Re-publishing/re-posting

I am re-posting an essay I wrote several years ago. 


Bloodless Brutality and Perversion;


Life at an American-Run International School;


Last week I met the new boss. Strictly speaking, “boss” is an appellation which is too colloquial or perhaps too lower class for an international school. Therefore, let us refer to my new boss as the new school Director.


During the first two days of the week we were required to participate in a variety of group activities. What I remember most vividly right now are two instances where two different individuals were visibly uncomfortable with this requirement. A young woman who introduced herself with the confession “I am painfully shy” looked as though she wanted to die when, later, during a group activity, she stood before the assembled faculty as part of a bit of theater. Secondly, one of the Slovak workmen engaged in remodeling our school, was recruited to sing a children’s song in English, a language which I suspect he’s not studied, with a chorus saying “you are special”/”I am special”, etc. One’s being special, apparently, doesn’t absolve one from the requirement to behave like everyone else when the Director demands it.


My axiom is that the individual is the ultimate minority. If we disrespect individuals, then we show contempt for all of humanity.


How did I come to be in this situation? How can a civilized society come to behave so barbarously?


More than one Slovak colleague freely offered a comparison with the techniques of indoctrination used during the recent past by communists. Indeed, that comparison is not inappropriate, and it shows how far Americans have come from an understanding of the principles of democracy. The great icon of America’s war for independence, Thomas Paine, complained that aristocracy was a system which placed inferior and untalented individuals at the top of the heap. During Communism there were ideological tests placed upon individuals who wished to make progress in their careers. At the school where I work, it is noteworthy that two individuals on the management team are singularly inexperienced. Our Director of Instruction finds it difficult to speak a coherent sentence. He embarrassed both himself and the assembled audience when, at a graduation ceremony, he was unable to pronounce a multi-syllable word without stumbling. At a recent gathering of teachers he was heard to say words along the following lines: “If everyone has a different opinion. . . that would be diversity…and we don’t want that…” He was explaining why the school had to have rules that everyone agreed to follow. It is cruel that his bosses have put him in a position where public speaking is required.


Moreover, his spouse was recently put in charge of the “International Baccalaureate
Program”, replacing a much more experienced and more qualified woman, an M.D., who is the head of a department at a local hospital. According to local gossip, what both these characters have in common is that they satisfy an ideological test: they are Christians of the right sort. And, that behooves the Head Manager of the chain of schools that my school belongs to. Indeed, whether there is a hidden religious agenda or not, it is significant that employees are forced to posit such a hidden agenda to explain why the people filling key management positions are inexperienced and/or incompetent.


The new Director has a fondness for shouting. Her loud vocalizing might be either an expression of joy or an expression of displeasure, as I learned one day when I asked what was, at that time, “the wrong question”.


During one of our group meetings the Director told us something along the following lines: I have been told that you need a dress code. More accurately, she said something like this, “One of the first things I heard was ‘Oh you’ve got to do something about the way that students dress…’”


Now, who told her this? I happen to know that it came from the mouths of one or both of the Director of Instruction and his wife, the individuals I described above. They are both Americans from the Midwest, also the place of origin of our new Director. I know this because I spoke with them about this last year. In fact, I wrote a long email in which I pointed out that what they found objectionable was not immorality but the simple fact that young people imitate other young people and certain pop icons whose style of dressing is not our own. And, I suggested that there was nothing immoral or disruptive in that. Rather, it’s probably a sort of natural law. And, I also suggested that when young people enter the workplace they are smart enough to understand what’s appropriate by way of dress there.


My lengthy letter was answered by a short email, “Thank you for your contribution. Have a nice day!”. Or words to that effect.


Today I would further add the following. Young women in Slovakia dress in ways that the average American might find provocative. This may produce misunderstandings when foreigners come here. Despite the fact that Slovak girls dress sexier than the average American girl, the country tends toward conservatism. Something like more traditional gender roles are largely taken for granted. Of course, there are thoughtful feminists in Slovakia, but I am speaking about a broad pattern.


Nonetheless, as the new Director was taking advice from other members of the “management team”, my sage words were ignored. We began one session with the question: what sort of dress code do we want? No question about whether there should be a dress code.
And we were given as a model the Dress Code from the school where the Director was in charge last year. An interminable discussion ensued. My new colleagues threw themselves into the discussion with great energy. We must get it right, they said; otherwise, you know how students are. They can find a way around every rule. I found myself muttering that the insights of philosophers, linguists, and others were surely lost on this bunch. Since when has it been recognized that no rule can be so water-tight as to exist without interpretation? Might it be that the reverent attitude which Americans sometimes take toward the country’s founding documents was inspiring them? If our country’s founders could get it right, then so can we? But even the very existence of the US Supreme Court shows the need for interpretation.
In any case, my new colleagues (not all Americans) applied themselves industriously to finding the Perfect Dress Code.


I regard it as especially significant that our set of rules began with an awkwardly worded sentence saying how we respected the individuality of our students. That’s why we don’t have uniforms.


But the Director did give us clear guiding principles. Under no circumstances would hats be allowed. (I felt great relief, speaking personally, when I heard that…otherwise we might be living in the New Babylon…)


I also confess that the enthusiasm with which my new American colleagues threw themselves into this debate about fitting angels on the head of a pin increased my sympathy for the old Slovak suspicion of authority—based upon the quite reasonable but unspoken grounds that it’s very likely to be illegitimate.


Finally, a set of rules was agreed to. Democracy triumphed. It was another case of the time-tested American method of rule from above, with periodic endorsement from below. The parameters of discussion had been set without discussion, and that really took a load off my mind.


At least it did, until, unfortunately, I began to think about all this. Consider, my alter-ego said, the rather breasty, long-legged young lady, whose tops often serve to emphasize her natural endowments, a woman who does not hesitate to wear short skirts. And, consider the most sex-obsessed teenage boy in the class. When she dresses in that fashion, what does it do to him? He must be distracted by it, musn’t he? Yet, she’s one of many such young people. Every summer, the streets of Bratislava are filled with attractive, slim, young women, who dress freely.
I believe that experts call this the problem of base rates. When young Fero—to give him a Slovak name—sees young Eva dressed in what Americans call a “provocative” way, he thinks, “just another very pretty girl”. My American colleagues probably think, “my goodness! She is dressed like a prostitute!”


Base rates: Locally, young women tend to dress that way. It’s not unusual. That’s like: don’t say college professors are forgetful until you’ve compared how forgetful they are to other professions/the general population. (Something I learned from the late Z. Kunda’s psychology textbook.).


As common sense says: Young Eva just dresses the way that many other girls her age do.
And, I reply to my colleagues, “No, she doesn’t look at all like a prostitute. Three nights a week, a prostitute is standing on my front doorstep Prostitutes look tired and bored, and sometimes they look unhealthy.”


(And I am not joking; there is a woman standing in front of or just around the corner from my door several nights a week.)


My naughty question, which provoked an incident of shouting, as well as a later apology, was about research allegedly establishing that dress codes improve student performance. On the day when we were allowed to debate how many inches a young lady’s skirt needed to be, we were told that dress codes improve student performance. And the remark was made with a prefatory tag suggesting we’d better not argue: “Research shows…” On Friday, a full three days after the original discussion, I dared to ask, “Where was the research done?”
I was told that we were not allowed to discuss this matter any further—as if we’d ever discussed whether there needed to be a dress code! As if our Director had shown extreme tolerance in allowing us to exercise our free speech by debating the skirt-length issue, and I was self-indulgently ignoring her previous generosity. But, after recovering from the shock of being yelled at, I did manage to tease out the answer that while the research had not been done in Central Europe, it had been done “all over the world”.


Later my Director apologized for screaming at me. Indeed, no one in my life has ever screamed at me in the way that she had, and the memory of that will always be stronger than the apology which came afterwards. But the absence of logic which became transparent at that point leaves an even more burning and powerful trace in my memory.


This little incident shows that we who teach at this school, having come to a foreign country, allegedly with the noble goal of improving the young people we encounter there, we who call ourselves “educators” are simply ignorant about the local culture. Or, perhaps, we are (rather dangerously) assuming that a law of nature has been discovered, even though no one has tried out the experiment locally In other words, we are behaving as if there were no such thing as a local culture. The research may have been done everywhere but here, but if it hasn’t been done here, you just don’t know about here. And, if we don’t need to do it here—and the Director’s behavior suggests that we don’t—then that must be because there’s nothing special about the local environment. QED: There is no local culture. Logically, the result is elegant and water-tight: you don’t need to know about it, since it doesn’t exist.


Side-by-side with the picture I have painted, please set another one. Imagine me earlier in the week sitting in the office of another boss-figure. I visited another new Director--not of the school this time, but of the International Baccalaureate Program, known among the cognoscenti as “IB”. She wanted to know how we could improve student test scores, specifically by increasing “higher level thinking”.


My response was immediate: the culture goes against that. I.e., the culture does not encourage higher level thinking. How could you reasonably ask me to teach something to the students when the surrounding environment is hostile to it?


I suspect that the IB Director’s take on my words was: “Slovak culture does not encourage higher level thinking.” She is an American, and I have often heard my fellow Americans lament this deficiency in the Slovak soul.


Of course, the IB Director misunderstood me. But, I think what I said-- or, what I meant--is true. I meant culture-in-general, both American and Slovak, and our general capitalistic power-from-the-top-down style of living. (Lest we forget: In no country of Europe—“old” or “new”—did a majority of the population support the idea of sending troops to Iraq; yet Slovakia, among others, has sent troops there.)


My little story about the lack of free speech at a school run by citizens of the world’s reigning superpower illustrates the general absence genuine discussion and genuine consideration of alternatives in our democratic countries.


And, let’s return briefly to the case of young Fero as he gazes upon the very feminine and visible form of young Eva. Eva is pretty. He likes to look at her. He thinks, “Pretty.” And he assumes that she’s just a normal pretty Slovak girl. My American colleagues say things like, “That way of dressing is not appropriate.” Their word “appropriate” itself needs unpacking. Where did that word come from?


It might have been appropriated from discussions of taboo language in sociolinguistics. Cursing, the invocation of the gods or naughty body parts is universally frowned upon during somber occasions of high state business and in churches. Linguists report that while such language is thought to be out of place on high occasions, it is obligatory on “lower” ones: you can’t be a proper macho jock without “bad” words..


But, I suspect that the use of the term “appropriate” that I’m hearing has little in common with such a neutral level of description. Would my colleagues really concede that while sexy clothes are out in school, they are positively required at the local Disco? Strictly speaking, their language seems to leave open that possibility. However, I am not convinced that they are so broad-minded as their language might suggest.
What would a more honest description of their attitude be? Might they not actually believe that sexy dress is outright wrong? Well, why would someone think it’s wrong? Maybe, because Fero just might get a little bit of immoral pleasure from the way that Eva dresses. And, even worse, maybe Eva knows it. Maybe Eva even likes the idea that Fero gets turned on. Of course, this was never said. Perhaps I am spinning a fairy tale. But, someone who held such views might well hesitate to express them openly. And, if my speculation has any basis, then we are talking about the barefaced assertion of American Puritanism. And, in that case, we are not only ignoring the local culture, but asserting a foreign one. Just as if we’d learned nothing from the errors of the old Soviet Union or the British Empire.
Oh, and by the way, if Eva turns Fero on, and she knows it, maybe Fero knows that Eva knows that he’s turned on… and, in her heart, Eva knows all that too. So, maybe they are actually, tacitly, engaged in a sort of cooperative activity. And, even if they’d never talk about it, I suspect that this is the truly horrible and unthinkable thought which frightens and shocks my American colleagues. And as if that were not enough, given what I said about base rates, they’re all doing it! Which means that Eva’s choice of unthinkably and unspeakably immoral attire is also upsetting because it reminds our American Puritan of the immorality of the local culture. They’re all shameless here! But, perhaps my American colleagues don’t want to know that. And, since we can’t change the surrounding society, we can at least change the school. An island of virtue in a sea of sinfulness.


I once read an essay on sexual perversion by the well-known American philosopher, Thomas Nagel. If my memory serves me well, he identified the sort of mutual awareness I described above as the basis for healthy sex. It’s lacking in cases of perversion and cases of true sexual immorality. The basis of a healthy sexual life is willingly giving and receiving . . . (close your ears if you are Puritan) . . . . pleasure. And, if that’s right, my school’s Puritan dress code is perverse.




Note:
Of course, Eva might also unwittingly turn on another Slovak boy—let’s call him “Brano”. I was imagining that Eva likes Fero. Brano is a different problem. In that case, Eva must use what they call “encounter regulation”. Oddly enough, every actual Slovak Eva I’ve ever met seems to have acquired a large repertoire of skills which enables her to regulate her encounters with undesirable admirers. Anyway, I suspect it’s the case of Fero which really drives Puritans crazy. Another moral: By denying students the freedom to dress as they like, the school is actually preventing them from acquiring the skill of regulating encounters.--A problem only if you assume that the school’s primary goal is to develop the talents of the student, as opposed to spreading an ideology or assuring that profits are skewed toward individuals currently at the richer end of our inegalitarian world.


An AFTERTHOUGHT:
Defending the right to enjoy one’s physicality in public is not the same thing as endorsing conservative sexual roles. I mentioned above that Slovak society seems “conservative”. The sort of thing I have in mind is depicted in all of its misery by Elfriede Jelinek in her novel “Lovers”. (Die Liebhaberinnen) Insofar as sexy dressing belongs to the world Jelinek describes, it is no part of happiness. But Jelinek’s criticisms seem to me to be very different from the Puritan reaction of my American colleagues.