husband.

The Shape of Water isn’t a fairy tale or a movie about the power of true love, which might redeem it in my eyes.  Love is mocked and denigrated in the depiction of the relationships of all the main characters. Both Elisa’s co-worker Zelda and the antagonist Colonel Strickland have dysfunctional marriages where the love is either missing or toxic. Zelda says of her husband, "All he had going for him was animal magnetism back in the day." Giles cannot have a romantic relationship because of his sexual orientation, which was just as unsettling in the context of the times as is the romantic interaction between a human female and a hybridized fish, an interaction which falls perilously short of outright bestiality. A review by Candice Frederick on Gamespot.com (https://www.gamespot.com/articles/the-shape-of-water-review-the-problem-with-inter-s/1100-6455107/) also highlights a glaring inconsistency in asking why the female should fall in love with a  monster or an otherwise physically unattractive partner but the same is not true in reverse. 

Del Toro tries to romanticize the sexual content by representing it as a key part of a narrative about finding love where it’s least expected. Yes, when we fall in love, we make ourselves vulnerable and naked to our partner, both metaphorically and physically. But by so graphically emphasizing the sexual elements in the story, the Shape of Water reduces Elisa to a caricature of a passionate and sensitive woman, and the theme of the movie to a parody of sex and love, rather than a celebration of diversity and differences.

"Adulting" in the 21st century

People have differing ideas about when the word “adulting” first began to be used but it was probably sometime early in the new millennium. It was chosen as the word of the year in 2014 by Grammar Girl Mignon Fogarty who said that she saw it in a tweet by Daniel Kroft on May 22, 2010 and has since become popular on social media, earning its own hashtag, #adulting on Twitter and Instagram.

As a part of speech, “adulting” is a noun that has been verbified, or turned into a verb. Brian, creator of TheWriteAtHome blog, lists several verbified nouns which have contributed to the evolution of American English. Adulting is defined by the linguistics journal American Speech as:

1. to behave in an adult manner; engage in activities associated with adulthood

2. to make someone behave like an adult; turn someone into an adult

Brian also talks about nouns that have been unnecessarily verbified, making their usage awkward and clunky. Personally, I think “adulting” is one of those words. I’ve seen the term used a lot by parents on social media lately to describe their pride when their college age children do things that (responsible) adults do on a regular basis or to ask advice about how to help their children make this transition.

There is a distinction between chronological adulthood and behavioral adulthood. Chronological adulthood is the what and when of adulting, what you are able to do and the age at which you have the right to do those things. This varies by country. The legal age of adulthood in the US is 18. By that age, individuals can vote, operate a motor vehicle, get a job, enlist in the armed forces, serve on a jury, sign a contract, own property, make a will, get married, limit their parents’ access to their medical information--and be charged as an adult when they break the law.  

There were no instruction manuals or advice columns for being an adult when we were growing up; you learned by example or trial and error. For many of us, our parents were the first role models for what being an adult looked like. Mostly we thought of adults as being old, boring and strict. They went to work, paid the bills, raised families, laid down rules, meted out discipline-and restricted our fun. Parents who were competent at "adulting" were a source of food, shelter, clean clothes, funds, transportation, comfort, wisdom and stability. 

In contrast to chronological adulthood, behavioral adulthood deals with the how of being an adult. It’s this aspect that currently seems to baffle parents and their (chronologically) adult offspring.  In a June 8, 2016 article on Time. com, writer Katy Steinmetz says, “To say you are “adulting” is to, on some level, create distance between you and what are implied to be actual adults who are adulting 100% of the time and therefore have little reason to acknowledge it.”

Trying to specify exactly what it takes to be an adult is a nebulous and complex task. In general, behaving like an adult implies not behaving like a child. So what do adults do that children don’t?Although I haven’t been 18 for a long time, I don’t really consider myself an adult, since many of the traits and behaviors that I believe define an adult are things I’m still working on. But based on my upbringing and experiences with people whom I do consider adults, I can offer the following general suggestions, which are applicable regardless of age but if learned early, can ease the transition to adulthood:

• Learn the art of making good decisions. The technique is essentially the same whether you are buying an appliance, or a house, evaluating a new job or a potential romantic interest: what is the benefit of making this decision and how much will it cost you (i.e. what would you be willing to sacrifice or compromise?) Never make decisions based on how you feel at the moment. You may not feel the same the next day, the next week or the next year. Also, think about how those decisions affect not only you but the people around you. As John Donne said, “No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.”
• Plan ahead
• Accept responsibility. Keep your word and honor your obligations.
• Do what needs to be done without expecting to be thanked or praised for it and always be prepared to do more than your share.
• Rules may be boring and restrictive but they are there for a reason: they ensure order, discipline and uniformity. The only time they should be broken or changed is if they are unjust, not if they are inconvenient, so try to follow them whenever possible instead of looking for ways of changing them.
• Understand that there is a time to stand up and a time to back down, and if you know how to make good decisions you’ll be able to tell the difference.
• Indulge in “mind broadening,” the best way to increase your knowledge base. Read a lot about a lot of different things. Read about things you don’t like or agree with. Talk to people who think differently.
• Communicate. Communicate calmly and respectfully.
• Listen. Everybody has a story and a different point of view.
• Be self- reliant but don’t be afraid to ask for help and accept it graciously when offered.
• Think about how happy you feel when somebody puts you first and put the other person first, even if they don’t do anything for you in return. (I got this one from an episode of the Fox show Lucifer.) The title character is telling his colleague what he most admires about her: “You always put your daughter first even though the ungrateful urchin does nothing to contribute to the rent.”  Most of the time, unless the other person is completely selfish and insensitive, you will get a lot of what you want too.
• Have fun and enjoy life, but don’t go after things or indulge in behaviors that damage the mind, body or soul. The temporary pleasure isn’t worth the long term pain. Exercise good judgment and a lot of self-restraint.
• The biggest thing that defines adults is the ability to anticipate the possible consequences of their actions and to flex and adapt when things don’t go the way they expect.
• No one’s perfect, but don’t stop trying. Show up to life every day determined to do your best and be your best self.

The Universality of Loneliness

What should young people do with their lives today? Many things, obviously. But the most daring thing is to create stable communities in which the terrible disease of loneliness can be cured. --Kurt Vonnegut

Loneliness is terrible because it makes you feel as though you have nothing to look forward to and no one to provide stability in a capricious and cruel world. Aristotle said, “Man is by nature a social animal; an individual who is unsocial naturally and not accidentally is either beneath our notice or more than human.” Loneliness, in Aristotle’s definition is an unnatural state, but it is the common condition of many characters in literature, both American and British. J.D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye, Charlotte Perkins Gilmore’s The Yellow Wallpaper, Edgar Allen Poe’s The House of Usher, Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird and Tennessee Williams A Streetcar Named Desire, as well as in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre and Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations, to name a few, are all novels that deal with highly sensitive characters who are lonely for one reason or another.

 In some of the novels, location contributes to loneliness. The characters live in places that are physically isolated, like the House of Usher, the Yorkshire moors of Bronte’s novel or an island as in Robinson Crusoe. Sometimes the characters choose to be alone even though they have the ability to be a part of society. Roderick Usher and Miss Havisham never leave their homes to interact with the rest of the world. Usher is sensitive to light and sound which makes it difficult to interact with the outside environment. He also stutters and can’t express himself fluidly. The House of Usher relies on supernatural elements as a part of the narrative. Usher believes that the house is alive and he is its prisoner.  Usher doesn’t care about his personal appearance and over the years, the house too has fallen into disrepair. Miss Havisham continues to wear her wedding dress. She, like Usher, always stays indoors. She looks older and frailer because of lack of exposure to the sun. Her house stays frozen in time since she stopped all the clocks at the moment when she receives the letter from her prospective bridegroom cancelling the wedding.

 Jane’s husband in the Yellow Wallpaper and Boo Radley’s father and brothers in Mockingbird attempt to control their unacceptable behavior by keeping them confined at home. Eventually, Radley himself makes the choice to stay at home and keep away from society to escape its toxic environment. In other cases, the choice is not in the character’s hands. Like Boo Radley, Holden Caulfield is disgusted by the hypocrisy and duplicity of the world.  He is also grieving the death of his brother Allie. Holden, Blanche DuBois and Jane Eyre are sent away to impersonal institutions such as boarding schools or asylums by their families. Frankenstein is also rejected by his father/creator so he wanders the world looking for love and companionship. These individuals are extremely sensitive, which makes it difficult for their families to understand and relate to them.

The depictions of Blanche DuBois, Carrie Meeber (Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser), Jane Eyre  and Jane in the Yellow Wallpaper all share the common characteristic of women who are victims of their passionate natures.  As a young child, Jane Eyre gets locked in “the red room” for standing up for herself against her cousin. After she meets Mr. Rochester and is preparing to marry him, she learns that his first wife, who also has a passionate personality, ironically has been locked in the attic at Thornfield. In the Yellow Wallpaper, Jane is confined to the nursery of the home where she and her husband are spending their vacation.

Carrie Meeber is a young woman who has a series of failed relationships, much as Blanche does at an older age in Streetcar. Miss Havisham is a jilted bride and Bertha Rochester is a discarded wife. Jane in The Yellow Wallpaper is a mother with postpartum depression and Blanche DuBois is an aging widow who has lost her home.  No matter what stage of life the women are in, none of them are happy.

Creativity seems to go hand in hand with loneliness in many of the novels. Roderick Usher paints, plays music and composes poetry.  The female protagonist of the Yellow Wallpaper keeps a journal. In Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield is a writer, whose favorite class is English. Gaston LeRoux’s Phantom is a singer, musician and architect. The creative impulse is admired but often involves mental processes that are beyond ordinary understanding.

Men are frequently seen as the instruments of women’s mental instability. Blanche’s sexuality and Jane’s literary aspirations make them both dangerous to the patriarchy. Blanche’s promiscuous past begins as an escape from her feelings of guilt at her husband’s suicide and the death of other family members leading to the loss of her family home. Blanche’s descent into madness is accelerated when her sister Stella’s husband Stanley Kowalski rapes her. In the Yellow Wallpaper, the suppression of Jane’s creative endeavors by a paternalistic husband reflect a Victorian culture that did not encourage women to pursue aspirations outside the domestic sphere, causing her to have a mental breakdown. Jane Eyre has a temporary breakdown when she discovers on their wedding day that Mr. Rochester is already married. Mr. Rochester ascribes his wife’s behavior to a family predilection for insanity, but her unhappiness at being forced into an unwanted marriage and trying to accommodate to a foreign culture might also be contributing factors. Miss Havisham in Great Expectations is not just rejected by her fiance, but he and her half brother cheat her of her fortune, a trauma from which she never recovers.

A change in financial status plays a role in the loneliness of some of the characters. Blanche DuBois comes from a rich Southern family but her position in society goes down when she has to sell the family home to cover funeral expenses. Miss Havisham was also wealthy but the destruction of her dreams makes her bitter. Carrie Meeber, in Theodore Dreiser’s Sister Carrie is a young girl from a poor family in a small town who moves to Chicago and strikes it big. Both Blanche and Carrie search for connection through their romantic relationships but neither is able to. Carrie ends up in her rocking chair, rich but unhappy, just like Miss Havisham who failed to find satisfaction in a loving relationship.

Physical appearance as an isolating factor is also a common theme. Boo Radley and Frankenstein are perceived as monsters as are Gaston LeRoux’s Phantom of the Opera and Victor Hugo’s Hunchback of Notre Dame because they do not conform to societal standards of physical appearance. At the end of Shelley’s novel, the creature’s creator, Victor Frankenstein, is dead. Having neither family nor friends to depend on, the creature jumps out of the window of a ship on which he and Dr. Frankenstein are travelling and floats away on an iceberg, separating himself from the world that has rejected him.

Charlotte Bronte’s  Jane Eyre  has neither looks, money or family connections and has also been betrayed by her lover. That would appear to doom her to a lonely and unfulfilled life. However, she is a product of the author’s dissatisfaction with the restrictions of Victorian society. Jane doesn’t avoid the outside world but embraces it with all its foibles and tries to make things better. She is a friend to the consumptive Helen at the boarding school at Lowood, and stays with her until she dies. She later becomes a governess to Mr. Rochester’s ward, Adele. She helps the little girl, who has been abandoned by both her parents and, being French, is a foreigner to the English, to adjust to her life. Even after being mistreated as a child, Jane returns to her aunt’s home and helps to take care of her in her final days. She also stays with and helps Diana and Mary with their work after she runs away from Thornfield. Her discovery of Mr. Rochester’s suffering brings her back to help him. Although her life is incomplete in many ways, she is a source of strength and support for those around her. Though Jane also suffers periods of loneliness, of all of the characters mentioned, she ultimately achieves everything that she hopes for. She finds relatives who care for her, gains financial independence, becomes a wife in a loving marriage of equals, and starts her own family when she becomes a mother.

Jane Eyre was written over 150 years ago, but her example reinforces the wisdom of Vonnegut’s words. Perhaps that is the real solution to ending the tragedies of the mass shootings that have traumatized the nation. We should all work together to create an environment that nurtures and support its members and looks out for those who are in danger of slipping through the cracks because they feel alone, unloved and unwanted. Give these troubled and confused young men the assurance that that their lives are important and that they have something of value to contribute to society and we may actually succeed in replacing violent behavior rooted in loneliness and isolation with a community reflects the Aristotelian ideal.

Unsuitable for A General Audience

Over the past few weeks, I have been working on a short story for a contest sponsored by the city library system. Most of the rules dealt with length and formatting, which were easy enough to follow.  The instructions on content were more problematic. All they said was “Stories should be suitable for a general audience.” That leaves a lot of scope for interpretation. In the movie rating system, "appropriate for all audiences" means "no violence, offensive language, or sexual activity.” The vast majority of animated Disney movies which were made before the new millennium like the Lion King, the Little Mermaid and Aladdin fell under this category and were rated G or GA.

What constitutes G-rated entertainment today, however, has changed to include content that is violent, suggestive or both. An online article from November 2005 (https://www.today.com/popculture/what-does-g-rated-mean-these-days-wbna9889136) references the Disney movie Chicken Little, which includes violence and sexual innuendo. 

So what is a general audience? If I categorize it by age, it would include babies to senior citizens. Stories geared towards a pre-school or pre-teen audience would not have the same subject material or appeal for a more mature audience. A general audience would also include different ethnicities, religions, political ideologies, sexual orientations, cultural and linguistic backgrounds. The content would have to be relatable to everyone in those categories. That’s where I’m having a problem. How can one story satisfy everyone's preferences?  

My story is written in English, which may not be understood or appreciated by people for whom it is not their native language. It does incorporate a foreign language because of the setting of the story but any unfamiliar terms are translated into English. I have written stories that draw upon my religion and cultural heritage in the past. My story does not reference any particular religious orientation although it does have a mythological component. Because it is not set in modern times, the language is deliberately formal and precise and utilizes complex vocabulary, which may not engage teenage texters or people who are used to more colloquial English. 

The male protagonist is an alpha male, which may be offensive to feminists, but the female protagonist, while sheltered, is not weak. The characters, like the dialogue, are true to the setting and conform to classical Western norms of appearance and behavior.

There are no physical contests, fights or battles, no races or weapons in the story so the average boy may not find it exciting. But it does include my perspective on the characteristics of a gentleman, which is a lesson that very few young boys get to learn these days. There is a hint of innuendo, but nothing as blatant as the Fifty Shades trilogy.I am an idealist at heart who believes that anything related to themes about love and sex should be portrayed as tender, nurturing and strengthening rather than dramatic, unconventional and combative.

 I don’t think that the trend of "more permissive social values" in modern entertainment has had a positive influence on relationships between men and women as the today.com article points out. A poster on an Etsy chat forum comments, “In American primetime, we have Victoria's Secret commercials that are pretty risque, Viagra commercials, commercials where men and women treat each other like dirt...Really, I'd rather have a felt [sic] penis flash across the page and quickly hit the back button with my child in the room (or my dad) than sit through a VS commercial or a commercial about erectile dysfunction.”  

 But if I am writing for a modern general audience which has been largely desensitized by graphic images and pornographic content, a story that doesn't create shock value by conforming to the popular expectation would be viewed as dull and insipid and fail to hold the attention of its audience.

I have heard profanity being used frequently in movies, songs, television, and the news and seen it in stories I have read as a way of demonstrating conviction or strong emotion.  In the past, it was used to identify a character who is not educated or cultured, but today  I see nothing beneficial or enriching in using profanity as a narrative device, or even a way of making a point in a debate or speech. To me, it just means that the writer or speaker doesn’t have the proper tools to create a good story or support their viewpoint, and the wrong tools only weaken the structure.

One of the lessons that I learned from Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, is that the best stories are the ones that are based on your own experience. Growing up in a Western culture I am familiar with its traditions, so I made that the background for my story.  Professor Bhaer  tells Jo “to write what would be of benefit to the mind, heart, and soul,” advice which is reinforced by blogger Trix Wilkins, who says “It’s when we feel, that we write passionately, from the heart – and that is where the compelling story begins.” So maybe that means that it’s time to go against the tide, to write a story that is not suitable for general audiences, but for discriminating audiences, who hold the writer to a higher standard. A story where the reader can learn about a variety of subjects from history to geography, art, culture, and psychology, where the humor is subtle rather than vulgar, a story that employs sensuality rather than sexuality, one which makes the reader both feel and think. A story like that may not satisfy everybody, so it may not reach a wider audience. But at least it will have bolstered the mind, heart, and soul of its first audience: its creator.

Civil Discourse in the Midst of Militant Reaction

The recent school shooting at a high school in Parkland, Florida has resurrected the ongoing debate between those who support increased firearm legislation to combat the increased incidence of mass shootings, and those who feel that such legislation does little to solve the underlying problem.

The specific language of the Second Amendment states that “a well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” It prohibits the federal government from making any laws that would hamper the ability to defend against unlawful violence.  Americans have interpreted the wording to believe that every individual has the unrestricted right to own a gun, but according to former Chief Justice Warren Burger, such a belief is “a fraud on the American public” and the right was intended to be reserved for the purpose of ensuring collective security by arming a state militia. It was not until the 2008 Supreme Court decision in Columbia vs Heller that the Second Amendment was interpreted as supporting the individual’s right to own a weapon, “unrelated to service in a militia” for self-defense. The ruling in the case applied first to the federal government and was later expanded to include state and local governments in McDonald v City of Chicago.

A  Wall Street Journal article on February 16, 2018 reported that 80% of the worst mass shootings in the US that have occurred since 2012 involved the AR-15, the weapon used in Parkland.  The headline reads “AR-15 Type Rifles Are Fast, Deadly And Very Popular,” thus focusing attention on the instrument rather than the wielder. A website sponsored by the NRA states that rifles are far less frequently used than handguns in the commission of a crime. In fact, the AR-15 has been responsible for less than 10% of all violent shooting incidents since 2000. Regulation hasn’t had much effect in the past because there are always loopholes in the system.

The public has been led to believe that people who are mentally ill are automatically at risk to be perpetrators of violent crimes. A federal law in place since 1968 prohibits the possession of firearms by those who have been judged mentally ill by a government body or who have been committed to a mental facility without their consent.  The states also have rules that involve the right of the mentally impaired to own a gun. Hawaii doesn’t allow the mentally impaired to own a gun without medical clearance, while in California, an individual is committed to a mental hospital and legally found to be mentally impaired is banned from owning a firearm for 5 years. However, many of the people responsible for violent crimes had never previously been diagnosed with mental issues, so mental health is not a reliable indicator of a propensity for violent crime, and using such a general standard for predicting criminal behavior is insufficient as a solution. 

What would be helpful is to have a way of predicting who might actually be at risk of acting out on their violent impulses. In a follow up article in the Wall Street Journal entitled “Technology Can Redefine the Mass Shooter Problem”, writer Holman W. Jenkins, Jr. suggests that technological assistance might provide some useful indicators, particularly given the wealth of  online information that is available through social media and other sources about an individual’s habits, preferences and activities. There were many warning signs in an analysis of Cruz’s online presence that, in hindsight, were ignored. But the flip side in evaluating such information, as Jenkins points out, is that we might be too hasty in jumping to judgment based on our own individual biases.  The truth is that there IS no ironclad way to determine who will commit a crime until after the act. To target a certain population without concrete evidence is a violation of its civil rights. It is one thing to have rights that may never be exercised and another to have a right summarily taken away.

By itself, a gun/firearm is merely an object, much like a knife, or a hammer or a plane. It lacks cognitive capacity and cannot function without human assistance. The outcome depends on the intent of the individual who uses the object.  As a friend recently pointed out to me, the planes that flew into the Twin Towers on 9/11 were instruments in the largest single mass murder on US soil. The murderers of 9/11 were foreign born young men who had been ideologically indoctrinated to believe that Americans were evil. Yet planes are still used as a method of long distance transportation. We have instead increased our vigilance by monitoring passengers and crew and imposing uniform restrictions on them.

WSJ Op Ed writer Peggy Noonan, along with Amy Wax and Larry Alexander in the Philadelphia Enquirer, point to a fundamental breakdown in the cultural cornerstones of society over the past 50 years as a causal factor for the increase in violence and mental instability in the population. The generation up to the late 60s followed a commonly accepted way of living and behaving. The precepts of the bourgeois culture as Wax says in "Paying the price for the breakdown of the country's bourgeois culture", were: “Get married before you have children and strive to stay married for their sake. Get the education you need for gainful employment, work hard, and avoid idleness. Go the extra mile for your employer or client. Be a patriot, ready to serve the country. Be neighborly, civic-minded, and charitable. Avoid coarse language in public. Be respectful of authority. Eschew substance abuse and crime.”  There was no Internet, social media or dehumanized entertainment at that time to flood and warp impressionable young minds with images of violence and illicit or aberrant sexual behavior.Those who subscribe to bourgeois beliefs are now mocked, harassed and castigated for being biased and bigoted towards people who don’t follow them.

The disturbing change in the culture has created what Noonan refers to as a toxic atmosphere, as dangerous to the mental well-being of the nation’s youth as maternal smoking during pregnancy is to a developing fetus.  Noonan quotes data from the Center for Disease Control (CDC) showing that 20% of children from 3 to 17 have suffered from mental or emotional illness at some time during the course of their childhood.In a public address the day after the shooting, President Trump asked the children who felt “lost, alone, confused or even scared” to seek help from the adults in the community, their families, teachers and spiritual leaders.  

But what if those adults are not equal to the task? Both Noonan and Wax believe that society has grown to emphasize the rights of the adults over the needs of the children, a trend Wax suggests began with the counterculture movement of the 60s. The adults who are supposed to espouse the standard cultural values that promoted a strong, healthy and functional society instead abdicated their responsibilities. Wax says: “The loss of bourgeois habits seriously impeded the progress of disadvantaged groups. That trend also accelerated the destructive consequences of the growing welfare state, which, by taking over financial support of families, reduced the need for two parents. A strong pro-marriage norm might have blunted this effect. Instead, the number of single parents grew astronomically, producing children more prone to academic failure, addiction, idleness, crime, and poverty.”

Without a strong foundation, whatever is built on it, i.e., the lives and stability of future generations, is weak. Noonan uses the abortion debate as an analogy in examining the mindset of shooters like Nikolas Cruz towards themselves and their victims, theorizing that they may feel that if an unborn baby’s life is of no value and can be cavalierly ended, no life, whether of offender or victim, has any value. Trump emphasized that the way forward is to “...work together to create a culture in our country that embraces the dignity of life, that creates deep and meaningful human connections.” Our attention should therefore be focused on repairing the void in empathy and connection, in creating an environment that fosters cohesion rather than isolation, and in seeing that our youth are given the mental, emotional and physical tools and training to foster and strengthen, rather than weaken or destroy their self-worth.  Only then do we have any hope of stemming the occurrence of further tragedies.

Women: Weak Neither in Mind Nor Body

Earlier yesterday evening, a friend and I were discussing the unique challenges our daughters faced as they carved out careers for themselves in what, despite great progress, continues to be a man’s world.  We concluded that they were nevertheless lucky to have so many opportunities for achievement and accomplishment as well as the freedom to exercise agency over their fate, something denied to women in the 19^th century. The discussion was reinforced by my examination of yet another work of literary fiction. This time it was an analysis of “The Yellow Wallpaper” by 19^th century writer Charlotte Perkins Gilman, leading to another wakeful early morning, (partially fueled by an overload of caffeine).

The narrator in Gilman’s story is Jane, a young woman suffering from postpartum depression. She and her husband John, a physician, are staying in a mansion for the summer as she recovers. John is a practical man who is unconcerned with  his wife’s emotional sensibilities and does not believe that she has an actual illness. Jane battles against the prevailing medical opinion which theorizes that she suffers from a tendency towards hysteria.  Her husband says that the best treatment for Jane’s anxiety is confinement in the nursery of the house, which is decorated with yellow wallpaper. Jane disagrees, believing that she needs activity, both mental and physical, to get better but her husband prevents her from any kind of work or socializing, believing the excitement will be too much for her delicate state of mind. She thinks the prescribed treatment is making her sicker, but her husband ignores her, supposedly out of love and the patronizing view that he knows what’s best for her.

The narrator keeps a journal of her thoughts, which she hides from her husband. The suppression of her needs and her will, leads Jane to slowly lose her mind. The yellow wallpaper serves as a trigger for her delusions but her husband refuses to remove it, saying that she should have the willpower to get over her apprehension.  Jane begins to see women “creeping around” behind the wallpaper and searches for a way to free them. Her exclamation at the end of the story that she has “got out at last” would have a very different connotation to modern audiences, but it symbolizes the narrator’s feeling of liberation from her repressive confinement. Although she is believed to be weak and unstable, it is Jane’s husband who faints in shock at the effects of his faulty diagnosis of Jane’s condition at the end of the story which begs the question of who the weaker sex really is.

Gilman’s story is a commentary both on the state of marriage and the perception of mental illness at the time. Psychiatry was acknowledged as a legitimate medical specialty in the early 1800s, but treatment options for the mentally ill were few, harsh and futile. There were no medications for the management of mental illness and no understanding that some illnesses might be linked to biological causes. The focus was largely on patients like Jane, who were considered to be suffering from a nervous temperament. Gilman herself suffered from postpartum depression after her daughter was born. She was subjected to a rest cure, involving long periods of bed rest and enforced inactivity under the care of Dr. Silas Weir Mitchell, so the fictional narrative draws from the author’s personal experience.  In 2005, Brooke Shields and Tom Cruise engaged in a widely publicized feud when he criticized her for taking antidepressants after the birth of her daughter, calling it irresponsible. Cruise was dismissive of Shields’s struggle with postpartum depression, claiming that “there was no such thing as chemical imbalances that need to be corrected with drugs, and that depression could be treated with exercise and vitamins.”  As a dedicated Scientologist, Cruise subscribed to its belief that psychiatry, which uses medication to treat mental illness, was not a legitimate field of medicine but merely pseudoscience.

The stigma associated with mental illness has largely disappeared as our understanding of its causes and effects have expanded. Psychiatry has made great strides towards successful diagnosis of various types of mental illness, and while treatment options have improved, there is still a lot that is unknown about side effects and the consequences of drug interactions in individual patients. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) report that even today 11 to 20% of new mothers like Jane suffer from postpartum depression, which continues to be challenging to treat. 

Gilman’s story is also representative of the generally patronizing and patriarchal attitude of 19^th century society towards women. At the beginning of the story, when Jane expresses her reservations about the home they are staying in for the summer, she says “John laughs at me, of course, but one expects that in marriage.”  He treats her not as a grown woman, but a child, calling her “little girl” and his “blessed little goose.”  Men and women were not equal partners and women were expected to subject their individual desires and ambitions to the spheres of marriage and motherhood.

Parenthetically, the characterization of women as irrational and ruled by their unstable emotions, also emerges in Washington Irving’s “Rip Van Winkle", another 19^th century tale. Dame Van Winkle and her daughter have no role in the story except through Irving’s narrative filter. They are on opposite poles of the spectrum, representing what society considered both accepted and aberrant behavior for women.  Dame Van Winkle is characterized as a shrew who is constantly finding fault with her husband. He is a mild mannered feckless man who is always out chatting with the neighbors and helping everyone else with their work while his own home and family are neglected. When he returns from his 20 year long “nap” his daughter takes him in and cares for him, while shouldering the responsibilities of her home and family. “Rip Van Winkle” highlighted the prevailing belief of the time that women who actively defied men or questioned their actions or judgment were abnormal and a danger to the stability of the community.

Gilman advocated economic independence as a way to equalize the disparity in power between the sexes. Ironically, her solution, radical for its time, creates a different problem for the modern woman.  As increasing numbers of women enter the workforce, they are preoccupied not with the lack of mental stimulation, but with balancing the competing demands of work and family. Except in rare cases, even when they have supportive spouses, the bulk of the responsibility for running the household and caring for the children still falls on the women. 

The feeling that if they concentrate on succeeding in their careers they are somehow failing their families, causes many women to feel guilty and anxious, creating a new form of mental disturbance. In addition to their inner conflict, they are also often criticized, mostly by other women, either for choosing a full time career or for being stay at home wives and mothers. In stories like “The Yellow Wallpaper” Gilman’s ideas were radical for their time in advocating a more egalitarian role for women. However, despite more resources and greater knowledge, we have yet to find a workable solution to the problem of gender inequality.