you gotta move

more u-haul woes. no more marcie.

packing up the apartment, moving down to jackson. more adjustment. more new beginnings.

**

last words on my somewhat appropriately dubbed "righteous indignation" in the previous post. n.b. i hope i had left clear indications of my awareness of my own poorly aimed frustration: "well, that was a rant (yes, childish at times). no doubt daniel's wheat to chaff ratio is in true form there. i don't even remember what i sat down to write about. i'm just a little pissed off." in any case,

1. a structure is a structure. a particular manifestation of a structural problem - which, i admit, is helpful to give when reflecting on the mechanics of experience - is only contingently relevant to a given inductive model. however - and this is where i agree the modifier "righteous" has place - an overemphasis or over-importance of the structural can render the inductive to the reductive, and then to the romantic. this, of course, is where the critical voice becomes the ranting one - when it spins so far away from its object (concerned, indeed, with the momentum of its own subject) that it eclipses its own purpose. so, when making a statement about patterns of structural weakness, it is paramount - if for no other reason than to avoid cheap irony - that one does not let the subject swallow the object.

2. perhaps - in mind mind - more importantly, when one is barred from gathering information about a situation, he or she is left with so little of a particular manifestion that no consistent conclusions can be made but the reductive. rather than scolding those attempting merely to assess a system that is held from them upon questionable gounds of cultural autonomy, experience, etc., perhaps it's more important here to acknowledge a higher level structural issue, which reinforces a strong subject/object barrier within a system - lending the other to unmendable non-agency, and holding a loophole of "you don't know x" justification for the subject. within this case, the ownership of truth is so strong that an "other" trying to gain access to knowledge - perhaps without any motive but to be able to orient themselves within a system - is suppressed on grounds of definitional ignorance. so, mere attempts to know are percieved as attempts to change - to redefine the object on the axis of truth accessibility, and inquiries about a system are seen as threats to that system. the problem is, an object - even within the definitional truth access of the system - is both expected to respect/understand/concede with the system, but barred from most avenues - besides directed assimilation - that would allow them to do so - and especially barred from those structures utilized by an enforcement of agency.

for those who could care less about my inability to escape referential mode, an example or two:

- when a teacher corps member asks a delta administrator about sexual education in mississippi, and the motivations for the particular policy described, he or she is given a non-answer that both indirectly describes the structure - e.g. comments on day care systems, cultural views about both children out of wedlock and the particular legitimate desires of children to have babies, indirect ways in which sex education can be worked into a cirruculum - and hesistant comments about abstinence (i call these indirect, because they fail to address any criterion of policy or non-policy) - and assumes that in asking the question, the given member was (a) opposed to whatever system was in place, and (b) intent on "fixing," or "changing" the system (re: "you can't go change the world"). these assumptions - done on part of the cultural self in response to the cultural other - shift away from discourse (which may have at its end a mutual understanding of cultural attitude and autonomy) and into conflict, wherein one supposedly autonomous culture is struggling with another, and one or the other will eventually "win." true, in the above example, i've failed to mention that the delta administrator may have a fundametally different - and possibly consistent - definition of sexual education, but any substantive momentum towards this awareness is bypassed by the cockfight that ensues.

- another example, a teacher corps member asks (n.b. not necessarily accuses or implies) a delta administrator about the motivations behind a de facto racially segregated school system - black public and white private - in the delta, and a similar run of non-answers is given (economic determinants, cultural patterns, similar qualities of education). again, i call these non-answers because they are systemically disjoint, and end at the moot comment of "it's too complicated to understand" or "this is just the way it is." however, it's still interesting that all the white kids in a community attend a private school with high rate of college admission - and that, completely in tune with the fact that the ability to purchase college correlates somewhat with the acceptance of one's offspring into college, there is a much, much lower rate of college admission in public schools (clearly, college attendence does not correlate one-to-one with opportunity manifestation or the fulfillment of personal agency, but it's a good indicator) - which of course may feed into the low income, and low degree status of parents who are sending their children to public school (perhaps, to respond to the economics perspective, at times because they can't afford private schools that don't have need-blind admissions), and the students with higher degree status have higher incomes, and send their own children to the appropriate educational venue, and rinse, repeat. this, of course, is all fine and well, unless there are students in these public schools who either want to attend higher education institutions, or parents who want them to do so, and they are effectively prohibited from doing so because things are just they way they are. (p.s. this, of course, is a model - and risks over-reduction. however, when looking at the historical trajectory of the delta, i feel it's not a altogether suprising pattern description. of course, i'm continually barred from learning any substantive information about the situation from those who act it out, and so must continually grope at fog and gesture, and otherness.)

clearly this is complicated, clearly this is hard to develop a clear model for. however, to fail to think critically on any terms about a situation like this is pretty much to respond to patterns of potential (perhaps probable) injustice with policies of indifference. this is all fine and well, unless - of course - one holds a dual position that education has something to do with developing autonomy within communties, with providing opportunities for children regardless of racial, cultural, or economic background, etc. i find it hard to believe that these two policies can be held in the same breath, and i find it pretty much impotent to be reponded to with the mystical non-issue of paradox, or scoldings about my righteous indignation.

perhaps i'm indignant not because i want to change things, but because i'd like to know what's going on - and that these two are considered one and the same.

3. a fundemental irony: the teacher performative is the fundamental space for the distribution of the myth of "reaching for the stars," or "you can do anything if you put your mind to it," or "be the change you want to see in the world," etc. however, when preparing to perform in the role of the teacher, one is constantly told that he or she "cannot change the world," or - in so many words - should limit himself or herself to the short-term goals of the classroom, which - of course - includes encouraging children to aim high.