The Name Game
Rose, Whereforth Art Thou?
Someone has asked about Humanities Science and how it differs from other disciplines, such as Natural Science or Social Science, and what do I think? The differences can be described in response to that question.
The natural scientist would be concerned about the brain and what physical phenomena (biological, chemical, electrical, etc.) go on when a person thinks. The social scientist would focus on the mind and what emotional or social factors influence the process. The humanities scientist would focus on the imagination that provides the content (images, structure, colors, etc.) and meaning of the thoughts produced.
Of course, these have crossovers, for many the social scientist is interested in the culture and values that influence the social behavior and often the humanities scientists would consider the behaviors that stimulate and perpetuate the imagination. The natural scientists help us build and regulate such design and action.
Thus, as a humanities scientist, I was intrigued by a recent letter to the Seattle Times advice giver “Ask Amy” when a divorced woman (we’ll call her Rose X) unexpectedly ran into a friend and her teenage daughter. This friend was unsure of how to introduce her to the daughter. Rose was no longer “Mrs. X” so maybe she had reverted back to her unmarried name (“Ms. W”). In the awkwardness, the woman told her friend’s daughter to use her first name, “Rose.”
[http://www.chicagotribune.com/features/columnists/advice/chi-0401-ask-amyapr01,0,5970918.column]
As a humanities scientist, I was intrigued by the values crouched behind such behavior of calling Rose “Rose” – something Shakespeare might also have considered– for the use of the language is quite revealing. At what level is it appropriate for one person to address another in the familiar form of the first name?
During my senior year in college I worked in the produce section of a market, and I often chatted with Bob, one of the butchers. Eventually, I learned his name was Bob Gerde and his son Jon was one my classmates from junior high and high school. Jon’s best friend Jim often accompanied Jon there and he had known Bob for over 15 years. Even so, he always called him “Mr. Gerde,” while I, who had known him only a few months, always called him “Bob.” It was a habit Jim felt uncomfortable to break, for that manner of addressing others was used to show respect and a social hierarchy between adults and children.
However, around this same time, Paulo Freire, a Brazilian educator, published Pedagogy of the Oppressed, which stressed problems with rigidity in the vertical hierarchy of the subject: object views of the teacher:student relationship. Freire felt this was a very static model, which deadened the vitality he saw missing in education, something he termed the “banking system” style. In this metaphor, the teachers deposited knowledge in the minds of the students and then they tested the students’ knowledge. Like a depositor checking his bank statement, the teacher made sure that what was deposited equaled what was withdrawn. Discrepancies were noted and corrected.
Instead, Freire created a dialectic view that proposed the teacher should also be learning from the students and, to complement this, the students were also serving as teachers in the relationship. Thus, all participants should be transformed through the education process, viewed as a dialogue, with the participants working in cooperation. In other words, with teacher as student and student as teacher, the classroom is a place of horizontal relationships more than simply a vertical down line.
This egalitarian view is quite popular in education now, 40 years later. Theodore Dalrymple, in Our Culture, What’s Left of It, notes the significance of the teacher and pupil terminology change. As he points out, “pupil” implies the existence of some “master” standing in a higher or authoritative position. Although popular terminology in education 40 years ago (Q. “Why did the cross-eyed teacher lose his job?” A. “He couldn’t control his pupils.”), this phrasing is quite archaic these days.
This week my students and I have been reading and discussing Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll House, wherein the central struggle is precipitated by one man, Torvald Helmer, becoming the manager of a bank and firing an employee, Nils Krogstad, not knowing that his wife, Nora Helmer, has illegally borrowed a large sum of money from Krogstad. As the plot thickens, the audience learns that Helmer’s main reason for the dismissal is because he and Krogstad had been friendly acquaintances in their youth and Krogstad is now addressing him by his first name, Torvald, in front of the other employees, which Helmer feels is publicly humiliating and showing a lack of respect for him and his position.
Of course, the students blame Helmer for being so picky, for the “first name basis” seems to be the norm these days. These same students write a paper or participate in a discussion on something written by Ernest Hemingway, and they frequently comment on “Ernest’s” characters and ideas. Listening to this for me is like fingernails on the chalkboard – Oops! - another dead simile. Some even go to the extreme of referring to what “Ernie” has written!
Thus, like the divorcee who says “Rose” is good enough for the teens to use or the education model that suggests the voice and experience of the teacher has no more authority than the real experiences the pupils, sorry- students, bring to the classroom, labels of respect are not so apparent. Perhaps, might it be time to consider “A Rose by another name?”
When Condoleezza Rice was Secretary of State in the Bush Administration, the newspaper headlines often referred to her as “Condi” obviously not to save space if her last name, Rice, is even shorter. And now with Hilary Rodham Clinton as Secretary of State in the Obama Administration, what do the headlines say?
Have you come a long way, babes?
In the play, A Doll House, Ibsen writes with the lines spoken by the husband as coming from Helmer, but the lines from the wife as coming from Nora. Have things changed when the modern day “Rose” rejects “Mrs. X” or “Ms. W”?
A few days ago, one of my students mentioned,
As a humanities scientist, I was intrigued by the values crouched behind such behavior of calling Rose “Rose” – something Shakespeare might also have considered– for the use of the language is quite revealing. At what level is it appropriate for one person to address another in the familiar form of the first name?
During my senior year in college I worked in the produce section of a market, and I often chatted with Bob, one of the butchers. Eventually, I learned his name was Bob Gerde and his son Jon was one my classmates from junior high and high school. Jon’s best friend Jim often accompanied Jon there and he had known Bob for over 15 years. Even so, he always called him “Mr. Gerde,” while I, who had known him only a few months, always called him “Bob.” It was a habit Jim felt uncomfortable to break, for that manner of addressing others was used to show respect and a social hierarchy between adults and children.
However, around this same time, Paulo Freire, a Brazilian educator, published Pedagogy of the Oppressed, which stressed problems with rigidity in the vertical hierarchy of the subject: object views of the teacher:student relationship. Freire felt this was a very static model, which deadened the vitality he saw missing in education, something he termed the “banking system” style. In this metaphor, the teachers deposited knowledge in the minds of the students and then they tested the students’ knowledge. Like a depositor checking his bank statement, the teacher made sure that what was deposited equaled what was withdrawn. Discrepancies were noted and corrected.
Instead, Freire created a dialectic view that proposed the teacher should also be learning from the students and, to complement this, the students were also serving as teachers in the relationship. Thus, all participants should be transformed through the education process, viewed as a dialogue, with the participants working in cooperation. In other words, with teacher as student and student as teacher, the classroom is a place of horizontal relationships more than simply a vertical down line.
This egalitarian view is quite popular in education now, 40 years later. Theodore Dalrymple, in Our Culture, What’s Left of It, notes the significance of the teacher and pupil terminology change. As he points out, “pupil” implies the existence of some “master” standing in a higher or authoritative position. Although popular terminology in education 40 years ago (Q. “Why did the cross-eyed teacher lose his job?” A. “He couldn’t control his pupils.”), this phrasing is quite archaic these days.
This week my students and I have been reading and discussing Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll House, wherein the central struggle is precipitated by one man, Torvald Helmer, becoming the manager of a bank and firing an employee, Nils Krogstad, not knowing that his wife, Nora Helmer, has illegally borrowed a large sum of money from Krogstad. As the plot thickens, the audience learns that Helmer’s main reason for the dismissal is because he and Krogstad had been friendly acquaintances in their youth and Krogstad is now addressing him by his first name, Torvald, in front of the other employees, which Helmer feels is publicly humiliating and showing a lack of respect for him and his position.
Of course, the students blame Helmer for being so picky, for the “first name basis” seems to be the norm these days. These same students write a paper or participate in a discussion on something written by Ernest Hemingway, and they frequently comment on “Ernest’s” characters and ideas. Listening to this for me is like fingernails on the chalkboard – Oops! - another dead simile. Some even go to the extreme of referring to what “Ernie” has written!
Thus, like the divorcee who says “Rose” is good enough for the teens to use or the education model that suggests the voice and experience of the teacher has no more authority than the real experiences the pupils, sorry- students, bring to the classroom, labels of respect are not so apparent. Perhaps, might it be time to consider “A Rose by another name?”
When Condoleezza Rice was Secretary of State in the Bush Administration, the newspaper headlines often referred to her as “Condi” obviously not to save space if her last name, Rice, is even shorter. And now with Hilary Rodham Clinton as Secretary of State in the Obama Administration, what do the headlines say?
Have you come a long way, babes?
In the play, A Doll House, Ibsen writes with the lines spoken by the husband as coming from Helmer, but the lines from the wife as coming from Nora. Have things changed when the modern day “Rose” rejects “Mrs. X” or “Ms. W”?
A few days ago, one of my students mentioned,
“Mr. Lowe, you are the only one of my teachers who has us use your last name to address you.”
I asked her the names of her other teachers. They were all female names.
Walter Lowe
Astral Facts is a monthly presentation of Humanities Science, produced in the bowels of the Humanities Science offices.
3 comments:
Could it be that it's more an issue of generation than gender?
As in "old school" v. "new school"? In other words, those younger instructors who have grown up in the generation of less emphasis on age and position now place themselves [back] at the same level as their students, and the buddy [and buddiette?] system self-perpetuates?
"I'll never grow old" didn't work for those boys with Peter Pan or Pinocchio; maybe they were just ahead of their time!
Just a personal observation: I have been out of college for four years now. I recall my two years of community college as being the most "new school". During my K-12 schooling, dropping a Mr/Mrs/Ms was always cause for correction. Then arriving at University as a junior, surrounded by Dr's, the instructors always insisted on a proper title. It was only here at GRCC that a first name was ever offered. Personally, I always reverted to a title + last name basis. It is the only comfortable way I found to address an instructor.
My rambling point being that although I am of the newer generation (I'm 26) I strongly support the "old school" camp. I feel that respecting one's elders is an important trait of society that is being lost, and many GRCC instructors are happy to help.
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