Ozik, on learning

From: Diane Hodges (dhodges@ceo.cudenver.edu)
Date: Wed Sep 05 2001 - 20:38:11 PDT


thanks for the prod mike - brevity is often too cryptic, eh?

Ozik's "The Cannibal Galaxy," (1984) is the story of Ephraim Brill. the
novel, like many of Ozik's fiction, accounts for a life, from youth to old
age - in his life, Brill is orphaned by the Nazi occupation, and sheltered
by Catholic nuns in a store room filled with the books of the former
priest - philosophy, poetry, theology, fictions, (there's a brilliant
parody quoted by Proust on the possibility of spying intelligence in the
eyes, and how - just as easily - we might espy intelligence in the nose,
which Ozik then makes use of throughout the novel, when introducing a new
character, i.e., describing the intelligence of their nose... )
Brill becomes enchanted with learning, books, ideas, - here, he is
inspired with the idea of the Dual Curriculum - European classics, with
the moral teachings of Hebrew scholarship and religious studies -
he ends up in university (Sorbonne, studying astronomy and working at an
observatory, on the brink of a major discovery, clinging to "ad astra" as
his motto for the value of learning - but he quits suddenly, anxious to
implement his curriculum.
he goes to America and starts his own school, based on the Dual
Curriculum,
- the novel is profoundly philosophical, and Brill is forced to confront
the contradiction of American education, where success is measured by
grades, not comprehension or originality,
his sense of achievement is ceaselessly measured by the grade-based
success of students who are able to answer questions that demand a
specific answer,
his skepticism of teachers who ask for analysis and more questions
culminates in his firing a teacher who prods for the story of ideas, and
eschews the "right answer" -
he is confronted, in his old age, with the contradiction when a student he
had perceived as slow-witted turns out to be a brilliant conceptual-artist
whose mother, a philosopher, had vexed and confused Brill throughout the
child's participation in his school.
the crisis, Brill's crisis, is at the end, when the girl, now
internationally revered as a genius, admits she remembers nothing of her
school years in midwestern America.
Brill is forced to realize that while his curriculum assumes greatness,
success in school is based not on originality or difference, but on
mediocrity, those who aspire to "get the right answer" and achieve good
marks, teacher praise, those students who cause no trouble but who learn
quickly what the teacher will reward, and can provide the response in
exchange for the reward.

there is much more depth to Brill, in terms of how his curriculum performs
a function of preserving his own losses (parents, siblings, his mentor,
Rabbi Pult, and so on);
and how the philosopher mother manages to mock his assumptions of
intelligence throughout her daughter's tenure at elementary school,
and so on.

 Brill's recognition is of mis-taking normalcy and mediocrity as values
that merely echo (and so affirm) his own losses, traumas, - and these have
been, in his exceptional life, always in the deceptive guise of
achievement, "ad astra," - his ability to escape Paris occurs when he
realizes the Nazis have taken his family, and he must be in the streets of
Paris as a "normal" person (not a Jew) - he slowly comes to confront the
contradiction of his own losses, desires, and deceptions;

but it is Ozik who portrays this in ways that reflect a particular (and
contradictory) value of American education.

a "good student in spite of learning" is exemplified in Brill's own son,
who excels at school, but who hasn't a glimmer of imagination or
creativity - he learns to be good at school, in spite of the heady content
that the Dual Curriculum might provide - indeed, being good at school
means dismissing the contradictions of learning and school, and surely we
all know what "being a good student" means for the elementary grades,
where school-as-culture is first inculcated into children's lives (or are
children's lives inculcated into school?) hm.

either way, a liberal curriculum does not address the deeper structures of
schools, and teachers who "love children" or "love students" but do not
identify themselves as someone who loves learning, - hmmmm.

diane

************************************************************************************
"Waves of hands, hesitations at street corners, someone dropping a
cigarette in a gutter - all are stories. But which is the true story? That
I do not know. Hence I keep my phrases hung like clothes in a cupboard,
waiting for someone to wear them. Thus waiting, thus speculating, making
this note and then another, I do not cling to life."
Virginia Woolf, The Waves, 1931.
                                                                          
     (...life clings to me...)
*************************************************************************************
diane celia hodges
university of british columbia, centre for the study of curriculum and
instruction
vancouver, bc
mailing address: 46 broadview avenue, montreal, qc, H9R 3Z2



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