Ressentiment in Littleton
Adapted From
The Jasper Problem in a Postmodern Context
Rethinking Reductionism and Developing An Ecology of Education
[Ed. note: Jasper is the author's pet dog whose behavior in chasing balls is the central metaphor of this book. Jasper chases balls everywhere but under the sprinkler; when a ball rolls under the sprinkler, where Jasper would get wet if he retrieved the ball, Jasper starts looking for the ball in another place, as though ball and sprinkler were nonexistent. Modern educational practice parallels the behavior of Jasper by deliberately ignoring the obvious but inconvenient.]
Ressentiment, a little understood, researched, or even heard of, phenomenon, has powerful consequences in our school environments. Ressentiment means "free-floating resentment." It is similar to "free-floating anxiety," in that the feeling is free-floating because the sufferer doesn't know where to direct a response to the stress.
In Society's Children: A Study of Ressentiment in the Secondary School, published way back in 1967 but out-of-step with the temper of the times, the authors Carl Nordstom, Edgar Z. Friedenberg, and Hilary A. Gold, voiced their concerns:
... We seek to determine whether there might be an unrecognized process by which schools actually do something to students, and in the doing, seriously interfere with the development of what used to be called a strong and forceful character ... In our preliminary judgment ressentiment operated to stifle enthusiasm, to undermine fortitude, and to discourage the development of self-mastery; and to the degree that this is true we saw ressentiment as insidious when endured, difficult to fight, and stultifying in its consequences.
We also thought that this process was not only unrecognized, but, in a formal sense, unintended. And, to the degree that this is true, we felt that it should be brought to the attention of responsible persons.
Where is this ressentiment in American schools coming from? In essence, the authors identified two main sources:
The reductive perspective applied to a holistic endeavor produces procedures that are interactively ignorant and systemically disruptive. This causes and exacerbates friction.
Many of the practices of American schooling are not aligned with the values held dear to our democratic hearts. They discourage the exercise of initiative and ownership.
One advantage of Japanese education is that it is fundamentally about building character in their students. We, on the other hand, lack any kind of holistic focus, but instead, fixate on the fragmented, piecemeal acquisition of instructional outcomes. The systemic ramification of this difference in perspective is an educational system in Japan which encourages development of personal integrity while ours frequently adopts policies which tend to diminish it.
This is the root cause of ressentiment in American schools. Subjected to educational practices based upon scientific management, our students feel dissonance when their democratic hearts are forced to undergo authoritarian schooling. They face manipulative conditions. The institution in which they are expected to learn and mature does not trust them to either learn or mature, but instead trusts its methods of prediction and control.
If, as it is hoped in this book, we are reaching the end of the Jasper Problem, and are ready to address issues previously ignored by our reductionist educational practice, there will soon be knowledgeable people, able and willing to respond to the problem of ressentiment in our schools. Ressentiment will cease to be a low-grade systemic infection within our learning environments when we recognize and acknowledge its effects, the ways in which our approaches tend to ameliorate or exacerbate it, and what changes are necessary to eradicate it.
If teachers and administrators are to forge learning communities among themselves and their students, they must be willing to come to terms with the existence of ressentiment and its causes. Since ressentiment is a systemic disorder, generated by a pervasive atmosphere of manipulation, it can only be addressed successfully by a systemic approach. Can we develop the wisdom to effectively perceive and respond to these systemic puzzles, or will we continue to gulp spirits in a vain and futile effort to avoid a hangover?
Ressentiment in our schools is actually a healthy sign. Students in more totalitarian situations do not fight as intensely to maintain their individual integrity in the face of manipulative environments. They lack the political literacy to expect more respectful--less manipulative and less coercive--treatment.
Protected by the ideal of individual freedom and responsibility, American students feel ressentiment because, rightfully sensing that their personal integrity is being threatened, they resist surrendering control over their identities and potentials, rejecting, as best they can, an environment which perniciously diminishes them with a pervasive atmosphere of manipulative mechanisms.
An example of ressentiment in literature is Winston Smith in George Orwell's 1984. He fought to maintain his integrity, his responsibility for the shape and substance of his identity, against the overpowering engulfment of Big Brother. He did not understand where to direct his resentment and resistance, or how to go about his defense, but nonetheless struggled, blindly and ineffectively, until crushed.
Students in our schools are beginning to recognize how they are being immersed in atmospheres of manipulation and coercion without any say on their part in what happens to them. On occasions, academic Boston Tea Parties of sorts occur, like one in Torrance, California, in 1989. The Los Angeles Times reported:
A group of seniors at Torrance's academically rigorous West High School intentionally flunked the latest California Assessment Program test in an attempt to send a message to administrators who they believe place too much emphasis on the exam ... some seniors became disgruntled when some teachers interrupted classes to prepare them for the state tests ... students also believed that administrators who visited classes to stress the importance of doing well were too concerned with maintaining the school's image ... The principal blamed the state Department of Education and the press which does not publish other indicators of school performance ... The head of the Torrance Teacher's Association blamed it on a trickle-down effect, saying the pressure starts with the state Department ... and works its way down through the local school districts, principals, teachers and eventually students. And he added, "I think students are feeling like pawns in a game that is much bigger than they are."
This single example of directed resentment is but a drop in a veritable ocean of directionless resentment floating around in our schools. Students intuitively recognize, or at least suspect, that their integrities are not being respected by the educational process. They sense that the shapes and substances of their identities are suffering from forced immersion in a manipulative environment. Within the conventional educational atmospheres generated by a culture of scientific management, the wonder is that more students and teachers don't understand what is happening and express their resentment.
Ressentiment can easily take sociopathic directions. The school shootings (of multiple, essentially indiscriminate victims) that have been occurring in this country in recent years can no longer be considered bizarre anomalies. They are an emerging social trend, an unpredictable development that no one expected, and no one can really explain.
We can reasonably assume that the episodes in Pearl, West Paducah, Jonesboro, Springfield, and Littleton are the systemic outcome of similar underlying conditions. But what are those conditions? Why have the incidents all occurred in towns with populations of less than 50,000? Why are all of the killer students white and from relatively privileged backgrounds? Why are these children so desperate and so empty that they strike out in such senseless ways? We live within a culture of violence, but why this recent development?
It takes an ensemble of conditions to generate such behavior. It will also require an ensemble of considerations and responses to alleviate them. Simplistic, non-systemic thinking will only make the situation worse. The school shootings are relational/emergent in nature. The dynamic interactivity between such factors as constricted identity development, the corrosion of personal integrity, the suppression of initiative and ownership, the programming of instruction, the depersonalizing size of classrooms and schools, the lack of adult availability, the pernicious influences of movies, music, and computer games, the exclusionary social practices in schools, and many others make the situation difficult to comprehend and explain.
Luke Woodham wrote a one-page manifesto to explain his actions in Pearl:
I am not insane. I am angry. This world shit on me for the final time. I am not spoiled or lazy for murder is not weak or slow-witted. Murder is gutsy and daring.
People like me are mistreated every day. I do this to show society "push us, and we will push back." I suffered all my life. No one ever truly loved me. No one ever truly cared about me.
Woodham's anger and desperation are apparent and understandable. His behavior is inexplicable. Why couldn't he find another way to express his fear and emptiness? What idiosyncratic combination of stress factors and personal weaknesses did it take for him to believe that this path of behavior made any sense? Innocent people died, and his life is ruined.
Children are burdened with the task of both exploring and establishing the identities of themselves: "Who are they and how do they fit into society?" A stable sense of identity is essential. Perhaps, in confusing times, a solid, coherent sense of self is more important than ever. In a fractionating world, children sometimes feel more fragmented than they can tolerate.
Robert Crawford, research director for the Coalition for Human Dignity in Seattle, Washington, writes:
More than anything, teenagers want to feel special. They crave power. They want to feel important, even if it's for a few moments when they're going on a rampage at school.
An embattled self can be desperate for any sense of solidity. Perhaps these children have become so desperate that they only feel important and real when they have forsaken all confusion and hesitation to embark on a murderous, self-destructive path. In defense of their identities, of their very integrities, they are distorted by the pressures of their situations and the perversions of their own thinking into such stupid and immoral behavior.
It is commonly reported that when a depressed person suddenly becomes relaxed and celebratory, it may be because they have finally decided to end their lives. The feeling of fragmentation and confusion is escaped, replaced by the resolution of a final decision. Life becomes clear; identity is made solid by the removal of the future.
Similarly, individuals diagnosed with A.I.D.S. often feel a sense of resolution, an escape from the tensions of life. They are also rewarded with an enhanced status in their community. The need for identity, a solid sense of self, is powerful--sometimes more powerful than life itself.
As Columbine high school student Sara Martin wrote before the shooting incident, in preparation for her speech at graduation:
... We're all looking for passion, for something, anything, in our lives.
Around what passion do we construct the identity of ourselves? Teenagers have asked this question forever. Two of her fellow students, Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris, the future murderers of thirteen of her classmates, had already answered that question. They had decided what to make of themselves.
Ms. Martin, at one point in the preparation of her speech, wondered how to capture the spirit of "humanity and integrity that walk the halls of our very own Columbine." She was unaware that a dark spirit had gained control of those two classmates, who were committed to destroying the humanity and integrity of the rest. Klebold and Harris had chosen to distill their souls into poisons to destroy the community that had ignored and rejected them.
How can we answer this emerging trend of school shootings? We need an open and serious dialogue, the self-correcting method for holistic endeavors. If we are to change the underlying conditions, we must have the courage and the wisdom to recognize then and act. Simplistic answers may temporarily place a band-aid on the problem, but the resentment will continue to fester until we understand and alleviate the situation.
We need to think about the conditions of positive social mental health. How do we establish healthy communities, where children like Klebold and Harris are encouraged to connect and belong, or at least be known and recognized?
Other than the familial and cultural factors, what are the educational contributions to the ensemble of conditions that generate the incidents? As educators, we have our responsibilities in this poisonous mix. What are they?
In what ways does the scientific management of schooling contribute to the turning of young souls into twisted, rotted, clumps of fear and hatred? Its systemic and pernicious disrespect clearly fosters a free-floating resentment, a feeling of a self embattled by unseen forces. In such a poisonous stream, is it any wonder that some children retreat behind thick walls of resentment and fear, where they look for scapegoats, objects of derision and hatred upon which they can construct a perverted integrity?
Reductive perspectives generate fractionating procedures and practices that wear and tear at both self-understanding and self-formation. The systematic suppression of personal initiative and ownership by reductive instructional practices adds to the overall feeling of oppression and disconnection. Especially when applied to the holistic endeavor of schooling, such practices further the development of ressentiment. When mixed with other social conditions, reductive schooling exerts considerable pressure against the fragile identities and unformed characters of our students.
The school shootings can be comprehended and explained, to a point. There are too many synergistic factors at play in such bizarre emergent realities, however, for us to understand it completely. What we can do is reach agreement about the validity of some of the indicators. We can learn to sense the sick social and personal ecologies that are lurking in the psyches of some of our students.
What will we do then? Can we change the culture of schooling? Can we ameliorate or remove altogether the conditions that generate ressentiment? The mixture of ressentiment with the violent messages endemic in our media and entertainment, the easy availability of guns, and the unavailability of parental connection is deadly. The conditions for future episodes are more pervasive than we can comfortably consider.
We have reason to fear the extent to which the emerging trend of school shootings will go before it fades of its own accord or we acquire the wisdom necessary to escape its dynamics. The conditions underlying the development are numerous and deeply entrenched. It will not be easy for us to comprehend and construct the necessary revisions to the practices and procedures that are generating the situation.
5/15/99
-----------------------------
Copyright Dennis Rader, 1999. All rights reserved. Published in The Jackson Progressive, http://www.jacksonprogressive.com by the kind permission of the author. Noncommercial reproduction of this article in its entirety is authorized, provided that this notice accompanies any reproduction.