The following is a series of responses to questions posed by Mia Funk at The Creative Process project in Paris, France. Mia and I have been working collaboratively over the past two years. I serve as faculty adviser for our high school’s Creative Writing Club; my students submit their work to Mia, who publishes their writing in the Young Writers: Pure Imagination section of her website and traveling exhibition, which features over 100 Leading Authors in the world today, as well as creative works by contributors from over countries and testimonials from teachers about the art of their craft. Teaching is indeed primarily an art, the vigorous attempts in U.S. graduate schools to frame it as a science notwithstanding; the most sophisticated and clever “strategies” can never ensure genuine student engagement; only the development of a viable relationship – a bond of trust and mutual regard and respect – between the classroom teacher and individual students can accomplish that.
–VINCENT WALSH
THE CREATIVE PROCESS
When did you realize you wanted to become a teacher? Were you always interested in helping people? Are your parents teachers?
VINCENT WALSH
I never planned on being a teacher as I was growing up, or even after I entered college. My mother was a homemaker/housekeeper; my father worked as a sales trainer for Big Pharma; I never considered his a teaching position, although looking back now I suppose it was in its own way. I did want to focus on a career where I would be helping people; I thought at first that I wanted to be a medical doctor. During my second year of pre-med, however, I realized that all the science and technology involved was not for me, since I had no real aptitude for it, so I switched majors to philosophy, and then, when the world of abstractions became too taxing, I changed my major to English, thinking I would become a successful writer of high quality literature, a famous novelist like my lodestar, William Faulkner. Teaching had to have been on my mind on some level, however, for I entered the doctoral program at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill on a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship in the fall1969; after the Kent State killings on May 4, 1970, I joined with colleagues in organizing a student strike at UNC, in solidarity with college and graduate students all over the country. Happy to say, our strike was successful, and remained completely peaceful. That summer I traveled all around the country, meeting with various political activists, looking for purpose and direction; I decided to model my life after George Orwell, who insisted that the best writing derives from lived experience. So I took jobs as a cab driver in New York City, then a manual laborer on construction crews in two states, a dish washer/bus boy/waiter/manager at a small restaurant in Chapel Hill, a school bus driver in Connecticut, as well as a third shift factory worker, before finally taking a position as a medical writer for pharmaceutical companies. I made a lot of money in this last position but quit after two years when I realized that these pharmaceutical companies were using peasants throughout the Third World as guinea pigs to test their products for side effects. In 1976, desperate to find work to support myself, I applied for a full-time position as a grade eight and nine English teacher in an elite private school. On the very first day of classes, I realized that I loved teaching; I suddenly felt that I was born to teach. Moving from medical writing to teaching involved a 90% pay cut, but I never looked back.
THE CREATIVE PROCESS
What are some of the most rewarding things about teaching? Do you stay in touch with your students?
WALSH
I still hear fairly often from former students via postings on Facebook as well as occasional emails. It was beyond gratifying in 2013 to see messages from students that I taught in the Bronx back in 1983, citing me as their favorite English teacher ever. It feels good to know I’ve had a positive impact on young people’s lives, especially because the current younger generation faces challenges far more daunting and dangerous than any previous human generation has ever had to confront; the continued survival of our species is literally at stake due to the severe twin threats of climate catastrophe and nuclear war. This burden of the younger generation is only made more onerous by the fact that major media companies in the West are doing all they can to keep young people misinformed about the grave dangers we all face in these deeply troubling times, because presenting an accurate picture of world affairs might interfere with corporate profits. We condemn pagan cultures for practicing human sacrifice, yet we sacrifice millions of human beings on the altar of corporate profits in these so-called “modern” and “enlightened” times. Allen Ginsburg addressed his epic poem “Howl” to the Babylonian idol Moloch for good reason.
THE CREATIVE PROCESS
Describe an experience which made all the hard work worthwhile.
WALSH
Working in the Bronx from 1981 through 1983 marked my first experience with inner-city teaching, which is vastly different from teaching in elite private schools and public schools in suburbia. One short anecdote should serve to illustrate my meaning. Early in the fall semester of 1981, only weeks into my role as an inner-city teacher, an Hispanic student named Jessica asked to speak with me after dismissal; she told me her African American boyfriend had run afoul of a local gang, and had been forced to move to Miami to get clear of the trouble. Jessica and David, both 17 years-old, were very much in love; David had promised Jessica he would come back home to her as soon as possible. Unfortunately, members of the gang that was after David began stalking Jessica, with the aim of kidnapping her to force David’s return to NYC. Jessica’s parents did not return home from their day jobs until 5 p.m. every evening, so Jessica was fearful of going home before then. So I stayed after school every day for the rest of the school year in order to drive Jessica home at 5; each time I dropped her off in front of her apartment complex, she warned me to make sure all my car doors remained locked and to pull away from the curb immediately after she exited the car and raced for her front door. Jessica was worried that gang members might be lurking nearby; she warned me that I could be shot if I dallied even for a couple of extra seconds. Jessica miraculously escaped several kidnapping attempts between October and June. Then, on the Sunday afternoon prior to final exam week at the end of the spring semester, I received a message from Jessica; David had been ambushed and killed in Miami.
I’ve always thought of Jessica and David’s tragic love story as a twentieth century, an inner-city version of Romeo and Juliet.
THE CREATIVE PROCESS
What are some things you wished you had known as teacher starting out?
WALSH
I wish I had realized how much resistance I would have to face as a teacher who intuitively believes in students’ rights and who espouses student-centered, reciprocal learning as the optimal educational experience. I was young and idealistic when I first entered the classroom; I had been active in the Civil Rights and anti-war movements while in college during the sixties and felt closely connected to the hippie revolution. I did not realize how brutal and destructive the harsh reactions to the liberating tendencies of the sixties would become. Because I was hopeful and naïve, I failed to guard adequately against the relentless criticism and insidious slander from authoritarian colleagues who created obstacles at every step of the way. The drama escalated to absurd extremes from time to time, as when my Reading Department Chairperson would crouch outside my classroom door listening to me teach through the keyhole, and then run to the Headmaster every time I gave an incorrect answer to a student’s atypical grammar question. Sounds ridiculous, yet petty harassment like this occurred on a regular basis.
THE CREATIVE PROCESS
Which teachers, parents, colleagues have been important to you and your evolution as a teacher? How did their example or advice impact you and the kind of teacher you would become? What books were important to you growing up or to your formation as a teacher? And which books/creative works do you recommend to your students?
WALSH
Two teachers had a major influence on the teacher I am (and strive to be) today. The first was an English professor at Fordham in the sixties, Dr. Erwin Geissman. Dr. Geissman was almost completely blind, wore dark green glasses, had a hair-lip and broken front teeth; when he paced in front of the classroom he sometimes reminded me of Quasimodo. Yet Dr. Geissman was masterful and emanated pure love for literature. Students from colleges and universities all over New York City would audit his courses just to hear him speak, so the room was always filled to capacity. He would walk in and step in front carrying nothing but a copy of the text we were working on – Faulkner’s Absalom or Joyce’s Ulysses, for example – and then proceed to talk for two or three straight hours, leaving his student audience totally mesmerized, utterly edified. Geissman’s lectures flowed smoothly and eloquently, like the cadence of the magical prose we were reading, evaluating, and celebrating. He was known for reciting page after page of Ulysses from memory. What I learned from Dr. Geissman is that to teach literature effectively one must live it, not simply analyze it. Literature resides in the realm of the ineffable; it combines intellect and intuition into felt perception, which offers a profound if tentative grasp of the reality of our daily experience. It is not enough to read and discuss literature; one must learn to love it, to become it.
The second teacher who has had a profound influence on my teaching is Noam Chomsky. I began corresponding with him in 1994, first by postal letters and eventually via email, and we have been friends ever since. The fact that Noam takes time out of his very demanding schedule to answer individual inquiries like mine continues to amaze me; I’ve met with him several times at talks he’s given and also in his office at MIT. There is so much I could say about this truly wonderful man, but for the sake of brevity, I’ll point to just two major influences he has had on my life as a teacher and mentor, even though I have never formally been registered as a student in any of the courses he has taught. Reading Noam’s books and listening to his lectures provides me with a comprehensive picture of the world; Noam presents an intellectual paradigm which corresponds to and explains what I see in the news every day, as well as what I am learning about contemporary international affairs and global events. Previous to encountering Noam’s comprehensive macrocosmic perspective, I felt hopelessly confused by the news I was gleaning from newspapers and media outlets. Noam’s vision enables one to make coherent sense of the world; very few thinkers or public intellectuals provide a comprehensive intellectual paradigm that can accomplish this. I have often regarded Noam’s lectures as “state of the world” addresses; even now, at age 90, his grasp of and understanding of global events remains unparalleled.
Noam’s second impact on my life has been more personal. I was raised under circumstances of severe child abuse; I never learned what it means to have loving, supportive parents – my early experience was marked by constant (as well as extreme) verbal and physical violence. Over the past twenty-four years, Noam’s consistent kindness and encouragement has been a powerful healing influence. Noam has never once failed to answer my letters and emails; his presence in my life has been continuous – we remain in steady contact. Noam has been the father that I never had before, as well as a lodestar that guides my work and my life. People claim that Noam is an atheist. I’m skeptical, since his answer when asked about this usually entails something like: “First, explain what it is you mean by the term God, and then I’ll tell you whether I accept that or not.” Sounds reasonable enough to me. In any case, Noam is surely an outstanding exemplar of what it means to be a humanitarian; he is without doubt the most Christ-like person I’ve ever encountered. His commitment to social justice and his love for people – all the peoples of the world – inspires and informs every aspect of his remarkable life’s work.
THE CREATIVE PROCESS
Do you think telling stories, engaging students’ imaginations is an important part of the learning process? What do you feel makes your approach to teaching a little different than what educators might find in books on pedagogy?
WALSH
I tell my students stories frequently; it helps them get to know me better, and helps me build relationships with them, both as individuals and as a group. When I tell stories in class, I try to find anecdotes that are interesting, poignant and/or amusing, as well as unusual; these stories make it clear to students that I’m an ordinary person, just like they are. I’m not another faceless representative of “the system,” what Roger Waters would call “just another brick in the wall.” The Dominican novelist Julia Alvarez, whose work in general does not impress me because of her neoliberal complacency, does provide one keen insight that is worth quoting in this context: “the importance of stories, how after food and clothing and shelter, stories is how we take care of each other” (Yo! page 290). Alvarez’s aphorism makes profound sense; I want to share my stories with students, and I encourage them to share theirs with me; this is how we share (and celebrate) our humanity. This is how “we take care of each other.”
THE CREATIVE PROCESS
Besides teaching, what other art forms and disciplines interest you? Do you write creative fiction, make visual, music, film…? What makes that discipline distinct from all other art forms?
WALSH
Apart from love for literature and immersion in issues involving social justice and human rights, music is the passion that permeates and informs my daily existence, chiefly the poetry and melodies of classic rock. Every night before retiring I sit at the keyboard and perform covers of songs by Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Jackson Browne, Leonard Cohen, Bruce Springsteen, Eric Clapton, and many others. Currently, I am combining that practice with intense interest in the amazing world of hip-hop, into which I am gaining entry through a process of reciprocal learning with my inner-city students, who are the experts in this area, while I am clearly only a neophyte. Music is the universal language, emanating from a place inside us that is deeper than verbal language; I somehow feel the meaning of lyrics that I do not comprehend or understand. In fact, verbal language is really a form of music, for to be effective and compelling language must include the same essential qualities that characterize inspiring music: cadence and rhythm, rhyme, voice, tone, imagery, and so on. Thus, music connects all human hearts everywhere.
I find this phenomenon particularly interesting and significant because it resonates with basic scientific facts: that all of us derive from a single small breeding group in East Africa approximately 50 to 75,000 years go, which means all human beings, despite superficial differences in skin color and facial features, share the same DNA; thus, we are all truly members of a single global human family. There is also emerging evidence that all human beings share the same basic understanding of the difference between right and wrong – in effect, we share a Universal Moral Grammar comparable to our Universal Grammar for language acquisition. Recognition of these facts can provide the basis for a total transformation in how we organize our societies and the global economy: away from an overemphasis on competition, and the false philosophy of social Darwinism, and more in the direction of collaboration and cooperation among peoples for the well-being of all concerned. Reestablishing this crucial balance will enable us to address the dysfunctional disparity between the rich and poor, readjust our relationship with the natural world, so that it is based on harmony and sustainability rather than ruthless exploitation, and establish international harmony and enduring world peace. John Lennon expressed this idea beautifully in his timeless anthem “Imagine”: “Imagine all the people sharing all the earth – you may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one. I hope someday you’ll join us, and the world will live as one.”
THE CREATIVE PROCESS
What is your advice for young teachers and students?
WALSH
My advice to aspiring teachers is to remember that knowledge unfolds from within, so it is essential for learning to become a reciprocal process, an interactive engagement where each person involved brings insight to the ongoing conversation. Students already have expert knowledge of their own that needs to be valued and taken into account in the educational process. The classroom culture must be based on mutual respect, with the explicit understanding that the teacher’s role is that of an expert facilitator who encourages and supports students’ efforts to succeed. The teacher does not have all the answers; instead, truth emerges through a process of collective inquiry that involves full participation and steady contributions from everyone in the room, teacher as well as students. Above all, the teacher should not presume the right to act as the gatekeeper of knowledge, setting a bar at a certain level and insisting that students meet that mark in order to satisfy arbitrarily imposed norms and standards. Students should be free to pursue their unique intellectual interests, and to select their own topics for scholarly research and writing academic papers. Younger students benefit much more from being permitted to write open topic essays than they do from responding to assigned teacher prompts. The goal in every class should be for every student to pass. I recommend arranging the seats in a circle if at all possible, and that the teacher sits in the circle, on the same level as the students, as a participant in a collective learning process. When an adult stands over adolescents and children, the effect can be intimidating; the body language involved implies that knowledge is necessarily imposed by authority in a top-down fashion, which is antithetical to the way young people (all people, in fact) actually learn. I also strongly recommend that classroom management issues be dealt with according to the principles of Restorative Practices, an approach that carefully evaluates antecedents to misconduct, and addresses behavioral issues as teachable moments. What students learn in our classes about socio-emotional and character development, with the ultimate goal of achieving self-regulation and self-management, is just as important as what they learn about subject content.
Having and exercising a healthy sense of humor is very important in working with children and adolescents; it is essential, however, to avoid cynical, satirical comments, which only serve to wound, antagonize, and alienate. Humor has two faces: we can laugh with, or we can laugh at. The latter fragments a learning community (which is what we want our classroom to become), and disrupts the collaboration and cooperation that are intrinsic to growth in human knowledge and understanding. A positive form of humor, which encourages everyone to enjoy the funny side of a situation, can go a long way toward dispelling tension and diffusing mistrust, reinforcing and strengthening positive relationships between the teacher and individual students.
I strongly recommend that prospective teachers who plan to teach in the inner-city learn as much as they can about the socio-economic and cultural norms and traditions of the community they intend to serve. It is harmful for teachers to come into the inner-city with a “missionary” attitude, convinced that their task is to uplift and enlighten the backward and ignorant. Inner-city students typically manifest a verbal facility that is quite remarkable, far beyond my capacity to match or replicate; they memorize endless lines from rap lyrics and popular songs, which they recite spontaneously and joyfully together in a manner that is astonishing to behold. Moreover, many of them can improvise seemingly endless lines and rhymes on the spur of moment, a skill I find impossible to imitate. A new teacher in an inner-city school will immediately notice differences in hair styles, as well as manners of talking, walking, and interacting that are quite distinct from what one typically observes in suburban schools, where demographics tend to be increasingly Caucasian, reflecting the dominant culture. Regarded closely, one soon realizes that these cultural differences are truly creative and distinctive, suggesting an inner vitality that is wonderfully refreshing and invigorating. It is no wonder that Caucasian students from suburban schools typically mimic inner-city styles and fashions in clothing, music, and often even in speech. And it is hardly an accident that hip-hop is now the predominant art form in the United States, as well as all across the world.
THE CREATIVE PROCESS
What books would you recommend to new teachers?
WALSH
To teach well and effectively in the inner-city, one must understand the traumatic impacts of poverty; I highly recommend Eric Jensen’s Teaching with Poverty in Mind as a core text for inner-city teacher preparation. One must also think in terms of culturally relevant pedagogy and culturally relevant curriculum. For insight into culturally relevant pedagogy, I can think of no better resource than Christopher Emdin’s For White Folks Who Teach in the Hood. With regard to culturally relevant curriculum, the selection of reading materials is especially important. Encouraging young people to read is a problem in all schools today because of the prevalence of smart phones, texting, social media, video gaming and so on. We adults tend to forget that our own reading practice typically involves engagement with highly interesting materials that are relevant to our daily concerns; adolescents are no different. When I invite my inner-city students to become involved with The Great Gatsby, I’m confronted with indifference and apathy, for they have no relevant experience, no ready way to place the text in context; they are being challenged to understand a social and cultural milieu for which they little, if any, background. In sharp contrast, when I present these same students with Richard Wright’s Black Boy, or Nigger by Dick Gregory, Piri Thomas’ Down These Mean Streets, Luis Rodriguez’s La Vida Loca: Always Running, Monster: Autobiography of an L.A. Gang Member by Senyika Shakur, or Claude Brown’s Manchild in the Promised Land, their response is immediate and compelling. Books like these arouse intense interest, stimulate lively discussions and debates, promote critical thinking as well as writing fluency, and awaken students’ desire to improve their reading fluency and reading comprehension skills. The lesson is clear: we must meet students where they are; we need to provide them with learning materials and lessons that are closely connected to their lived experience, and then gradually expand their awareness and knowledge of broader realms of their literary heritage, including texts like Gatsby. Reading fluency, reading comprehension, and critical thinking are survival skills; we must ensure that our students are acquiring these if we ever hope to see them become successful, fulfilled, happy adults who function productively in our society and contribute to the common good.
THE CREATIVE PROCESS
You're currently developing an educational initiative?
WALSH
I’m currently working on developing culturally relevant pedagogy and culturally relevant curriculum in collaboration with a small cadre of colleagues, African American and Hispanic educators who know much more about this field than I do. We’re focusing on encouraging students to become engaged with their own learning process by providing them with texts that reflect and connect to their lived experience. At the inner-city high school where I currently teach, only 38% of our students go on to college or university, so it makes little sense to emphasize academic argumentation and scholarly research with the majority of our students; these are not skills they will be called on to apply after they graduate from high school and seek entry into the job market. My main concern (and worry) for most of my students is that their existential alienation from an educational process that ignores or minimizes their aptitude, cultural background, and socio-economic status causes them to fail to develop job-ready skills; they will therefore end up at risk for becoming homeless, or for being inexorably drawn into illegal activities that suck them into the hopeless void of the school-to-prison pipeline. As Michelle Alexander documents so eloquently and convincingly in her landmark study The New Jim Crow, once minority adolescents become involved in the U.S. criminal justice system, even for misdemeanor offenses, they are likely to remain trapped in a pervasive system of human bondage for the rest of their lives. The racism and economic caste system in this country is a moral blight and an embarrassing disgrace, a scandal internationally; these are issues we must discuss openly and honestly with our students if we hope to rejuvenate our nation’s formal commitment to democracy and fundamental human rights.
THE CREATIVE PROCESS
What are your views on the future of communication and how technology is changing the way we communicate, read, interact with the world and our imaginations?
WALSH
Technology obviously has a huge impact on all our daily lives, for better as well as for worse. Properly and appropriately implemented, technology enhances the quality of our lives immeasurably in a wide variety of domains. Yet insofar as innovations in technology, which was originally developed through R&D funded by taxpayer dollars and then handed over to private companies for profit, remains primarily driven by the profit motive, it is increasingly likely to have harmful consequences on our lives. My chief concern in this regard is the claim made by so-called tech geniuses like Bill Gates and the co-founders of Google, namely, that all human knowledge is quantifiable, which is simply not true. The limitations of what our three dimensional brains can comprehend and understand in an infinite universe are actually quite narrowly constricted; beyond basic facts that have become painstakingly established over centuries in the hard sciences such as physics and chemistry, much of the rest of the reality we confront remains mysterious, ineffable, accessible only through speculation, conjecture, intuition, and imagination. Tech moguls want to believe in quantification because this concept obviously enhances their bottom line: the more their computers can do for us, the more computers these entrepreneurs can sell, adding to their endlessly voracious appetite for personal wealth, as well as for the political power that accompanies wealth in a neoliberal economic order.
There is no doubt in my mind that education is the key for preparing our younger generation to deal with the awesome challenges that are currently facing the human race – chief among them the imminent threats to continued human survival posed by nuclear holocaust and environmental catastrophe. Yet when one examines the effects that tech moguls like Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg exercise on educational systems throughout the world, especially in Africa, but also in the United States, one immediately perceives that these tech gurus’ insistence of the quantification of knowledge involves merely the preparation of young people to process data efficiently in whatever corporate niches they are able to access in a job market that is becoming increasingly skewed by disparities between the tiny, elite few who able to make a decent living, and the vast majority who are left to struggle just to make ends meet. Critical thinking clearly has no place in the educational system valorized by the likes of Gates and Zuckerberg, who expect students to perform as efficient cogs in the neoliberal economic machine. Yet critical thinking is the most important skill we can teach young people, not only for negotiating challenges and obstacles in their personal lives, but also for finding solutions to enormously complicated challenges such as healing our environment and establishing harmonious international relations on an enduring basis. We urgently need educators who are willing to confront accepted social and intellectual norms, who do not hesitate to ask difficult questions, who encourage students to thinking outside the box. We need teachers who see young people as far more than just potentially efficient cogs in a corporate machine, who encourage their students to take risks, to be creative, to open realms of exploration and discovery that have never been accessible to human beings before. This planet was once a paradise, yet we continue to abuse and degrade our beautiful home due to an economic system that privileges private acquisition, by means of violence and oppression, at the expense of the common good. This must change if we hope to enjoy a viable future.
THE CREATIVE PROCESS
What are your hopes/concerns for the future of literature?
WALSH
My view of contemporary literature reflects similar concerns. Literary artists can and should serve as the conscience of humanity, calling upon us all to constantly examine the quality of the decisions we make and the consequences they produce in our lives. I’ve always felt that literary artists – all artists, actually – should serve as “canaries in the coal mine” for the rest of humanity, warning and cautioning us when we approach danger, especially the kind of lethal danger we are facing today. The great poets, essayists, and novelists of our time should be directly addressing the threats to human survival embodied in nuclear weapons and global warming, as well as be excoriating us (as Dickens did) to address and correct the rampant injustices precipitated by extreme economic disparity, which is perhaps worse today than ever before in human history. Unfortunately, literary artists and literary scholars in the West have become thrall over the past half century to the false linguistic philosophy postulated by Derrida’s poststructuralism, a philosophy which inevitably leads to moral relativism, undermining core precepts of human rights, denying both Chomsky’s Universal Grammar and John Mikhail’s Universal Moral Grammar. Where there is no clear understanding of how language works (Derrida knew next to nothing about the science of linguistics, preferring theoretical speculation over the scientific method), there can be no definite way of determining what is real and what is not, not to mention what is morally acceptable and what is not. Thanks to the current preponderance of the philosophy of poststructuralism/postmodernism, the contemporary literary artist, conveniently, does not recognize any need to even examine, much less evaluate, the core existential and moral crises of our time, for he or she has become convinced that language is indeterminable and that morality is relative; when nothing can be said that conveys definitely discernible meaning, all that is left is the “playfulness” of words. I have found only one significant exception to this woeful trend among contemporary fiction writers in the West – Junot Diaz’s vivid fiction: his incisive short stories, and his remarkable novel, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, which I’ve written about in my doctoral dissertation (and posted on Academia.edu). Diaz confronts neoliberalism, neo-colonialism, and neo-imperialism head-on, and warns explicitly and insistently about the contemporary radical threats to ongoing human survival.
THE CREATIVE PROCESS
Considering the current state of the world, what are your hopes for our future on this planet? As we face various problems, do you think education should be at the center of a humanistic vision of our world? What do you hope your students take away from your classes?
WALSH
My hope for the future rests on a single simple notion: as conditions on our planet become increasingly desperate and intolerable, ordinary people all over the world will rise up in collective protest against the violence, oppression, and injustice, rejecting the insanity of predatory capitalism’s self-destructive trajectory. We see this beginning to happen all over the world today in the formation of massive grassroots movements in support of human rights, as well as socio-economic and environmental justice. My hope is that we can and will come together as one human family, and adopt universal, enforceable standards of human rights and economic and social justice. We will reestablish a harmonious, sustainable relationship with Nature, for which indigenous peoples will serve as our mentors and guides. We will establish lasting peace – not just the elimination of all nuclear weapons, but the rejection of war itself as a means for settling international disputes. We can build on the model of global governance that already exists in the United Nations and the United Nations Charter, a model that could prove entirely successful if we eliminate the potential for manipulation of UN principles and procedures by powerful states such as the U.S., which currently leads all other nations by a wide margin in the number of vetoes it has cast over Security Council resolutions during the past seventy years. My hope is that we will soon see the emergence of what Meher Baba refers to as “The New Humanity”: according to Meher Baba’s unique formulation, “humanity is now going through the agonizing trial of spiritual rebirth. Great forces of destruction are afoot and seem to be dominant at the moment, but constructive and creative forces that will redeem humanity are also being released through several channels. Although the working of these forces of light is chiefly silent, they are eventually bound to bring about those transformations that will make the further spiritual advance of humanity safe and steady.” (Discourses 3). It is my hope that every student who exits one of my classes will carry forward in the spirit of this hope, and take an active role in working toward its practical realization.
THE CREATIVE PROCESS
Thank you, Vincent Walsh, for everything you are doing in our inner-cities to celebrate literature, the importance of education, and to help your students achieve lives of meaning and value. We look forward to to continuing our collaboration and, once again, thank you for adding your voice to The Creative Process.
BRIEF BIOGRAPHY - VINCENT WALSH
If I were to describe my background and upbringing by means of a song, it would be John Lennon’s incisive critique of the capitalist system in “Working Class Hero.” I was born in 1946, in Council Bluffs, Iowa. My father eventually took a job with a pharmaceutical company, so we moved to the South Shore of Long Island when I was eight years-old, where I attended Catholic school. I learned firsthand about the violence and hypocrisy inherent in authoritarian systems at home and in the classroom, particularly the violence, hypocrisy, and abuse disguised and protected by clerical garb, and the prevailing dogmas about “sparing the rod.” I had no direct experience of racism in the whites-only suburban town where I grew up, so MLK’s march on Selma and the brutality of Bloody Sunday came as quite a shock during my sophomore year of college. Vietnam War protests and Civil Rights marches, combined with the liberating energies of the rock ‘n’ roll and hippie revolutions, quickly completed my estrangement from the status quo; I carry the same spirit of anti-authoritarianism and a radical critique of prevailing social norms into the classroom every day now, all these many years later, a spirit that resonates strongly with inner-city kids who deal with racism, economic injustice, and police brutality on a daily basis. The need for articulating and disseminating the spirit of rebellion against injustice has never been greater than it is today; if there is hope for humanity’s future, it will come from the younger generation. That realization is what gives purpose to my life, and provides my impetus for stepping into the classroom again every morning. Our children desperately need our honesty, they deserve the truth; we need the promise they embody for a brighter future for all of humanity, and for our beloved Mother Earth. We are highly unlikely to find another suitable home in this universe, and certainly never one that matches or even comes close to this terrestrial paradise.
