This is what I see in my own metaphorical mirror, of course, although I’m never quite sure which character I am.
The Metaphor Is the Message
“It’s human nature to conceive of abstract ideas through more immediate, concrete experiences,” goes the beginning of this Mental Floss article on the hidden etymologies of certain words. We use metaphors to make sense of the world around us, and the language of those metaphors shapes our thinking.
Certainly that’s a recurring idea in our study of truth, lies, and memory. It’s a theme in 1984, and you’ll actually grapple with the idea of “dying metaphors” when we study another bit of writing by the same author. For a moment, though, focus on “The Ways We Lie” and the emulation-through-analysis prompts you were given in this post:
Remember that posts like that are written to teach you, not just to present you with assignments and deadlines. That post, for instance, forces you to read slowly and carefully, if you want to know what to read and what to write. It provides context and plenty of opportunities for enrichment.
Google Classroom, meanwhile, contains a much more linear and rote version of our work. You’ll still need to be organized, but it’s harder to get lost — in the sense of developing curiosity and self-awareness.
Regardless, you’ve now had three weeks to read Stephanie Ericsson’s essay, “The Ways We Lie,” which is third in your reading packet, and make your way through the ETA and essay prompts, which are in your writing packet. The essay prompt is built around the following quotation, and you’ll notice it has its fair share of metaphorical language:
Martin Buber once said, “The lie is the spirit committing treason against itself.” Our acceptance of lies becomes a cultural cancer that eventually shrouds and reorders reality until moral garbage becomes as invisible to us as water is to a fish.
How much do we tolerate before we become sick and tired of being sick and tired? When will we stand up and declare our right to trust? When do we stop accepting that the real truth is in the fine print? Whose lips do we read this year when we vote for president? When will we stop being so reticent about making judgments? When do we stop turning over our personal power and responsibility to liars?
List out the metaphors in the first paragraph alone:
- cultural cancer
- shrouds
- moral garbage
- as water is to a fish
Your own essays are likely to use metaphors in a similar way. That will be one aspect of our in-class workshops over the next few weeks. Pay attention, as you embark on the writing process, to the metaphors you use. (I just used “embark,” for instance, because the metaphor of a journey or river fits our writing process.)
Back to the Looking Glass
That classification and division essay is one of many assignments you must complete over the next few weeks. You’ve been given a complete list through Google Classroom, but I will link to it and embed it again here:
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You have a predictive calendar covering every day for the rest of the year, too — load “What You Need Right Now” at the top of the home page — which is a reminder that you are also reading 1984, hacking high-stakes exams, and working on your Pareto Projects.
You are busy! That’s by design. And it gives us a chance to do what was always planned for the end of the semester.
What Was Always Planned for the End of the Semester
Each of you will meet with me, one at a time, to review your performance. We will go through your evidence from the most recent GAP panel, but that’s not all we will consider. If you are in a co-taught class, these performance reviews will include Ms. Olson, too.
First, you should recognize that this takes an ungodly amount of class time to do. We can afford to do it once, only once, and only because of the interstitial instructional and feedback model we use.
Second, the governing metaphor continues to be the mirror, specifically the looking-glass logic of Alice. Here is the metaphor in November:
The final line of that instructional post is this: “You are what you do, and you must be honest about what that means.” We have returned to that need for collective clarity and personal honesty again and again, until the need bubbled over into a day of storytelling and lectures:
The Mirror
That image and link lead this site’s top-right menu now. Its lessons are more important than ever, especially the TL;DR of it: Stop shifting the blame in this course. Take responsibility for the choices you’ve made, or accept that your frustration and lack of learning is the choice you’ve made.
That’s the half-empty looking glass, to mix a couple of metaphors together. The half-full: Some of you remain a bit lost, and a conference will help. You need help fighting the dishonesty, cynicism, and selfishness that surround all of us — the “cultural cancer that eventually shrouds and reorders reality until moral garbage becomes as invisible to us as water is to a fish,” as Ericsson puts it.
So I want you to think of Alice and her looking glass. What we do lies on the other side, and you pass through by stepping into your own reflection.You must confront who you are and what you’ve done. There is no other way through.
Once on the other side of the mirror, the environment changes and a lot of the old rules stop applying. That’s what I promised on the first day of school, and it will stay a promise on the last: There are two courses taught in Room 210, and one of them can change your life.
Before you cross that membrane, however, you have to look critically at the reflection in front of you. You have to confront the truth. And that means recognizing the dishonesty and cynicism that throw that truth into relief.
That’s why Ericsson’s metaphor is so powerful. We become numb to lies because the world, unfortunately, is filled with dishonesty. Reason is under attack all around us. You are encouraged, sometimes by people who ought to have your best interests at heart, to blame others and foster distrust. These people, your age and sometimes older, reorder reality. They spread that cultural cancer.
But there are no “alternative facts.” There is absolutely a point after which an uninformed opinion becomes an error of fact. There is right and wrong, truth and fiction, and we can separate the one from the other if we are careful.
Through the mirror, there is an invitation to do good. There is an invitation to dialectical discussion. There is empathy. There is an opportunity to guide your own learning in defiance of a 100 years of broken educational policy.
I can help you pass through that mirror to a place where you have complete control over what you learn and how much it helps you. If you’re already there, I can help you make sense of what that means. But you have to work for it. It can’t be handed to you; that’s another metaphor entirely.
Remember that you’ve already been invited to stop blaming others, to learn self-control, and to break out of the Skinner-box machinery of traditional education. The only difference between that approach and what we’ll start tomorrow is that the language (and metaphor) of invitation will shift to the language of requirement. We will meet, one at a time, for as long as it takes.
90% of you will walk away from that conference in a much better place. (I actually think it will be 100% of you, in defiance of Sturgeon’s Law, because you’d have to be as stubborn as a Flat Earther to stay cynical or misinformed afterward.) That brief loss of choice will ultimately give you more choice than ever.
Meanwhile, you will work on the learning that has been provided for you, interstitially, using the makerspace as necessary.
Ask questions about this — any of it, from metaphors to etymology to Alice in Wonderland to the structure of a conference — below.