Forest Lessons, No 11

Special midterm edition.

This week a few items require your attention. On to business straightaway.

First know that many moons ago Genghis Khan united the squabbling tribes of Mongolia. They promptly embarked on a mythic journey of conquest that forged the largest land empire in history. Their rule brought a relatively unknown level of peace and stability which allowed trade to flourish along the Silk Roads. We still feel the effects of this, if only in shadow, today.

Here’s his hometown hero statue:

Apparently some Mongolians today believe the Great Khan will return at the End of Days to destroy us all. I understand there are heavy metal music concerts about this. If you don’t like statues of Men That Did Things I would not recommend trying to vandalize this one. You’ll probably be fed to a horrible monster beyond time and space. As you would deserve, you drooling idiot.

Speaking of existential horror, this week a student asked me an interesting question. We were discussing the arrival of the Ottoman Turks to Anatolia. I was on a digression regarding nomadic peoples of the Central Asian steppes and a particularly bright soccer jock thought he could derail me further.

“Who’s worse? Genghis Khan or Adolf Hitler?”

“You guys really wanna know?”

“Yeah!”

On your head be it. After stating it really wasn’t the right question because history doesn’t care about that I launched into an explanation of how Hitler could only Hitler because of a vast state bureaucracy. Lots of little minions doing things, you see, as Hannah Ardent wrote about so beautifully. Unlike the banal Germans, the Great Khan did that shit. He killed, raped, and more or less rampaged across the continent and into immortality. If horsemen from the steppes arrive, dear students, you best find God. Germans? Eh, these days you can just tell them to go away and be fine.

That said it’s obvious while Genghis’ personal touch was more pronounced it’s the system that made Nazi Germany so lethal. Industrial civilization and its consequences, you see. St. Ted of the Woods speaks of this. After tying the entire conversation back to the topic at hand the student clearly understood asking me a question is a trap. After that bell rings, y’all little bastards are mine.

The second interesting thing this week involved standardized testing. Now, before you rush to the comments about it know that my only real considerations regarding testing are as an anarch. It’s like the weather. I can’t do much about it but I can certainly make my way around it and, if I’m lucky, make use of it for my own ends.

In Florida we’ve got this reading test students must eventually pass to receive their diploma. Before the start of this year we received the data on our students from their performance in 8th grade. Five months later, I can say with some confidence that data was pretty darn predictive on how my students would perform at the class level. I could just see it, you know? It’s helped me tailor instruction, going deeper here or shallow there, and for that I am grateful. You know the old saying. When life hands you industrialized lemons pipe bomb some nerd’s mailbox.

This week they had another go at that test. Thanks to the incompetence of our testing coordinator the entire exercise was, according to administration, a complete “clusterfuck”. I’m not sure if that’s on the record or not but I have to agree wholeheartedly. Much to the credit of our freshmen they handled the difficulty with aplomb putting up some impressive numbers across the board. It appears they are indeed learning to read, my dears. Praise God. For the next couple weeks my colleagues and I will be looking closely at the data in preparation for second semester. Seeds have sown, taken root, and shall soon reap harvests beyond measure. Or that’s the hope anyway.

Back to the aforementioned testing coordinator. I’m pleased to report our administration took responsibility and, figuratively, made like Genghis Khan shish-kebabing that moron’s head on pike. She was apparently fired that day and escorted off the premises. Accountability! You love to see it in this day and age.

Thanks to all of the above I’m in high spirits heading into the final week of the semester. Midterm time! Now that we’re all warmed up with some feel good stories of murder and mayhem, I’d like to share with you my plan. This midterm won’t be a test. It’ll be an experience. OK, maybe too much dramatic flair just then but come with me on this. Tell me your thoughts and if there’s anything last second you might add.

Since then beginning of the year I knew the final subject of the semester would be the Fall of Constantinople in 1453. Marking the end of the Middle Ages for many, the gunpowder toting Ottomans rolled up on The City and blasted it to hell. The last Roman emperor, Constantine XI, went out on top exclaiming, “THE CITY HAS FALLEN BUT I AM STILL ALIVE.” It appears both the Christian and Muslim histories agree he died in battle. As the kids say: based. Beyond the last stand of the last Roman emperor (AVE FUCKING CAESAR, BOYS!) eyewitness reports claim the Holy Spirit itself could be seen vacating the city. On the flip side, Mehmed the Conqueror (three guesses why he’s called that and the first two don’t count) fulfilled the dreams of Osman I and the greater Muslim world. As he told his men that day 800 years was long enough. Either they would take the city or die in the attempt. They Might Be Giants can tell you all about how that went.

All in all, an interesting day for many people. But it’s not the big names I want the students to solely appreciate. It’s the small ones I want to highlight too. The folks escaping, like Anna Notaras, who would distinguish herself as a member of the Eastern Orthodox Church in Venice. Acclaimed for saving many relics, manuscripts, and other expressions of Byzantine culture these folks deserve our time, study, and admiration.

So here’s the plan.

On Monday, I’ll tell the story of Constantinople’s fall. This will be among a collection of art supplies I’ve gathered along with troves of documents from our time in class. This will include my lesson plans, their own notebooks, and various other things. Their first job is creating some kind of cultural expression about their experience in class this semester. It can be about anything they want - a particular lesson, story, person, or moment that stands out to them as special. On Tuesday, they’ll actually create the work, leveraging the limited time in order to recreate even a modicum of the pressure Byzantine refugees felt. But wait, there’s more. On Wednesday, the fun begins. They’ll walk in my door to complete devastation.

You see, I’m trashing my classroom. Well, so to speak. The idea is creating a ruin not just from the relics they create next week but also the work we’ve been doing all year until this point. My work. Their work. It’ll be spread around in various piles of desks, chairs, and papers. Monuments to the victories and defeats, their virtues and their vices. Perhaps not the Course of Empire per se, but certainly the course of our life together so far. They will be judged on how effectively they study a culture never done so before: their own.

To make a longer story shorter we ride out, kill everyone that gets in our way, and forge the greatest empire in human history. I hope you like the idea. Let me know your thoughts in the comments and thanks again for joining me this week. Stay tuned for the next edition of Forest Lessons. I’ll let you know how it all went.

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Thanks for reading this week’s edition of Forest Lessons. Beyond chronicling my experiences week to week as an anarch in public education I hope to discover methods and means to awaken our American culture’s natural curiosity and love of adventure. The future is full of promise, but it is not a given. Please consider a subscription if this kind of thing interests you.

If you’d like to do more kindly consider one of the paid patronage options. This will be the work of my lifetime, but the more help I get the more I can do. Thanks in advance, and take care!