I was talking to a colleague from Ukraine who specializes in the politics of the FSU and visits Ukraine regularly.

“It sounds like Ukraine has moved back to the nineties,” I said.

For us, “the nineties” mean bandit wars, gangs, corruption, and a complete collapse of all governmental structures. “This is like the nineties” has come to mean “horrible, hopeless, terrifying.”

“Oh no,” my colleague said. “This is even worse than the nineties. Then, criminals would come and take your business away but now government has become a criminal gang that  comes and takes your business away. It was kind of better when bandits were in charge.”

Why is it that students who confess that they like to read do so apologetically, as if it were an embarrassing eccentricity, while students who don’t like to read proclaim it proudly, as if disclosing a laudable personal quality?

I keep hearing that journalism is dying, but after seeing articles like the following, I’m ready to dance on its grave:

Again and again, Barack Obama has told the world it is no longer American foreign policy to pursue U.S. interests abroad. It was at a NATO meeting where he announced he no longer believes America is exceptional — at least any more than any other country believes it’s exceptional.

So why should America put its national interest in Ukraine over Russia’s national interests? It’s not so much that Obama is anti-Ukraine. He’s just absent.

Nature abhors a vacuum, Aristotle wrote. And so does geopolitics. As America moves out — of Europe, of the Middle East, of Asia — others are jumping in. Russia, of course. China. Iran.

The idea that Russia’s pursuit of imperial expansion is somehow caused by Obama (or any American president, past or future) is simply childish. Russia’s central guiding idea for centuries has been insistent and rapid expansion of its colonial domination. Putin’s attempts to dictate Ukraine’s policy is nothing new. Ukraine was a colony of Russia between 1665 and 1991. Not only Obama but even the US didn’t exist back in 1665.

As I keep saying, many things happen in the world – both good and bad – without absolutely no influence whatsoever from the US. Russian imperialism has existed long before Obama was born and will continue to exist long after he dies. Short of launching a nuclear attack against  Russia, there is absolutely nothing whatsoever anybody can do to stall Russia’s attempts to mess in the affairs of neighboring countries.

P.S. Thank you, reader Titfortat, for this link.

I’ve been asked to comment on the following story: a group of students at McGill University petitioned their professor to give them an extension on a paper and he wrote a funny response that went viral. Read the linked article for more details of the story.

I have to say that my style of communicating with students is very different from what this prof does. However, teaching styles vary a lot and if this way of relating to students works for this prof, then that’s great. There is no single formula of pedagogic success because, as I said before, a teacher’s most important tool is his or her personality. Here is my approach to giving extensions and dealing with absences, in case you are wondering.

What bothers me about the linked article is this:

Ken Hastings, president of the McGill Association of University Teachers, said that, kidding aside, the brouhaha raises some pretty serious underlying issues about fairness.

Everybody in the class, he said, is linked by a contract of fairness and it is intrinsically unfair to change any of the agreed-upon rules, including deadlines. The professors are bound by the contract just as much as the students.

It bothers me to see the language of the business world applied to teaching. We never see business people use the word “syllabus” to refer to a contract, do we? Then why should teachers adopt the vocabulary of business  for their work? A syllabus exists for the sole purpose of making it easier for the teacher and the students to orient themselves in the course. It is not a contract. Nobody signs it, notarizes it, or goes to court over it. At least, not until people like Mr. Hastings force us all to ditch long-standing academic practices in favor of the unfortunate corporate model of education.

I change my syllabi on a regular basis. Even if I teach the same course for years, each group that takes it is different. It develops a dynamic of its own, requires different approaches, and masters some skills better than others. This semester, for instance, I cancelled one of the compositions that had been planned for the course in one of the sections of Intermediate Spanish but not in the other section I’m teaching. I discovered that the students in section 1 had very good writing skills but found it extremely difficult to speak. So I cancelled the composition and scheduled an oral exam instead. I discussed this change with the students, and they all agreed that the change made sense. My teaching would be seriously handicapped if I were forced to treat a syllabus as if it were a contract.

I believe that people use this rhetoric of contracts to conceal their incapacity to have a dialogue with students and impose their authority in the classroom. Instead of making themselves and their decisions respected and discussing things with students, they use this childish avoidance strategy that helps them to save face.

“I’d totally be willing to accommodate you,” they tell students, “if it weren’t for this iron-clad contract that I can’t break. The decision is out of my hands. Don’t blame me, blame the contract.”

This is an easy way of avoiding confrontation with students but it is ultimately very dangerous. If we slip into the verbiage of business contracts and lead the students to believe that they are our customers, we are opening the way for administrators to use this rhetoric against us.

A contract, a syllabus, a customer, a student, a business, and a college are completely different concepts. There is no need to limit our vocabulary by using them interchangeably. Let’s stop avoiding protagonism in our own teaching. Instead, let’s begin to say, “I do (or don’t) grant extensions because this is how I choose to run my classroom.”

There is absolutely nothing wrong with a teacher having authority and control over his or her classroom. We don’t need to pretend we are part of the corporate world to give ourselves authority.

We have authority just by virtue of being teachers.

P.S. Thank you, The Sister, for sending me this story.

A student comes by my office and delivers the following monologue:

“I just wanted to tell you that I always mean to come to class but there is always something more important that comes up. Like today, I really wanted to come because I know we will be practicing for the oral exam and I wanted to be there but then a friend asked if I could drive her to the airport. I mean, she could take the shuttle but since we don’t have anything important, like anything graded in class today, I thought I should drive her.”

This is the same student who can’t say, “My name is. . .” in Spanish at the end of Spanish Intermediate course. Her version of this ultra-complex statement is “Mi llama es. . .”

It’s good to know that France has solved all of its problems and can now dedicate itself to futile attempts to legislate morality.

Cliff Arroyo says:

With very few exceptions, revolutions are terrible ways to try to improve societies.

Unless the population is well educated and/or financially stable and/or culturally composed* enough they’ll for sure end badly.

I agree completely. Both on the level of societies and in what concerns personal development, a revolution is an attempt to forego slow and painful process of transformation. And that never works. You have to work patiently and consistently for a very long time to create anything worthwhile.

David Bellamy asks how I see Ukraine’s economic future. Unfortunately, to me it looks quite grim. Today’s massive protests in Ukraine are very similar to what we saw during the Orange Revolution of 8 years ago.

In 2005, Ukrainians managed to overturn the results of the rigged elections and place a democratically elected president in office. Sadly, that victory did not lead to any change in how everybody lived. This is why I see no reason to hope that this time protests will lead to any real transformation.

As much as it pains me to recognize this, today’s protests – as well as those of the past – share a single goal. Ukrainians are looking for a magician (or a group of them) to make everything better. Today’s conflict in Ukraine is over who those magicians will be: Russia or the EU.

However, even if either of these entities had only Ukraine’s best interests in mind (which they don’t), their actions will never be enough to repair a country where people are not reading to abandon stealing, bribery and corruption in favor of working, producing, and paying taxes.

I can’t blame Ukrainians for this state of affairs. For centuries, every effort was made to quash the spirit of self-sufficiency and entrepreneurship in our people. It is ridiculous to expect the results of colonial domination to evaporate after formal political independence is achieved. If for hundreds of years people are told they can’t survive without an external agency that manages their lives, they will interiorize that belief.

I don’t know how long it will take to shed the colonial legacy. But 22 years are obviously not enough.

People often try to be nice and welcoming by wishing me a happy Hanukkah or asking what I did for Rosh Hashanah. Every time, I explain that “I’m not that kind of a Jewish person” and that I have a very vague idea of what Hanukkah and Rosh Hashanah are. I even had to Google them to see the correct spelling for this post. And for generations, my Jewish ancestors have had no idea what these words even mean. This is in no way unique to me and my family. There are millions of post-Soviet Jews whose way of being Jewish has nothing to do with practicing a religion. We have our very different rituals and traditions that are in no way less valid and meaningful to us than lighting menorahs and eating kosher.

“Then what makes you Jewish?” people sometimes ask.

The basis of Jewishness, in my opinion, is the experience of anti-Semitism. Jew-haters don’t care two straws which traditions you uphold, what religion you practice, or whether you know what Purim is. If there was a moment in your life when you discovered that you are different in a way that you don’t control and that this difference will force you to confront hatred and persecution, then that experience is at least just as valuable as keeping Sabbath or placing a mezuzah in your doorway.

My father tells me that when he was a very little boy, he felt ashamed of his very Jewish last name. He had no idea at the age of 5 what was wrong with that last name. He only knew that he had to conceal it. Instead, he invented a Russian-sounding last name of Orlov and pretended it was his.

I also discovered at about the same age that I had reasons to feel fear and inexplicable shame when somebody mentioned the word “Jew.” I also found out that the seemingly unfinished question of, “So. . . are you?” could only have a single meaning. It was also the only question that my mother-in-law asked her son when he told her he met a woman he cared about. “Is she?” And when he answered “Yes, she is,” in his mother’s eyes, that equaled confessing to a big personal failure.

Of course, there are also positive ways of being Jewish that we practice. Our dedication to learning, the burning need to be the absolute best at everything, the obsessive desire to succeed – these are all elements of our Jewishness. They, too, however, arise from the millennial experience of anti-Semitism. One had to do so much better than everybody else just to get a chance that others possessed by virtue of not carrying the taint of Jewishness.

Holidays, synagogues and menorahs represent a valid and effective way of feeling togetherness as a people, especially in the face of the experience of the Diaspora. But not having access to them doesn’t really change anything. As the old saying by Soviet anti-Semites goes, “We don’t care what’s in your passport [where people’s ethnicity was stated]. We won’t hit you in your papers. We will hit you in your face.”

My adventures in weird nail Polish continue. This is Maybelline Color Show Polka Dots.

Applying nail Polish has an intensely therapeutic effect.