Читать книгу Bone of My Bones - Cynthia Gaw - Страница 8

Receive my instruction, and not silver,

And knowledge rather than choice gold;

For wisdom is better than rubies,

And all the things one may desire cannot be compared with her.

—Proverbs 8:10–11

Having proven many times the stereotype of the absentminded professor by walking into someone else’s assembled classroom, Dr. Shaw checks her watch—almost ten o’clock, and the number on the door—206. She then pauses just a moment to invoke her heavenly teaching muse. “Please give me good questions; make me quick to ask and slow to tell.”

At 9:55 the Avery halls surge with the between-lecture swarms, the hive ashift. In six minutes those halls will be almost deserted, filled only with a distant buzz of merged professorial voices.

The classroom is about half full. The teacher sees the active, worker-students tuck into their desk-shaped cells poised to produce sweet knowledge, wisdom, and truth. The professor queen produces a variety of pheromone assignments, lectures, and discussions that regulate the behavior of the workers. But the workers choose her, and she is there only to serve their need for intellectual fertility; they generally respect and appreciate her for her service to them.

But occasionally, somewhere in the comb of desks, a passive, stingless drone-student merely occupies his or her waxen nest. These students serve the queen only, nothing higher, and that with as little work as possible. They have no function apart from service to her, and the queen is, therefore, always a tyrant to them. Believing grade A honey will fill them through the action of the queen, they idly avoid the discipline and thought that produce grade A honey, and consequently live in a perpetual and anxious state of cognitive dissonance. Wanting only the A and doing little to earn it, passive students have no joy in the relational or educational process and become mere desk-warmers, place-takers in an impersonal social system of geometrical purposelessness, grinding out an almost meaningless degree.

Workers serve the community in diverse ways according to many specializations and gifts; they ask interesting questions as they seek to bring the ideas in great literature to bear upon their own lives and understanding; they look for relevance and connections; they are drawn into conversation and relationships with peers and professors; their vast differences in background and personal temperament enrich their classrooms and turn those classrooms into microcosms of society. Workers believe in the existence of a state called ignorance which they want to avoid and in the existence, however nebulous, of a quality called wisdom which they want to absorb.

Drones are haploid, male only, unifunctional. Drones are careful never to learn anything that won’t be on the exam. They willingly accept an impersonal place in the educational mill and don’t mind becoming, with their degree, ground-out products for sale. Drones come to a university only to get prepared to earn a living in a way that deconstructs the abundant life. Lucky for the hive that workers far outnumber drones.

Nora Shaw opens her backpack, pulls out a stack of thirty-five reading quizzes on the Sumerian myth The Descent of Inanna, lays them on the table at the front of the classroom, and announces, “You may begin your quiz when you are ready to close your textbook.” The workers realize she’s giving them fifteen minutes to take a ten-minute quiz. They have extra time to think and craft articulate answers. They thankfully smile as they come forward to pick up their quizzes. Drones are always irritated when a professor begins before the top of the hour. The two drones see, but cannot hear, what is happening and keep their earbuds in.

At 10:04, breathless and sweaty from the jog from Walker Hall, Jason Critcher quietly slips into a desk near the door. The worker bee meets the queen’s eye with a genuine apologetic smile; she returns the smile with one of her own that reassures him that the tardy will not be recorded. She thinks, “The administration is correct; the hike from fourth-floor Walker to second-floor Avery can be made in ten minutes, but barely. If one has a long-winded calculus professor and both a calculus textbook and a world lit anthology in one’s backpack, it cannot be done.”

At 10:07, Andrew Mitchell, who asked to be called Drew, strolls casually and confidently across the front of the class, and takes a seat on the far side with a very polite and very disruptive greeting. The queen feels an undercurrent of disrespect in the drone’s surface chivalry. His tidy loafers, creased khakis, and buttoned-down collar do not bespeak hurry. As he sits down, he looks the queen squarely in the eye. She sees arrogant challenge rather than apology.

She ponders, “How does one write an attendance policy in a syllabus for Jasons and Andrews?” The usual strategy crafts a strict policy to protect the administration and the professor from the complaints of drones and then ignores the policy in the majority cases of cooperative workers. All students then note the irrelevance of the syllabus and don’t bother to read it. Getting a new syllabus is like getting an owner’s manual with a new hair dryer. One plugs it in and turns it on, not needing to read again that “electrical appliances should not be submerged or the plastic bags they come in slipped over the heads of toddlers.” It is only given to protect the manufacturer, not to help the user. Getting students to read the helpful parts of a syllabus is like a flight attendant getting passengers to “pay close attention” to their four thousandth lesson on how to buckle a seat belt. One is simply tuned out.

At 10:10 Dr. Shaw directs the class to “please pass your quiz to a classmate and pull out your green pen for editing.” Amid the now-rustling class, Rachel and Crystal exchange papers and rummage in backpacks for a green pen. Rachel is a nursing major who told her professor during an office visit that she wants to work in a developing country with a missionary organization. She is one of two very dissimilar homeschooled students in that section of ancient world lit. Although well-prepared for university work in terms of knowledge, Dr. Shaw suspects her imagination is semi-dormant and her critical sense unexercised. The professor thinks her family must be of the “Christ-against culture” mindset in which holiness means to retreat from the world and to circle the wagons in self-defense, rather than to go forth as salt and light into the world. Her demeanor is confident and her countenance open, but a yawning chasm exists between her and even her Christian women classmates. Her modest, comfortable jean skirt, long simple hairstyle, and cotton-print blouse advertise an utter indifference to fashion from which the more fashionable Christian girls seek to distance themselves. The professor approves her desire to live in a developing culture, for she is relationally handicapped in her own. In the mountains of Ecuador or the highlands of Kenya, nobody will notice she is clueless of her own culture, and her concern for them will prompt her to learn about their culture. Dr. Shaw especially likes Rachel and sees the potential that this course has to enrich her intellectual life.

If only Crystal had some of Rachel’s indifference to pop culture and some of her self-confidence. Crystal is poured into jeans two sizes too small. Some of her extra pounds billow out in the broad gap between her hip-huggers and the bottom of her tight tank top. To her teacher, Crystal seems desperate to conform to worldly expectations that are, according to Jean Kilbourne, “killing her softly.” Her immodesty advertises her need to be attractive to men. Her identity seems dominated by her sexual appeal. Dr. Shaw hopes the literature will draw Crystal, who is a worker, into new interests. Servat Kalpar, who sits next to Crystal, sympathizes with her classmate from inside her hijab; “These poor, loose American women have lost their self-respect.”

Servat is a pre-med student from Pakistan. Her first language is Urdu, and her exposure to literature very limited, so this course will be a major challenge for her. Servat is worried, but not her professor. Dr. Shaw recognizes a diligent and serious student when she sees one, and she knows that Servat will be in her office when she needs the help she’s been sincerely offered. The A expected in her science classes isn’t likely, but this active worker will no doubt buzz past a C.

Servat acquired her student visa with her uncle’s help. Rasheed Uncle is a professor in the medical school at Chapel Hill, and he advised her father that her application at his medical school would be strong with good grades from Blue Ridge. She knows her father in Multan considers a Pakistani medical doctor trained in America the best hope for her future, and that her father will accept her uncle’s advice on a suitable husband. So, even though Servat has never met her father’s brother, she sees Rasheed Uncle as controlling her future. She plans to stay with her uncle’s family in Chapel Hill over Thanksgiving break, and she’s nervous about the visit. Servat wisely traded quizzes with Theodore Mullins, whose editing comments will be concise and helpful.

Nora Shaw knew she had one of the best students of her career when Theodore Mullins came into her office on the second day of the semester. He was the other homeschooled student, but of the “Christ transformer of culture” variety. It wasn’t just that he had already read some of the works on the syllabus, but that he had heard of most of them and felt left out of conversations he wanted to be a part of because he had not read them all. From the few questions she had asked him about his background, she determined that Dorothy Sayers’ lost tools of learning had been not only recovered, but sharpened and used extensively. Even his first reading quiz reflected deep understanding of classical logic and rhetoric. His vastly superior academic background had produced no recognizable hubris. He was curious and qualified, humble and eager. She sensed in him a commitment to the truth that would make him one of the few students courageous enough to exemplify the definition of a good student that she and Donald Drew had hammered out over tea so many years ago. She went over that definition in her mind applying it to Theodore, or Ted as he asked to be called.

He had sound reasons for being in school and a worthy motive for study coupled with a capacity for self-discipline and accuracy in thought and methods. He did not confuse excellence with elitism. He was not necessarily possessed of a high IQ (although she suspected Ted’s was sky high), but he did have the inclination and the will to sit down in a library and apply himself to difficult studies. He studied the influential people of history, in their original writings or as close to that as possible, and did not parrot slogans he thought that person might have said. He examined reality with integrity. He followed an argument where it led, accepted evidence for what it was worth, and took imaginative leaps, but not beyond the strict barrier of truth. This was a young man who would productively use what others have written as a springboard to dive into the sea of his own ideas. He did not dissent without understanding what he was challenging. He was utterly indifferent to intellectual popularity or fashion, and he inflexibly denied that truth was decided by counting votes. Deep down he knew that his education did not stop off campus, but continued all day and throughout his lifetime. He was aware that he would gradually develop growth in understanding. Dr. Shaw sensed he would never lose his sense of wonder, and that he was aware of his own humble but significant place in God’s purposes.

Ted was one of her few local students. He grew up in a large extended family on a mountain in nearby Cross Valley. The professor and her husband, Luke, had visited a church called Poplar Bible Fellowship where she had heard of the extended family. After his home-high school, Ted wasn’t sure what he should study or where he should study it. So he and his old grandmother decided that he would live at home, study a year at Blue Ridge for minimal expense and major in philosophy for broad background. Ted rode to campus from Mullins Mountain with his Uncle Hank, who taught in the computer science department.

Dana Blevin traded quizzes with Andrea on his right. Dana’s particularly tight low-riding jeans, unbuttoned yellow polo, stylish, slip-on Italian shoes, up-combed hair, and earring certainly had a gay look. Dana was an intelligent worker bee; Nora would have no trouble making him feel accepted. Some texts were friendly with homoeroticism; some were not. Gilgamesh and Enkidu came in early in the course and offered an opportunity for frank and respectful conversation on that subject. Dana was especially receptive to poetic language and artistic in temperament. He would be an outstanding student.

Matthew Okonkwo traded quizzes with Travis Williams, both of whom, Dr. Shaw knew, would bring a strong perspective to class conversation. Matthew was a towering basketball player from Edo State in Nigeria. He was in no danger of taking his opportunity at Blue Ridge for granted, for his athletic scholarship had most likely been his ticket out of extreme poverty. English was his fourth language, and his genius was on the court. Ancient literature would take work, but his profound thankfulness for just being where he was produced a respect, for the class, the professor, his classmates, and the subject, that made him extremely teachable.

Travis Williams would definitely add an important perspective to the class. He was a confident and outspoken atheist and an active member of the Freedom From Religion Foundation. Dr. Shaw had already noted the strong influence of Bertrand Russell and George Bernard Shaw upon Travis’ thought. He was an evolutionary biology major with a reverence for Richard Dawkins. Ancient and medieval world literature looked continually at religions and worldviews. Travis would remind the class of the logical possibility that they may all be wrong.