Dialectic

The Little Green Blog: August 2006

Not to prolong this post too much, but I think the fantastic play "The History Boys" can make an interesting point here.

In the play, two teachers, Hector and Irwin, exhibit very different ideas of what makes for good scholarship. Hector is of the opinion that the only way to get something out of the boys of any value is to fill their heads with Auden and Housman and the like, and simply skim from the top of what will be a marvelous collection of quotations and memorized couplets. Irwin believes that all of that is rubbish and what is important is contrarian thinking, a sort of method without content that seeks mainly to surprise and provoke. (A very good article about all this is found here, at Slate.)

One might think that I am about to say that a little of both methods together could provide what is necessary for proper writing. But, in fact, neither method is suitable, I think, though Irwin's does find success in the play. Both strategies focus on self-expression: Hector encourages meaningless bacchanals of poetry-quoting and Irwin openly describes history as only a kind of "performance."

However, standing in opposition to each other, the two strategies give the boys an example of a dialectic, and one which cannot be resolved in a perfect synthesis. I think, essentially, that most students are incapable of dialectical thinking because they are unused to having more than one idea in their head at a time, mostly due to the fact that their reading is so shallow and they are familiar with very few ideas about any given topic. When one does not have more than one idea about a thing before one, how can one possibly say anything oneself—how can one find a space in which to speak when one cannot see the terrain?

Batteries do not run, I believe, when only one electrode is in contact with something else. Self-expression is just that--an effort at contact in only one direction. Self-expression is not self-directed; it is outwardly directed, but it draws on nothing further. And that is, I think, what makes writing so poor in so many cases

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