Lift Yourself from a Rut

When I first heard the theme for this conference, it seemed to me to suggest commencement rhetoric: “Excellence in Learning.” But perhaps the exhortation suggested in that theme will be transmuted into some kind of motivation (with some difficulty—possibly a bit of academic alchemy) that may be beyond a mundane conference. I am kept from a rather comfortable “cop-out” by reflecting, English-teacher-like, on the root meanings of the words we are using: “Excellence in Learning.” If we consider these words’ basic meaning, we can legitimately translate them as “Lift yourself from a rut.” Now, that is a variation on a theme that tweaks my complacency. For a moment or so I would like to reflect about that.

Ruts are not always acknowledged, and they are not even uniformly disparaged. After all, in one sense, a rut seems to be the preferred way. But even when we recognize that we are in a rut and desire to lift ourselves out, the walls may be surprisingly hard to climb. However, we pay a price if we do not climb out of our ruts: we could end up with that intellectual compromise in which we are willing to be a copy rather than the original, willing to prize routine more than inspiration, or willing to be tyrannized by past achievement.

Having worked in administration, I recognize that administrators are more given to ruts—popularly known as “procedures”—than most people. For that reason, I try never to forget that a procedure is rarely a principle. And I hope that the next time I am tempted to justify a standardized method by arguing that it has always succeeded in taking me where I wanted to go, someone will help me evaluate the destination instead of allowing me to defend the road I take. I can anticipate someone questioning the method and perhaps even suggesting that there may be a more scenic route. In such cases, however, I can sometimes turn the questioning off by simply saying: “No, there is no better way.” But someone who asks why I want to reach that particular destination presents a much deeper question. That question makes me reflect a little because the person is not questioning my means—which I can usually defend to my satisfaction—but my ends. And if my ends are trivial, the means make little difference. Consider, for example, that the “straight and narrow way” takes on its significance because the end is nothing less than salvation.

While the “straight and narrow way” leads to a transcendent end, most of the ruts in which we choose to indulge ourselves do not. Our problem is a willingness to be a copy, to take a Xerox approach. Now, we do nothing wrong by copying that which is excellent, but unless we make a unique contribution, we are going to function within our university responsibilities at something less than our expectation. We all have our own little song to sing, and we cannot be coerced by the thought that “I guess I have to join the chorus.” Of course, we do need to teach certain principles. We need to be careful, however, that in focusing on these elements, these basic ideas, that we do not simply echo what has been said before. I remember a student saying to me (and his comment was casual, but it was devastating): “Brother Thomas, I really don’t remember too much about the class, but I remember everything you said that was truly yours.” He remembered best some of the incidental anecdotes. I have thought since then how important it is that those things I choose to make mine, and to give possibly a unique impress somehow, be significant, that my end somehow find its appropriate means.

Now, a nice check is available to determine our unique contribution’s significance: publish it. Let colleagues view it, both on campus and off. A kind of confidence is born from such review that is immensely reassuring in the teaching process. I remember walking through the Metropolitan Museum of Art and seeing some young painters playing the sedulous ape to Rembrandt. Oh, the draftsmanship was excellent, but I came away with an appreciation of the difference between an artist and an artisan that I had not always recognized. That copy, the rut, the well-established rut, can be a snare and a delusion. We must not assume other people’s anxieties by following their paths, because we must work out our own salvation, a secular one as well as a sacred one.

Let me say a word about routine, because that was the second temptation I mentioned. I am not here to make wholesale denigration of routine. An obvious level exists at which efficient iteration of something is quite important, even necessary. But only in a computer program have I seen some really exciting manifestations of role manipulation. I am afraid that too often we have echoed that famous Civil War general who said he would fight the war out on the same lines if it took all summer.¹ History records he had a pretty difficult winter.

Our feeling for routine may be reinforced by some praise we have heard of good habits, as though free agency were some kind of a Pavlovian captive. Habits are not created, and it seems to me that of all the virtues we talk about casually, consistency is probably the most overpraised. Most of us remember Emerson’s line about a foolish consistency being the hobgoblin of little minds. The trouble is that my own consistencies never appear foolish, just those of my neighbor. Consistency, in other words, is usually an appeal to our insecurities. Routine is often a rather pious refuge. Great teachers gloriously offend against the strictures of the commonplace, but I would hope that we have no trouble discriminating between inspired questioning and mindless rebellion. If so, we had better settle for routine.

I recall a teacher I had in a beginning German class, a very attractive young woman, who was determined that we not spend our time in routine, rote memorization. She got us involved in conversations very quickly. The conversations would have questions such as “Would you like to kiss me?” I started off by thinking, “I’ll answer nein to anything she says.” That was about the only word I knew. But my strategy failed because if I said no, she would ask the next question, “Don’t you think I’m attractive?” I soon realized that the neins were not helping me much. But if I said ja, then she would say, “What will my husband think?” You know, in sheer terror I learned a lot of German vocabulary. I remember her with great respect. She was doing something unique. I was a shy boy and I think she knew it, but she demonstrated to me that what I had assumed would be a pretty mechanical business was not mechanical at all.

Now, may I mention one last point that seems possibly the most subtle temptation of those I have mentioned. I had a rather famous teacher who had written a notable article on the Elgin marbles. This achievement turned up often in his lectures, a fact that was at first amusing and finally depressing. He had some ingenuity at working it into his lectures, and we began monitoring him to see how much time he would need during each lecture before referring to it. He was tyrannized by his own reputation. That was all he had. He was not a copy of other men’s minds, and he was not caught by an abstraction, such as consistency; but he was jailed by his own achievement—afraid to go beyond it—possibly feeling that he could not quite match it again. And he got in a rut of his own making. He became a species of flawed promise, never quite reaching again what he had been—not an ancestor, but a descendant of his own work.

In my own experience as a teacher, I tried several ways to avoid falling into ruts; the most successful was throwing my notes away after each semester. Sometimes that was rather hard to do. I had worked on them very carefully. Throwing my notes away did not keep me from using the same examples in a succeeding semester, but I had to think about those examples again. As a result, the slightly different person I was had to reckon once more with the material I was trying to use so that I would not become, in some sense, a captive of my own past. Most of us perhaps can recognize the need to climb out of some our ruts, whether self-imposed or those imposed upon us. But we must want to free ourselves from our ruts, and finding that desire may be difficult.

If we recognize the need and love what we are doing (but maybe not what we are currently accomplishing), if we love the possibilities of our present position, then we have two ingredients that we need for excellence in learning. Those ingredients, love and need, will help us lift ourselves from the rut. Some lines at the end of a poem by Robert Frost sum up our practical possibilities.

Only where the love and need are one,
And the work is play for mortal stakes,
Is the deed ever really done
For Heaven and the future’s sakes.²