ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, September 22, 1996 TAG: 9609240095
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: 3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MARSHALL FISHWICK
"DAY BY DAY in every way we get better and better . . . ." So sing the spin-doctors in the Clinton Caravan as it moves to what many assume will be an easy November victory.
Getting better for whom? The millions long below the poverty level with no way to rise above it? The host of babies born out of wedlock to single parents? The prisoners in vastly overcrowded jails? The burgeoning youth population on drugs? Workers who see everything rising except their wages? Those in the rest of the world caught in tribal, ethnic, and religious conflicts that lead from slaughter to genocide?
My sheltered life on a university campus does not witness many of these problems first-hand; but we do have our doubts and dilemmas here among the upwardly-mobile well-fed academic elite, who seldom say that we are "on the right track."
I found this out when I assigned an opening paper in my classes asking students about their opinions and prospects. Here are some of the answers I got:
"We studied the 'Lost Generation' in the 20s. The really Lost Generation is us - in the 90s."
"We are so tired of being lied to."
"I have friends who hang around town to 'explore their options.' Years later they're still tending bar in Blacksburg."
"Would you vote for a party that gets its family values programs and speeches from Dick Morris?"
"I left town for a year and came back to find my friends still talking the same talk, still eating the same vegetarian sandwiches, still being 'relevant.' It's a hideaway from reality."
"All I want is a job - a place I can fall into and hide. Is that asking too much?"
"Try to be an athletic coach, not a teacher. The coaches get the big bucks, and the teaches the overloaded classes."
"I duck behind an old stack of barrels as the bullets ricochet around me."
"They call us Generation X. We're tired of being dumped on."
I read Peter Sacks' new book, Generation X Goes to College, and I began to understand what my student meant. Sacks reports that today's college students "have a strong sense of being entitled to easy success and good grades, even though they are often unwilling to achieve them." Such an accusation fits very few of my students: The Electronic Revolution has increased their work-load, and they have usually responded.
Sacks goes on to say he tried the "Sandbox Experiment" - becoming like a kindergarten teacher and doing everything possible to make his classes like playtime. As a result, he writes, he no longer taught, but became a "partner" in the "learning process.'' His ironic conclusion: "Welcome to teaching in collaborative, multicultural multivalued postmodern America."
Certainly there are serious educational problems and attitudes on every level, but exploiting and expanding them has become a problem in its own right. Politicians, academics, consultants and the media revel in their condemnation. Most of the problems have deep roots in our society - in broken homes, poverty, abuse, neglect. Such problems will require strong leadership - men and women with courage, strength, intelligence and charisma. We must cast aside the handlers and spin doctors, and find people who will speak for themselves and their beliefs. We must get a new generation of heroes, like those who once sacrificed themselves to further the lives of others.
History is meaningless with leaders and heroes. "It is natural to believe in greatness," Emerson wrote. "All mythology opens with demigods." Heroes are mirrors of the times. Like miniskirts and hoolahoops, they lose power when models change. In America we have all but forgotten our earlier heroes. We look instead to the celebrity - who passes across the heaven like a shooting star, then disappears into the eternal darkness. "I'll never forget old what's-his-name." We already have.
Very few of my students identify with the heroes of their parents, let alone of their grandparents or ancestors. "Ours is an age without heroes. We have no giants who play roles which one can imagine no one else playing in their stead."
First print, then radio, then television, then Internet have wrought incredible changes in our culture. They have taken us away from reality to virtual reality. Our heroes often exist on celluloid or in cathode tubes. Myths that served us for centuries have languished and died. But the old yearning for myths, and for greatness, is still with us. That is what I sense today in my students.
James Davison Hunter, the director of the Post Modernity Project at the University of Virginia, points out that academics have lost agreement not only about heroes, but also about texts, methods, and "the canon." The foundation of traditional authority has been deconstructed. All too often, Hunter concludes, all we are left with is a pile of rubble.
From that rubble we must construct another and better world. The message is clear: We must change with the times, but never forsake our past. We must work together to find both mission and method in our troubled and tumultuous day. Let us look for and welcome new heroes. They are one important answer to our many complex problems.
Marshall Fishwick is a professor of humanities and communications at Virginia Tech.
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