​On Election Day, I had the privilege of working the polls in Montgomery, NY. Although understaffed, we managed to process nearly 1,200 votes at that one polling station. My job was to help with the voting machines where voters fed their paper ballots for scanning and storage after making their selections. The voters were, almost to a person, polite and even enthusiastic, particularly when I would reward them with a sticker at the end of the process. The voting sticker occupies its own space in the American imagination as a emblem of honor and duty. After all, without the sticker, only an unceremonious thump and beep from the machine followed by an uptick in its digital counter would mark the august occasion of performing one's civic duty. American stickers may not be quite as satisfying as Australia's "democracy sausages," but they still offer a little thrill for almost everyone. In fact, only a handful of voters that day declined the decal. A few, apparently wary of the added drag of a piece of paper on their clothing, declared that they were "in a hurry." An even smaller number took the sticker and pasted it on before surlily announcing, "I already know I voted." I guess they figured the tag was meant as a reminder not to get back in line, like some sort of mnemonic "election ink." Of the hundreds of voters I processed, though, maybe twenty total declined this humble American electoral tradition, the sticker, and only a very few others were not grateful and gracious.

Just one gentleman stood on his own, though, by taking umbrage at the content of the sticker itself. At first, he accepted the badge as usual and turned to leave, but then he stopped and spun back with an intense look on his face. The sticker, I should point out, had two messages, or, more precisely, the same message in two languages. Across the top of the little oval with the American flag, it said, "I Voted." Across the bottom, it read "Yo Voté." This particular voter incredulously pronounced the bottom line to me as if it were English slang, "'Yo vote?' What is that?" I chose to take him at face value and replied as literally as possible, "it's Spanish."

I need to point out that it is not for the poll workers to engage voters in contentious discussions, so I hoped that my bland statement of the obvious would end the conversation. Instead, he blurted, "What? Spanish?" Struggling to decide if he was being sarcastic or was really confused, I called upon my three years of high school Spanish from back in the 1900s and pronounced it for him, "Yoe voe-tay," and repeated, "It's Spanish."

​Instead of just moving on content with my approximation of the pronunciation, he chose to treat me to a spontaneous lecture on how "they" need to learn "our language" if "they" are going to live in "our country." I said nothing at all and looked hopefully toward the next voter in line, which somehow further encouraged my haranguer. "My grandparents had to learn English when they got here," he insisted, "so these people should learn our language." I remained steadfastly silent, which required a tremendous effort, as he started to reiterate the main points of his broadside. He clearly had nothing to add to his argument except an increasingly shrill intonation. Things were getting touchy for no reason I could ascertain, and I needed to defuse the situation and move him along so that others could freely exercise the franchise just as he did.
​
What is it about languages that we find simultaneously comforting and off-putting? Is it that language is so fundamental to communication, and communication is so fundamental to our interactions in and within society? Or, is it that language is a quick way of forming community and serves as an easy identifier as to whether one is in or out of the fold? Perhaps this voter was annoyed because he was not part of the Spanish-speaking set, or maybe he was irked that Spanish-speakers were not sufficiently part of his set as demonstrated by their persistent use of Spanish. Even so, it seemed a stunted hill to die on, the cause that only English should appear on a voting sticker. Given that my county has a large Spanish-speaking population, the dual-language approach seems a reasonable attempt to be inclusive.

​To be fair, I have heard the argument that if we were to be truly inclusive, we would feature the languages of several immigrant groups on our fraught little "I Voted" stickers. I get the logic, which is tantamount to saying that unless we represent all the worthy people who move to our shores, we should represent almost none. In other words, since we cannot be maximally inclusive, we must be utterly exclusive. Remarkably, this argument has the distinction of being both a superb example of a slippery slope fallacy as well as a pristine instance of sacrificing the good on the altar of the perfect.

While English is by far its most common language, the U.S. has no official language, with Spanish as the second-most common tongue. This linguistic split also holds true in my county, where the largest city is more than fifty-percent Latinx. Therefore, printing "Yo Voté" along with "I Voted" on the sticker makes sense and does no harm. It serves as an invitation to our Spanish-speaking population to participate in the most fundamentally democratic right and rite-of-passage our republic has to offer. As for the claim, à la my recalcitrant voter, that "my grandparents had to learn English," while perhaps true, it is complicated by the reality of the varied communities that have immigrated here throughout history. Many such communities retained and replicated the customs, traditions, cuisine, practices, and, yes, languages of their home countries, thus enhancing the richness of today's culture. We can see vestiges of this phenomenon all over. Visit a "Germantown" of 100 years ago and you might observe business signs in German, hear the language spoken on the street exclusively, and read official documents and even street names all in German. In fact, just south of where I live, at least one town is home to a large ultra-orthodox Jewish community, where one can see an example of a cultural enclave. Or, visit Chinatown today in many major cities for a taste of what I am describing. Nonetheless, even if they did not receive that community help, I am sure my recalcitrant voter's grandparents would have welcomed a generous period during which they were able to speak their own language while they learned English, which is notoriously tricky to master, as I hope to one day.

On Election Day I could have said all this and much, much more, but I needed to move my vocal voter along. He was looking agitated, and his voice was angry even though I had tried to appear both as disinterested and as uninterested as possible. I guess he wanted me to agree with him, which itself could have been an inducement to keep on spouting. In the end, I could only go with the truth of the matter. With a look of profound incomprehension in my eyes and as much exasperation as I could muster, I shook my head and replied, "It's just a sticker, sir." He left then. Maybe my pleading tone embarrassed him a bit, but I doubt it. As he strode out the door, having surprisingly donned the dual-language decal, I processed the next voter, who welcomed her sticker with a gracious giggle.

ESCHEW OBFUSCATION 

Anyone who knows me even a little bit knows that I have a propensity to say things without much ornamentation. It is a habit I come by honestly, a family trait passed on from my parents to my brother and me. When I say I do not ornament my speech, that does not mean I am not prone to fits of hyperbole or casual sarcasm, being human and all. Nor does it mean that I get in people's faces or am rude or impulsive. I talk straight, meaning that when I speak, I tend not to evade the truth or facts as I see them, and I abhor misdirection and obfuscation. This straight talk is a sign of neither arrogance nor aggression. In fact, a wise straight talker will remain silent and listen when her or his version of the truth might fall flat or be counterproductive or hurtful. One of my personal guides is that only fools speak when there is nothing to say, which is not to suggest that I am not such a fool more often than I would care to quantify or admit.

Straight talk can be jarring to some who demand what they consider more diplomatic speech. Indeed, I can be diplomatic and quite deferential in my tone and diction when necessary, but that last qualifier is essential: when necessary. Diplomatic speech is vital to the success of, well, diplomacy. In other situations it can be off-putting, mystifying, dilatory, or downright misleading. The same can be said for euphemism. At times euphemism is absolutely the right choice for reasons of politeness, gentleness, or cultural sensitivity, but euphemism, when used as a matter of course, can be tantamount to guileful manipulation. It places the audience, particularly during conversation, in the subordinate position by imposing unwarranted verbal limitations. Similarly, political correctness can be disorienting, but there is a caveat here. While some extremes of what is deemed political correctness can be quite silly and while political correctness can feel constraining to many audiences, political correctness is also a way for individuals and groups to create and possess their own identifiers rather than subjugate themselves to those imposed by more dominant groups. And, lest you imagine that the politically correct are creatures solely of the left in the United States, think again. Labeling a middle-class married woman a "housewife" will likely and rightly cause offense and evoke indignation from watchers of MSNBC, but what response can you expect from wishing a Fox News fan "happy holidays" around Christmastime (or, for that matter, spelling the holiday Xmas, which warrants some research if you are unaware of the origins)?

What do diplomatic speech, euphemism, and political correctness have in common? All three have their uses, as I have noted, but all three have their abuses. The worst cases result is evasion and deception, willful or otherwise. But even when used properly and benignly, diplomatic speech, euphemism, and political correctness create a sense of insider-outsiderism. Much as with sarcasm, if you are not in on the lingo or do not understand why it is being applied in a situation, then you are de facto excluded—an outsider. The gratuitous use of jargon can have a similar effect.

Straight talk may also seem to have an inside-outsider quality for those who are not personally or culturally disposed or comfortable with it. Some will say that straight talk is too curt and off-putting, but that is never its intent and need-not be its effect. Straight talk is a way of cutting through the clutter of language. Like all forms of communication, it is severely hampered by the human limitations of perception that plague both the speaker and the listener, but straight talk is an attempt to be more direct and emphatic and is often greeted as refreshing and freeing. In conversation, it signals a willingness to drop pretense and evasion and cut to the chase, to say what you mean and mean what you say. It gives the opportunity to converse mutually without ritualizing the process. In fact, as a tool of diplomacy, it can eliminate delays and misunderstandings when wielded with integrity and skillfully for mutual benefit.

Again, straight talk is not about rudeness, insult, or dominance. Those are hallmarks of bullying, which sometimes masquerades as straight talk and is anything but. Bullying is about mastery and control certainly, but it is also about evasion. The bully eschews exposure as a coward and values winning above all else as though every circumstance were a zero-sum game. Straight talk, by contrast, is a form of verbal collaboration for creating win-win scenarios. It evinces deep respect and regard and a willingness to share on an equal footing. The straight talker is not seeking to oppress or intimidate but to accommodate and welcome straight talk in response. The straight talker strives to maximize honesty and transparency and therefore is rendering her or himself most vulnerable in the exchange. Talking straight, unlike bullying, runs a risk because it seeks to remove the veils that conceal individuals from each other and too often from themselves. 

Nonetheless, as a veteran and dedicated straight talker, I find the risk is worth it. Who wants to live in a world in which everyone habitually and relentlessly obscures meaning? Language and communication are slippery enough without the added liability of volitional evasion. Straight talk is not always the best tool and is sometimes inappropriate or ineffective, but as a norm it cuts down on the nonsense and frees participants in a conversation to come to terms as painlessly and effortlessly as possible. Straight talk is not perfect. Like its political cousin, democracy, though, it is the worst form of communication except for all those others.

​Try to picture a conformist in action. We will call him William. 

William is a follower, someone who is forever riding on the bandwagon and never driving. William adheres to standards because, well, they are standards, and he adores traditions. William is ever conventional because the unconventional is to him uncomfortable and even at times offensive. William is neither adrift nor passive. Despite appearances, conformity is a proactive mode and can be hard work. A conformist, such as William, does not float with the tide. He swims with it because it is stupid to resist. William buys the trendiest sneakers because the are trendy. He has no pronounced tastes of his own but he is convinced they look great since everyone is wearing them.  William chuckles and scoffs at people who wear other shoes.

If William were an animal, he would be an impala, a ubiquitous southern African antelope that is easily identified with a large figure M on its rump. Safari guides may tell you that the M stands for McDonalds because, like the restaurant chain, the impala is a reliable source of nourishment and can be found on every corner. When you see an impala in the wild (and you will), it will either be in a herd or dead. The impala runs with the herd for protection and companionship and eats a consistent diet of plant parts. The individual impala takes no risks, and the herd certainly does not. The impala plays it safe, relying on numbers and speed to escape enemies. That does not mean the impala has no fun. Herds of impala may frolic together and play and even fight, but one herd member is always cautiously on the lookout for danger. The impala are so consistent that they drink water and even give birth at the time of day least likely to attract predators. With any threat, the impala herd will bolt in an instant and scatter with tremendous leaps to disappear into the brush. William is an impala. And, William eats at McDonalds too, not because he likes it better than other places, but because it’s familiar, easy, and where everyone else eats.

Now think of a contrarian. Let’s call her Trudy, keeping in mind that there are many fewer Trudys than Williams. 

If Trudy sees a crowd on the march, she heads the other way. Trudy swims against the tide, often making a big show as she flails about. In fact, she does not like popular beach vacations and prefers staying home to work in her garden, which is "at least doing something useful." She must labor at her contrarianism, which she takes very seriously and is hence not much fun to be around. She is not a misanthrope, but she just hates going along with the throng. Strict adherence to traditions are for losers and followers. Trudy rarely goes to see the fireworks on Independence Day and has not put up a Christmas tree in years. Everyone else does that, so why should she? Trudy checks out the latest trendy footwear. She may even find the look appealing, but everyone is wearing them. She chuckles and scoffs before buying something else. 

If Trudy were an animal, she would be the infamous honey badger. Aggressive and solitary, the honey badger is a sharp contrast to the passive and social impala. I do not mean to suggest that Trudy or other conformists are aggressive, only to point up the contradistinction. Honey badgers work hard for their differences. Their only fun seems to be in reeking mayhem as, for instance, when they attack barnyard fowl and kill more than what they need or when they take over the borrows of other animals despite being superb diggers themselves. In addition, unlike the impala, there are no honey badger packs. The individual honey badger can and will fight even much larger predators, including lions, and has the added defensive ability to disperse a noxious odor from a gland if in danger. The honey badger is a risk taker. As for food, the honey badger enjoys honey, to be sure, but eats just about anything: insects, rodents, lizards, fruit, roots, etc. In short, the honey badger is just the opposite of the impala, and that is the point of contrarianism: to be contrary, to do the opposite as a matter of course. Trudy's diet, by the way, is probably less varied than the honey badger's. For instance, she would not eat McDonalds, but make no mistake. She enjoys the Big Mac just fine, but she prefers driving a bit further to eat at Bojangles', which has shorter lines. Finally, notwithstanding assurances from the viral video that "the honey badger don't give a shit," Trudy certainly does give a shit, perhaps even more so than the William.

So, what is the difference between the conformist and the contrarian, the impala and the honey badger? The impala and the honey badger contend with exactly the same things in their environment but in near-diametrically opposed ways. The impala moves in herds, the honey badger largely alone. The impala plays it safe, the honey badger not so much. The impala flees from danger, and the honey badger charges. The impala eats a limited diet, and the honey badger eats everything. Their reactions are different, but their drivers are the same. Still, what drives William and Trudy? Both respond to what is trending and what is popular and make their decisions according to their disposition, one in favor of the trend and one opposed. They are entirely reactive if not reactionary, and at times equally knee-jerk. As a practical matter, the only difference between the choices of the conformist and the contrarian is the outcome, which are equally predictable.

Contrarians often present themselves to and are perceived by the world as independent thinkers or even iconoclasts, and I have tried to demonstrate that they are anything but. Independent thinkers may take in all the same information—for instance, what is trending, what is not—but they go beyond simply binaries and fold in, well, whatever they want. They may go with the trend. They may reject it. They may find another option. There is no good animal analog for the independent thinker because there is no single model for the independent thinker. They can range from the less-than rigorous outlier on one extreme to the rigorous critical thinker to the true maverick or iconoclast on the other extreme. They can be leaders, loners, or the loyal opposition. To whatever degree, the independent thinker is marked by a lack of easily predictive reactivity.

While I admit to a bias toward the independent thinker, in our society the conformist and the contrarian certainly have their roles and their utility along with the independent thinker. My point is to demonstrate how the contrarian and the independent thinker are just two sides of the same coin. All too often, contrarians are held up to the world as bold thinkers. We hear this claim when some ignorant people deny well-established science, such as with the science of climate change. There are a few scientists who renounce the human causes and the consequences of climate change. Their supporters will point out that famous scientists like Einstein also bucked the establishment, but the comparison is weak. Einstein was a maverick and iconoclast, not a contrarian. He did not look at the establishment and pick the opposite stance. He applied rigorous thinking and self-awareness to forge new paths in areas of science that were not as easily verifiable or readily observable (and, in fact, not nearly as universally accepted) as climate science. In short, he was not simply reactive but was thoughtful and thorough in his analysis and left open the prospect that he could be wrong. His method was even more important than his conclusions and contributed to the accuracy of those conclusions. His methodology indicates that he was neither a conformist nor a contrarian but was an independent thinker.

The contrarian, though, is not driven by careful thought or the objective search for truth. The contrarian and the conformist are simply reactors to the same stimuli, no matter how the contrarian presents him or herself to the world. If the impala/honey badger analogy is a stretch for you, think of sheep and wolves. We have all heard the story of the wolf that infiltrates the sheep herd disguised as a sheep. But, imagine the sheep is a conformist, and the wolf is a contrarian. The sheep and the wolf would then lead their lives much as conformists and contrarians, reacting to the same drivers, albeit in antithetical fashions. Is the wolf so different then? If not, we must conclude that a contrarian is nothing more than than a conformist in disguise. The conformist is, indeed, a sheep in wolf's clothing.

​"Decent" is a slippery word, which does not exactly qualify it for stand-out status within the English lexicon. On the one hand "decent" just means mediocre, acceptable. A grade of 'C' is decent. If someone says that their team has a decent chance of winning, save your money. It is not a full-throated endorsement of a sure bet. A decent song is one that I will not complain about but do not care if I ever hear again. A decent television show is one to watch if there is nothing else on. No one will be pleased to drive a long distance or pay a lot of money just for a decent meal. Decent is good enough and nothing more.

On the other hand, "decent" as a mark of character is high praise. Saying that someone is decent indicates that they have a goodness of spirit, honesty, and integrity. I may not agree with a given politician, but if I deem her a decent woman, I am suggesting that I respect her rectitude if not her opinions or convictions. Saying an actor is only a decent performer but is also a decent person is neither redundant nor contradictory. It offers faint praise for the actor's thespian prowess even as it commends the actor's personal righteousness.

So, in one sense, as a broad descriptor, "decent" means "good enough" while on the other, as an assessment of human behavior and motivation, it means "better than good." (I told you, slippery.) Obviously, achieving decency in the first sense is the definition of unremarkable. Achieving decency in the second is a mark of distinction, particularly in our current environment of rampant indecency.

This latter sort of decency of character can be exemplified by a particular episode that took place in an organization when the longtime CEO was in her last year before retirement. This CEO was a woman of deep conviction and honesty. In short, she was a decent woman. In her last year, the organization committed to a multiyear contract with a vendor that promised to help put the organization on a whole new economic footing while maintaining its focus on its mission. The CEO and her staff probed this offer in every way, including contacting the vendor's current clients, and, while they learned that the road might be rough, they were assured that any struggles would be well rewarded. 

Instead, the vendor was unwilling or unable to deliver on its promises. In addition, and more troubling, the vendor pressured the organization's staff to commit to directions that were perilous to the organization and to its ability to deliver on its mission. Upon learning of this looming crisis, the CEO first sought to reset the agreement with the vendor, but the vendor failed to meet the terms of the revised contract as well. She then negotiated to rescind the contract altogether after that first year, thus sparing the organization unnecessary struggles and sparing her successor as CEO the burden of an untenable contract.

Think of the wherewithal her action required. The CEO first had to accept and admit that the arrangement with the vendor, however well intentioned, was in error and that she herself had been mistaken. She further had to convince herself that despite strategizing and budgeting around the tantalizing promise of financial rewards for the organization, the promise was empty. Now the organization had to make up for a budget shortfall. Had the contract been successful, it would have sealed her legacy as a CEO, so breaking the contract must have required an extraordinary act of self-discipline. Indeed, she scuttled the deal as almost the final act of her longtime career in leadership. It was the right thing to do and could not have been easy to present to her board. The correct decision required a leader with a core of fundamental decency who was more interested in the ongoing mission of the organization than she was in securing a legacy or protecting herself.

In a counter example, a CEO at another organization discovered, upon taking office, that the organization was in dire financial straights. To his credit, he worked with his team to devise techniques to keep the organization afloat. He did not, though, devise a strategy for moving past its precarious state, and those emergency actions quickly hardened into norms. Over years, they became sacrosanct practices, "the way we do things," and any effort to undo or even question the efficacy of those norms was met with extreme hostility and even viciousness. Anyone who proposed or sought to modify the practices was suppressed or purged, no matter their intention or approach. The organization's mission was subordinate to the practices that had been established. This CEO did not have the wherewithal to unwind the web of emergency actions he had undertaken because he did not possess a decent character. His method was to bluster, distract, and bully to get things done the same old way even though he was accomplishing little—all symptoms of his rampant indecency. The overall quality of the organization itself, inevitably, diminished with no hope of improvement due to the CEO and his team's fecklessness and malevolence.

The CEO in the first example was inherently decent and possessed the integrity to make difficult decisions even when they might reflect badly on her. The CEO in the second example was truly indecent. While he rose admirably to face the crisis early in his tenure, that effort exhausted his stock of mettle. Hence, one organization could continue to be excellent and deliver on its mission while the other inexorably sunk below the mark of mediocrity and could not fulfill its primary objective. It was less than decent.

So, human decency engenders excellence, which should not be surprising. A wise man said that "excellence is the result of habitual integrity" (often attributed to Lennie Bennett). Since decency and integrity are merely separate words to represent a person's inner strength and potency of character, it is not surprising that both describe the ingredient necessary to foster excellence in all we do.

These two concepts, Cocktail Party Instruction and Coverage vs. Uncovering, are related and therefore can be treated together. Both, when abused, have to do with content-intensive (and teacher-focused) pedagogy that privileges the what over the why and even the how. Sometimes they can be associated with particular academic disciplines, but they also correlate with the use of standard textbooks and anthologies and the employment of multiple choice and short answer tests as a primary means of student assessment. Neither does much to encourage students to enter into a dialogue with academic material and practitioners, much less produce new knowledge, now or ever.

Cocktail Party Instruction has much to do with what used to be called “cultural fluency,” the idea that to be a properly educated citizen one must have exposure to and knowledge of key facts and artifacts. There is a close association between this form of instruction and the so-called literary canon, which has purported to identify particular literary texts that are most valued by our culture and hence indispensable. Literature survey courses are an vestige of this assumption. Elsewhere in the humanities, this type of instruction might result in history's courses built around dates, important figures, and momentous events (useually financial upheavals and wars). In the sciences it might appear as a slavish adherence to rote memorization and preordained application, such as in a laboratory where student “experiments” consist of little more than multiple reenactments with canned results.

Similarly, Coverage has to do with an associated body of knowledge within a discipline but more focused on movement through a specific discipline than with meeting cultural norms. Simply put, Coverage focuses on completing the textbook and/or the syllabus on schedule rather than adjusting the pace of delivery and even not addressing material in order to facilitate student learning. Uncovering goes further by emphasizing the development of student skills and habits that will teach students to learn rather than to absorb (and regurgitate) material. For example, Coverage may dictate that because ten Shakespeare sonnets appear on the syllabus (or in the anthology!) for this week, students must slog through all ten in class even if they comprehend little. Uncovering, on the other hand, would allow the instructor to concentrate on fewer poems than assigned so that students may better understand how to read Shakespeare’s sonnets. If the students are good with ten, that is fine too. The teacher can make that assessment on behalf of student learning. The first approach all but guarantees most students will not be able to read on their own. The second helps assure that they could read on their own and, ideally, they may even want to. So, yes, they may not read as much at first, but they will read better.

While both Cocktail Party Instruction and Coverage emphasize a both of knowledge that students must have, even without comprehension, it is remarkable what always gets left out. Namely, historically oppressed or ignored people, peoples, and ideas. For instance, women, minorities, foreign norms, nonmainstream religions, languages, and controversies of all sorts. These items are invariably omitted from or abridged in the official body of knowledge to the detriment of all.

What is more, the political argument aside, no body of knowledge can ever be complete or truly representative. Therefore, to pretend that there is some universally agreed upon and finite set of facts and concepts is dishonest and irresponsible. It resists learning and encourages and rewards cramming and forgetting. Any mature student knows intuitively that the more one learns the more one finds more to learn. Learning is a never-ending process. It does not stop at the end of a term or upon graduation, or at least it should not. No learner is ever “complete.” The best teachers see their duty as teaching students to uncover knowledge, to learn.

Here is a cocktail party alternative. From time to time, literary scholars will play a little game in which they admit to some great or famous or canonical piece of literature they have not read. How is it possible that such erudite individuals could have overlooked The Great Gatsby or The Iliad? Were they avoiding difficult works, or was there a flaw in their otherwise impeccable educations. Frankly, the answer is that no one can get around to reading everything. Not a big surprise, I am sure, but someone always gasps as though I have a character flaw whenever I cop to the fact that I have never read nor seen Macbeth. I have not avoided the play, but I just have not read it or had the opportunity to attend a performance (and, yes, I know a version is in movie theaters now). The fact remains, though, that I could read and enjoy and understand the play at any time because I developed that skill many years ago by reading Shakespeare (and viewing his plays) and reading other authors in a variety of literature classrooms and on my own. I can uncover Macbeth and a host of other literary works at will. Why would I deny my students the same pleasure just to meet an arbitrary standard? I would rather they not read Macbeth in my class so that they may learn to read Macbeth better in the future. That is the distinction I draw and the choice I make for their benefit.

Now, I have to go to the movie theater.

Of course, this principle applies to all forms of communication, verbal and nonverbal, and gets to the crux of the human dilemma—that we are an inherently social species who need to convey all sorts of messages to one another for all sorts of reasons and yet cannot clearly and directly communicate our thoughts. Even the simplest messages are misconstrued, and our plethora of languages and cultures compound the problem. I do not have to dwell on this obvious fact.

Nonetheless, it remains imperative that humans focus on producing clear communication, however futile the effort. Clarity is futile.

Still, when teaching college writers, I drive this point home, that clarity trumps everything. Inexperienced writers often slog through their prose, stymied by their own insecurities and the weight of a thousand rules—real and fabricated—imposed by well-meaning teachers for whom a rule well-followed is more important than a thought well-communicated.

At the risk of appearing to erect a straw man, I want to address any objections that the rules of grammar are meant to help clarify the expression of our thoughts. First, the rules of grammar are not “meant” to do anything. They are simply the codification of convention, which is why they change as the conventions change. They are not immutable laws of the universe or abstract truths or religious doctrine. Also, as I suggested, perfectly grammatical constructions can still interfere with clarity. Here are a couple of glaring examples:

Or,

Is that clear?

These sentences are the sort that teachers might label "awkward" out of sheer exasperation. (The second one, by the way, is from Bob Dylan's song “Tell Me, Momma,” and I acknowledge that he is cleverly playing in these convoluted lines.)

Here is one that attempts to follow a “rule” (do not end a clause in a preposition—a manufactured rule, by the way) but ultimately serves up a pile of corned beef hash with a side of rank pedantry:

Or how about this masterpiece of embedded confusion:

The woman is a dentist. The man is dating her. My brother also sees that man. Awkward!

These examples offer extremes that have obvious fixes, and one could mine the annals of literary theory for some truly bizarre constructions. More to my point, though, and beyond the scope of my examples, sometimes bending or even violating the rules of grammar is advantageous to clear communication.

The fact remains that all aspects of the writing process and all elements of the written piece must serve to maximize clarity, including grammar. The planning, organizational logic, diction, syntax, style, etc., when correct, improve the audience’s understanding. And one of the most import benefits of emphasizing clarity to novice writers is that it helps them focus on the audience, which is paramount.

Even in poetry and other forms of literary writing, although they can be intentionally obscure, the goal is to be understood. Of course, sometimes the point of a literary piece is to defy meaning so as to evoke the futility of human interactions and understanding. Even so, although vexingly counterintuitive, such literary intention still devotes itself to the mission of clarity with the (obscure) form enacting the theme of imperfect knowability.

In Jonathan Swift’s A Tale of a Tub (1704), the narrator, a wit of the then-modern mode, presents a detailed Christian allegory that offers little illumination. He interrupts this tale frequently with lengthy digressions on various ostensibly unrelated topics, the final one being the famous “A Digression Concerning Madness” in which he altogether throws off reason. Then blissfully bereft of logic, he is free to continue his allegorical tale howsoever he pleases without any need to make meaning.

His final paragraph is most telling and worth quoting in full:

He follows this paragraph with a curt “Finis.”

Two paragraphs before, he had executed one of my favorite Swiftian metaphors:

This metaphor brings us closest, perhaps, to the meaning of the Tale: that it is a work that inherently resists meaning.

So, here, we have a great work of literature that eschews clarity to complain about the perceived lack of clarity in fashionable writing and the general futility of trying to communicate with accuracy or clarity. The reader, perhaps convinced by its opacity that there is much profundity in the Tale, falls victim to the allure of the “wondrous dark.” Here obscurity serves clarity, and the reader stumbles.

As is frequent with art, exceptions are the rule, and yet clarity still trumps everything.

Terry Dewsnap was my advisor at Bard College in the mid-eighties. I was an English major and a first-generation student, a term I never heard until I was anointed into the higher ed communion myself years later. Terry seemed just right to me, just what I should expect of the professoriate according to popular depictions of college. He sat in an arm chair in a stuffy, book-lined office, puffing on a pipe. His tonsure reflected just enough lamplight through the tobacco plume to effect a hazy halo. He wore a tweed jacket, a tweed jacket!, with leather sleeve patches! and later grew a full beard! Amidst the lumber of stereotypes stacked high in my seventeen-year-old mind, he embodied the quintessential professor. Bookish, smart, vaguely avuncular but never too familiar. I feel comfortable calling him Terry now, and other students did then, but to me, throughout my Bard years, he was Professor Dewsnap.

He sometimes confused me with my freshman roommate, Geoff, and would imagine he had seen one of us when only the other was present. He even cuttingly accused Geoff of never showing up to one of his classes, one in which I was enrolled (and attending) and not Geoff. Geoff and I, for the record looked nothing alike. Geoff was dark haired and I was blond--a pine and an ash. We are as bald as cypresses now, though.

Terry’s file cabinet was a wondrous contrivance. When Terry needed to hand me a text to illustrate a point, he would pull open the top drawer, always the top, and a flourishing copse of paper would instantly sprout. He'd thumb through and somehow pull just the right one, which would invariably be dogeared and slightly stained with a brownish substance. I imagined that he must once have knocked an open coffee into the drawer and ruined every sheet. He neither explained nor apologized for the condition of his offerings, and I was, nonetheless, content to receive his wisdom, howsoever ragged and soiled.

I took his class on satire and a tutorial reading Ulysses. In the classroom, Terry was somewhat unconventional. His notion of what constituted satiric literature was wide ranging, an expansiveness that influenced the satire courses I would teach years later. Terry tended to stand, swaying like a sapling, for most of the class, and, always in his tweed with patches, steadily smoked his pipe. Unlike other pipe-puffing professors, Terry had to light his pipe, it seemed, with every inhalation. This inconvenience was offset by the fact that he could immediately stow his pipe in his jacket pocket, which visibly alarmed uninitiated students, who expected him to ignite like dry timber.

While he lectured, he stood with his back to the class. This way he could doodle continually on the board. I do not recall if he ever wrote words there, but he did draw wiggly lines and looping curves while he spoke. The students were baffled and annoyed. Once, out of curiosity, I carefully copied his squiggles and found that studying them helped me recall his lecture. Or so nostalgia would have it. For an assignment in that class, I attempted to write an ill-conceived satiric parody of an epic in wooden prose. It was long, and when I showed the first part to Terry, he assumed it was complete. I told him it was only part one, and he asked, with perfect artlessness, “are you really going to continue with this?” Chopped down to size, I wisely never did.

As an advisor, Terry was most insightful. When I expressed interest in a particular professor’s course, he grumbled, “Take this other course of his instead. He at least knows something about that topic.” When I came to him to sign up for a music listening class he sighed with evident disappointment. “So, you've decided to go down the Bard path,” a statement that in a stroke sundered me from my pretense. The fact was that I just wanted to experience more varieties of music and begin to understand them. I thought I was plowing through the woods, not sticking to a route. In many ways, though, he was right--not about my motives but about the Bard path.

Terry oversaw my Senior Project, of course. It was the apotheosis of callow satiric novel writing, of course. Again, he struggled through the thicket of my prose, which was blissfully free from the fetters of talent or purpose. He really tried, was valiant in his effort, to chop through the slovenly wilderness of my mindless musings. When it was done, I gave it a title, Joe Christ. Terry hated it. I know because he told me so. Not subtle enough--a stark oak in a conifer forest. He suggested that I find a quote to use as my title, which is a grand old tradition and was a great way for him to dodge culpability. I turned to my old friend, Jonathan Swift, and found a pithy phrase in one of my favorite passages from A Tale of a Tub: “so ill to order affairs.” I had my title.

(I just realized that, to this day, despite writing a novel with that title and a dissertation on Swift, I still don't know what that phrase means.)

In spring of 1986, with buds on the branches, my graduating class was to select our baccalaureate speaker. I probably didn't even know what a baccalaureate was, but I nonetheless was present for the deliberations. Someone, it might have been me, nominated Terrence Dewsnap. I do remember giving an impassioned speech on why he should be our nominee, which I would have transcribed at the time had I known I would be asked to write this testimonial nearly three decades later. Terry handily won the laurels.

The next day I had an appointment with Terry. I was there early for whatever reason and was waiting outside his office when he showed up. I greeted him with a heartfelt “congratulations,” and he responded with wooden politeness. Inside, as we settled into our familiar seats, he looked up at me suddenly and glared darkly, cleaving me with his eyes. He barked, “what are you up to? Is this some sort of joke you are playing on me?”

Since I had no idea what he was talking about, I replied, “I have no idea what you are talking about.” I was stumped.

He told me that two other seniors had said congratulations to him that day and he did not know why. He determined that we were conspiring in some sort of prank designed to fell him.

I was cudgeled. He was pissed in a way I had never seen him before, and I braced for the next blow. I explained the vote and the honor we had conferred upon him. As I talked, his face softened, and he settled back into his chair. I congratulated him again, and he thanked me again, this time with genuine warmth

When it was time for Terry to give his speech, the graduates’ excitement buzzed like a saw. Here was the quintessential professor about to expound publicly, in the chapel no less. We grew as quiet as logs. He started off with banalities but then started weaving a subtle narrative throughout his more conventional remembrances. It was tale of an event that took place our sophomore year, one in which he, Terrence Dewsnap, with one stroke, transformed the entire campus. It was the tale of a tree and an axe, or maybe a chainsaw. I don't remember. Axe is more evocative, so let's go with axe.

Oh, and a brownout.

I remember the evening well If not fondly. It was a Sunday, and I had an art history paper due the next day. I was typing it on my Brother electric typewriter when the power went out. Well, most of the power. Some lights stayed lit, but dimly, and there was not enough electricity to run a typewriter. The dorms broke into panic. It seemed nearly everyone had a paper due and nearly everyone had an electric typewriter. Even the Luddites with manual machines would find the light too faint to work. We were doomed.

Dr. Terrence Dewsnap, it seems, decided that very evening to remove a tree from his property in the woods. The nearby powerline never stood a chance.

The speech, by the way, was a triumph. It was droll, it was self-deprecating, it was satirical. It was very Bard. We loved it!

After commencement, I took my parents to meet Professor Dewsnap. For the first time I introduced him as Terry. He was awkwardly gracious, and they were overawed to meet the quintessential professor.

Posted Monday January 26, 2015 by AACU In liberal education nation

On the last day of AAC&U's Centennial Meeting, one of my colleagues on the ACAD board (American Conference of Academic Deans) told me that someone was joking about creating an AAC&U Bingo game. You know how these things work. Every time someone says a certain phrase printed on your bingo card, you mark the card until you get to yell "bingo!" Our students could (and certainly do) organize similar games around professors’ pet phrases, only theirs are more likely to involve tequila shots. The evening plenary version for AAC&U would involve, perhaps, sips of wine.

Imagine that every time a speaker said “transformative” or “learning outcomes” or “student-centered” or “global citizens,” the players in the room marked their cards and nipped their wine. If you get bingo, you win a bottle.

While the innovative (bingo!) AAC&U Bingo proposal was no doubt a harmless joke, its lightheartedness veils a cynical yet accurate observation. I will admit that few things could be as much fun or as engaging (bingo!) as a room full of tipsy academic leaders (bingo!), but what does it say about our beloved organization that its rhetoric is so predictable, so repetitive? Does it suggest just the opposite of what AAC&U preaches about good teaching practices (bingo!) and avoiding lecturing and rote memorization? Repetition saps words of their impact (bingo!), even their very meaning. They become cant phrases and jargon, and their deployment suggests a failure of creativity (bingo!) and imagination, or worse, a mindless insincerity.

But let's step back a bit for a fuller and more generous assessment (bingo!). Frankly, the only reason we can all play the game is because we are such dedicated attendees of AAC&U meetings. We are voracious consumers of AAC&U publications. We are indefatigable participants in AAC&U workshops. In short, the words and phrases we hear at AAC&U are familiar because they are woven into the principles (bingo!) that guide AAC&U and that guide many, even most of us, to be more reflexive (bingo!) and intentional (bingo!) educators. The very fact that you are reading this blog suggests that you are a devotee of AAC&U or are, at the least, profoundly AAC&U-curious.

And, therein lies the positive outcome (bingo!) of AAC&U Bingo. The phrases that form the basis of the game also form our common language, a language we hope to induce the academic and wider world to respect, a language we hope will inform the practice (bingo!) of liberal learning (bingo!) well into the future.

At the closing plenary, Brian Murphy of De Anza College (one of the four excellent speakers tapped to fill in for the ailing Freeman Hrabowski) stated that the goal of his ad hoc panel was to have the very large audience leave the packed room and return to our campuses to convey and commend AAC&U’s agenda to our colleagues. While he earned a chuckle for his humorous delivery of the line, he was quite sincere. Many of us, maybe most, could easily fill our AAC&U Bingo cards again and again, and that is a good thing—maybe even a wonderful thing.

We know the principles (bingo!) and agenda of AAC&U, and we have pretty good ideas for implementing (bingo!) them. That is our imperative: to move words into action. Bingo!