Burden of Knowledge

                                                                                             

Fruits hanging from the Tree of Life

     A friend of mine, a master at plumbing, once asked my opinion about a particular issue in education. It was a complicated question, and I needed to provide some historical information, context. When I finished answering, he said something like, “Man, I wish I knew all the stuff you do.” 

      I responded, “I’ve been teaching for twenty years. I know education like you know construction. Hell, I wish I knew plumbing like you do,” and I wasn’t joking. 

     The encounter got me to thinking about "education", and the pursuit and dissemination of “knowledge,” the essence of a good educator. The classroom is our place of business. Teaching is a craft, plain and simple, and just like any other craft, to be masterful, we must work at it, which means hours and years of training, and even then, there's always more to learn. 

     Teachers are lifelong students, always developing our skills, honing our craft, the subject matter, often, secondary, maybe, even, irrelevant, as legendary San Francisco defense attorney Tony Serra says of the law, "Whether our clients did it or is irrelevant. We are building an ideological castle based on precedent and symbolic justice." Think about that one a minute. I feel it's the same with education. We're teaching students to think even more than learn about a particular subject. After all, it's been shown most students forget 90% of what they learned a week after their last class.

     Whether someone operates a cash register, directs a P.R. firm, runs a business, designs buildings, or works with his or her hands, to be good, it takes practice, to be masterful it takes commitment. Of course, the idea of knowledge, as a profession, is often abstract, dealing with ideas and theories, our tools – words. 

     As a kid growing up Mexican in a working-class community, I had a lot of catching up to do when I decided I wanted to be teacher. I'd never been a good student, nor can I say I even enjoyed school. Attending Catholic school helped, though I didn't realize it at the time. Our teachers, nuns and brothers, dedicated their lives to teaching. They referred to their work as a vocation. They passed the idea down to us, students, that a profession wasn't simply a career or a job but a "vocation," as if anointed by the divine, something to be taken seriously. 

     Of course, one of their objectives was for us to enter the religious life, which wasn’t likely for L.A. suburban kids in the 1950s and ‘60s -- Baby-Boomers, but they did their jobs well. One of the first lessons we learned was the pursuit of “knowledge,” our primary source, the Bible, of course. It’s powerful when you teach children they were born in the “image and likeness” of God, like Adam, the first creation, a being, alone, in a beautiful garden. 

     Then, as we read, Eve, the woman was created of man’s rib, making “her,” logically, a second-class citizen in Eden. Of course, we gobbled up the narrative. It was a cool story, with all the elements of storytelling, drama, suspense, sex, a beginning and an end, the alpha and omega. and it was our story, about how we all got here and who we were. That’s some strong stuff, and we hadn't even gotten to the tree, yet. “And out of the ground the Lord God made to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food, the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.” 

     There it is – “knowledge” but connected with “good and evil.” So, is knowledge one or the other, or is it both? Did that mean “knowledge” was something to avoid? Yet weren’t our teachers telling us to study, earn good grades, and learn how to think? How was it then when we got home and questioned something, our parents, or an adult, would say, “Don’t get smart with me,” or "why do you ask so many questions."

     Maybe “knowledge” could also get us into trouble, like when God warns the young Adam and Eve, “…till [the garden] and keep it… you may freely eat of every tree of the garden; but of the tree of knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die.” 

     That’s a heavy message to lay on a kid, but what does it mean? I’m not sure how “apples” got a bad rap. There is nothing in the story about an apple tree. So, the story goes, the devil masquerading as a serpent, convinces Eve if she eats from the tree, her “eyes will be opened,” and she will be like God, “knowing good and evil.” 

     We all know what happened, they ate, their eyes were opened, and they knew they were naked. Message: Adam is weak for doing what the temptress, Eve, tells him. Message: blame it on Eve, the female, or does Eve, and femininity, get the short end of the story, blamed for man’s weakness. How much does a story like this resonate in a culture. Consider, women didn’t get the right to vote until 1920. They couldn’t even open credit lines or have credit cards until 1974. Men have always held the majority of seats in legislatures, both state and federal, and we still haven't had a woman president. Maybe the bible stories take hold of a culture more than we realize. 

     And how about the impact of a story like this on snakes? Since the devil was disguised as a serpent, seems, in Western culture, snakes are the most hated in the animal kingdom. I read about a study where a group of graduate students were studying people's reactions to snakes. The class put a rubber snake out on a desolate Arizona highway. The students hid behind bushes and observed. Every car that passed by ran over the snake. One driver was so indignant, he ran over the snake, backed up, and ran over it again, just to make sure, I guess. 

     Next, the class put a rubber turtle on the road, and nobody hit it. One driver nearly crashed trying to avoid the turtle. Now, someone might argue that some snakes are poisonous and dangerous, but so are other animals. Why the snake? Is there power to biblical prophecy? When Adam and Even ate from the tree of knowledge, “God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from which he was taken. He drove out the man….” Pissed off because you have to wake up every morning and go to work, to toil, blame it on Adam and Eve? 

     Is the story literal, some people think so. Or is it a metaphor, a parable about the first two humans on earth who were punished for not following their creator’s will? Is it telling us that we should obey our elders, our teachers, the police, our "betters"? Is there another lesson, not only about disobedience to the king but about the nature of knowledge? If we educate ourselves and learn more than our elders, our teachers, the king, it might get us into trouble. After all, it’s no accident God named it the tree of knowledge. and he warned Adam and Eve not to eat or “…their eyes are opened.” 

     Does God, or whomever wrote Genesis, not want our eyes opened? Am I hearing echoes of Florida’s governor Ron DeSantis warning us not to be “woke,” to not eat from trees (or books) of knowledge? Or is the story more complex, a warning about the pursuit of knowledge? The vehicle most cultures use to acquire and spread knowledge is education, and one way to educate children is to tell stories. I even heard a lawyer once say, something like, the best lawyers aren't those with the best evidence but those who tell the best story. 

     I also wonder why so many people in society call teachers “liberal.” I was thirty-years in education, community college, in the liberal arts, language and literature, and I found many of my colleagues anything but liberal. In fact, education itself may be one of the most conservative occupations, especially in "languages." Educators evade change. It takes nearly an act of God to get an education department to change course. Sometimes, I think people don't understand the word "liberal," as it applies to education.

      Historically, the liberal arts or the word "liberal" didn’t have anything to do with politics, progressive or conservative. From Pythagoras, Socrates and the Greek’s “enkuklios paideia” to the Latin, “artes liberales,” meant that a certain field of study, the liberal arts, the Trivium, would make for a “well-rounded student,” or it would “liberate the mind.” No wonder the Greeks and the Romans took their stories of gods and turned them into lessons to educate their citizens, just like the Jews and Christians with the Bible. 

     Usually, when I hear people say teachers are so "liberal," I think, no, it's not that we're liberal. It's that the nature of our work forces us to study subjects in more detail, to dig deeper, to look for answers in the deep recesses of a library, where other don't go, not unlike a plumber who can't find the clogged drain and needs to search deeper, farther into the line, which not only takes work but "know-how." So, our answers to any problem will always contain "context."

     What I find today is people want a "yes" or "no", "right" or "wrong" answer to their questions, like why are so many immigrants invading our border? Should we support Ukraine over Russia? Who was more brutal, the British, the French, or the Germans, Fidel and Ho Chi Minh, Saudi Arbia or Iran, Iraq or Kuwait? Is communism or capitalism better? Democrat or Republican? Trump or Biden, on and on? 

     There is always “context,” which frustrates people. They don’t want context. They want an answer that affirms their position, usually political. If you don’t agree with them, or you provide context, you are anti-something or other. In 1940s Germany they burned books and killed teachers, same in Cambodia, and Latin America, during the dirty wars. Why? I think -- too much context.

     That’s what I call the "burden of knowledge," knowing too much, or knowing what people don't wnt to hear, maybe, what Genesis intended. That once Adam and Eve ate from the tree of knowledge and their eyes were opened, they’d have to figure things out, consider their nakedness, their labor, the nature of good and evil, cursed by knowledge. like Pandora’s Box, which I know many people haven’t read, but they do know what story means. Open the box and who knows what terrors you might release, or steal fire (light) from the gods, enlighten and warm humanity, but find yourself pushing a rock up a mountain for eternity. The great classical poet, Alexander Pope warned, “Too much knowledge can be a dangerous thing.” 

     So, since I taught the literature of Mexico and Latin America, and studied the cultures, and someone asks me about uncontrolled immigration from Latin America, my mind doesn’t conjure up an image of masses at the border. My mind goes back to particular facts, incidents, and events, like U.S. and European colonialism, policies that exploited Latin America from 1520s to the present, policies that affected the different migrations of people from the south to the north, including the ones that affected my own grandparents.  

     Now, I’m not saying my conclusions are right, but I am saying there are many factors to consider when answering complex questions like immigration, war and peace, and poverty and wealth, whether people are savages and animals or reasons for animalistic behavior? 

     The acquisition of knowledge, like Adam and Eve eating from the "tree of life," must consider both good and evil, not one or the other. It’s difficult because we’re humans, carrying our own prejudices, likes and dislikes. So, like Prometheus, for teachers, and for me, opening a book or listening to someone’s observations, or reading an article, or witnessing an event is like putting fire in our hands. Our vocation tells us to share it, even if it upset the gods, knowing we might be doomed to push a rock up a hill for eternity or be chased out of the most perfect garden ever created.