FROM THE EDITOR: The Body of Knowledge and the Body Politic
There is a substantial amount of pain and uncertainty in our community being caused by events in Washington. How we approach this moment matters.
By Martin Davis
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
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“I think that what we were being taught was less a body of knowledge than a way to be in the world: orderly, organized, attentive to direction. There is nothing wrong with developing those skills — in fact, I’ve learned the hard way how useful they can be. What is wrong is their fetishization, the way they were allowed to outrank the actual body of knowledge held within algebra or English lit.”
— Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Message
The first time I encountered something that forced me to examine the faith tradition of my parents was when I read The Chosen, by Chaiam Potok. A novel about two young Jewish boys growing up in New York City — one orthodox and one Hasidic — it traces a friendship that forms following an accident involving the two during a baseball game.
Reuven and his father, being orthodox, embraced a more-worldly understanding of Judaism. Danny was the son of an ultraconservative Hasidic rabbi who raised his son in silence and taught him to eschew the world. The two formed a bond that saw Reuven go deeper into his faith, and Danny grow closer to the world.
Conflicts between the two were pronounced as the novel progressed, especially over the way in which Danny was raised. To Reuven, a father who raises a son without speaking to him borders on abuse. It is perhaps the most difficult challenge Reuven must try to understand.
The novel caught me just as I, like Danny, was beginning to question the very conservative religious world that I had been raised in. And like him, I left that restrictive reading of faith and of life for one with a very different focus.
I find myself during those precious few moments of quiet available to me, returning to this story. As the Advance continues to dig deeper into the real-world impacts of the rapidly shifting world of government under our feet, I appreciate more than ever the importance of reaching for understanding over contempt.
Understanding and the Body of Knowledge
Whether the topic be Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, or an unfettered faith in government, our public discourse has veered sharply toward what Ta-Nehisi Coates calls “a way of being in this world.”
By this he means approaching information without critically assessing what it means. Rather than explore how information connects to the world we live in, we instead fall back on the jargon we use to describe that information in order to stereotype and marginalize what we disagree with.
This oversimplifying of information has played out locally in very public ways, such as the February Spotsylvania School Board meeting when a speaker rose during public comments and launched an ad hominem attack on the Board and the new superintendent.
“I’m here to say to you Marxists who hate god, who hate America, who hate white males, and the Judeo-Christian values that made you free, repent.”
One may wonder if the words would be so acerbic had this individual bumped into Clint Mitchell or one of the Board members on the street, causing one of them to drop their bags, and then gotten into a discussion about who they are.
Such an ad hominem attack is an example of deploying jargon in order to paint those we don’t understand or agree with so as to not have to engage them — all who disagree with me are Marxists, god-haters, and white male haters — repent!
The latter example of meeting people on the street and getting to know them on their terms would represent wrestling with an “actual body of knowledge.”
The difference between the two is the difference between hatred and discourse.
Another example comes from a Republican friend of mine, who has rightly bristled at being called “Nazi” simply because he is Republican. “The Republican Party is a large body of diverse individuals,” he rightly noted. To equate him with Nazism simply for his party affiliation, he said, is deeply troubling.
Indeed. He is rightly repulsed in the same way as Democrats are repulsed that they are equated with Marxists, or people who “hate god,” simply because of party affiliation.
A Quarter Century of Knowledge as Jargon
How we got here is complex and multilayered. But education is certainly one of the more important factors. Since 2001, when President George W. Bush signed the No Child Left Behind Act, American education has become almost exclusively about jargon — words to be memorized, not concepts to learn.
Here again, Coates is a sound guide in helping us to understand the problems associated with reducing knowledge to flash cards and multiple-choice tests.
Explosive terms like Nazism, Marxist, and Judeo-Christian when carelessly used become not carefully defined ideas, but rather “jargon,” as Coates writes, that people then level recklessly at others.
“The first step” in seriously understanding something, Coates continues, “is to relegate “jargon to the background … because jargon makes the mind go gray.”
The way education is currently structured is designed to keep people’s thinking gray. After all, which is more difficult? Writing a brief definition of Nazism or Marxism on a flashcard and asking people to memorize it? Or actually wrestling with the depths of those ideas?
Far from allowing terms to be demonized and replaced with equally obtuse terms like “patriot” or “liberal,” a sound education “engages the actual body of knowledge.”
A Path to a More Humane Body Politic
As the rolling effects of lost jobs, closed offices, funding disruptions, and policy shifts continue to unfold, it is more important than ever that we engage the body of knowledge, and not use it to berate those with whom disagree.
How much poorer would the lives of Reuven and Danny have been had they not dared to use the designations of their Jewish traditions each was associated with — orthodox, Hasidic — as a starting point for learning, as opposed to jargon to drive one another away?
How we approach one another matters.
“Policy change,” writes Coates, “is an end point, not an origin. The cradle of material change is in our imagination and ideas.”
We all have much work to do. Whether it be working harder to understand why D.E.I. emerged and the realities of inequality it shines a light on, or to understand the concerns over the proper role and size of government in a free society.
We can’t control how that debate plays out in D.C. — 50 miles and a light-year away from front-porch conversations — but we can control how it plays out amongst our neighbors here.
For the next two weeks, I will be reading The Chosen, and I invite you to read along with me. For those who would like to join, sign-up by answering a couple questions.
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