Global History:
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History of China

Women in History & Now:
Under Construction
 

This is a Global Studies lesson I taught to ninth grade students.  Some of them were born in Bosnia, Ukraine, Jamaica; some were Hispanic and several African-American.  Some had parents from Italy, Germany, Poland, China, Egypt, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Guyana.  As the term began, students sat in clusters mainly with others of the same ethnic background.  Often, as students came into the class, they argued over seats and pushed each other.

Like students throughout America, these young men and women are confused and angry as their families have to worry about meeting monthly expenses.  Frank Ventura told me his father lost his job and had to take one that paid much less.  "Things are not the same at home now," he said.  These young people are in terrific peril of using the difficulties they meet to be bitter, angry at the whole world and people standing for the world different from themselves, and of retaliating by having contempt.  That is what happened intensely in their neighborhood, Bensonhurst, a few years ago, when there was violence between Italian-Americans and African-Americans that got into the news.

Earth as seen from Apolo 17

A Globe

I told them I learned that these opposites, large and small, are in us all the time.  "Have you ever made something that is large, smaller than it is--made the feelings of another person smaller than they are?  Is our purpose like the globe's purpose --to be fair to the meaning, the true size of something: or to lessen its meaning, make it unimportant?"  "Make it unimportant," said James Vega courageously.  Kristen Amato said, "You mean I think about what I want, and what someone else wants doesn't matter?  I do that."  "I do it all the time," said Helen Levine thoughtfully: "to me, my problems are big; my friends' problems seem smaller."

I told the class that what we are talking about is contempt,  which Eli Siegel defined as "the addition to self through the lessening of something else."  Contempt is a false and horrible relation of large and small.  We puff ourselves up through making other things look puny.  Contempt, I said, is the cause of cruelty and prejudice, and we cannot like ourselves for it!  The feeling that we are big through having another person look small is what makes a student shove another in the cafeteria, has one student mockingly imitate another's language or "dis" what that person is eating or wearing.

Every teacher needs to learn from Aesthetic Realism that there is a fight going on in himself or herself between contempt and respect.  When I began teaching in 1971, I simply assumed that what I had to say was the biggest thing; I made the feelings of my students miniscule while mine were monumental.  My students rightly objected, and my class was a combat zone where I strained to have the upper hand.  By the middle of my second year I felt like a failure.

Then I met and began to study Aesthetic Realism, and in consultations I heard criticism of my contempt.  For example, I was asked whether I felt I was the center of the world and other people were unnecessary appendages.  When I told my students about the criticism I was hearing and asked them for theirs, the atmosphere changed--from a combative, demeaning one, to one in which, for the first time, learning really took place in all of us.

"The subject that interests students most, whether teachers see it or not, is ethics," states "An Aesthetic Realism Manifesto about Education."  "Eli Siegel has defined ethics as 'the study of what the world outside of yourself deserves from you'" [TRO 703].  This class and I saw that the globe, in its structure and purpose, is ethical.  According to the Columbia Encyclopedia, "A terrestrial globe is ... the only means by which sizes and shapes of continents and oceans can be represented without distortions."  That is, a globe represents the world truly, has us able to see better what is deserves from us--and is therefore diametrically opposed to contempt.

I asked, "How do we make things flat in ordinary life?"  Evelyn Jones said sometimes she gets excited about something in a class, but then tells herself, "What are you getting all worked up about--it wasn't that good."  Vito Angelo said when he really likes a girl, he acts cool--"You can't show them what you feel."  I asked, "Every time we say, 'This is boring!' without really knowing something, are we making it flat?"  "I did that today," said Luz Segarra. "How do you feel when you do that?" I asked.  "I don't feel so good," said Luz.  "I get tired," added James.  My students were beginning to see that when they flatten the meaning of other things or people, they also flatten their own feelings, take the life out of themselves.

Throughout the lesson my students were excited.  There were no blank stares, no heads on the desks.  They did not interrupt each other or carry on conversations.  Almost everyone passed the test on this introductory unit.  They remembered the names of the different map projections and what they are used for; the names of the oceans and continents; how to locate places using latitude and longitude.  During other lessons they would often refer to their maps and ask me to put one on the board.  When the bell rings I have heard, "How come this period goes so fast?"

My students are increasingly kind to each other.  There is no mocking of each other's language or background.  Instead of forming separate groups, whispering and giggling among themselves, they sat together and helped each other, including with language.  A bilingual girl, Me Li Xiao, told me that at the beginning of the term she was afraid to talk in class because people would make fun of her, but as the term went on she knew this wouldn't happen.  She participated in class discussions.  At the end of the term Annmarie DiMarco wrote that because of this class "I [became] friends with people I don't normally stay with. I respect them more for the person inside."

This article was originally given as part of a seminar at the Aesthetic Realism Foundation in New York City. 
It appeared as an article in the Philippine Post.