Appiah talks about the tradition of footbinding as both a national honor, and also a gender “honor” system. As with many other countries, wealthy families were proud of the fact that their daughters did not have to work. In fact, with footbinding, their daughters couldn’t work. Very similar to the Middle East where the wealthiest families were happy that their women never left the home and were never seen by outsiders. It is part of the double bind honor system. First, women are “protected” this way because they are the prizes of the family, and as such, they are kept out of sight. However, it was also understood that they could not really participate in society. I mean, they are the “weaker” sex, and they “don’t understand the complex world of law and finances” as many cultures tell us. No, I don’t believe this, I’m just repeating a long-standing trope. The other thing you’ll notice about this tradition is that only wealthy families can afford to bind the feet of daughters because working class families need their daughters to work, to earn for the family, and probably also earn while married. This is considered “low” to wealthy families, and helps distinguish wealthy women from poor women.

Appiah notes that there was an internal movement in China against footbinding, but it did not gain traction because of the overall views of women, and their “precious” place in society. When outsiders began to come into China, however, especially the missionaries, they were appalled by the tradition, and noted that it was unnatural and destructive, demeaning to women, and it denied women access to education, work, money and travel. Of course, coming from the mouths of missionaries, it was dismissed as something “outside” and presumably from a weaker society. As more women foreigners came into the country, however, the Chinese women took note of their mobility, their educated views and their financial independence. This worked on some level, but again, it was viewed as alien influence. Anti-traditional. Anti-Chinese.

Appiah notes, however, that Chinese national pride was hitting a high point in those days (1900), and Chinese men and their families were spreading around the world, and observing various cultures, and bringing back stories about the rest of the world. Everywhere these families went, people would ask about footbinding with a sense of disgust, and slowly, some Chinese began to think of it as dishonorable, a dishonorable way to treat women. Also, foreigners in China who were not missionaries, especially educated women who came to China, proved to the Chinese people that women could do things that men could do, and that women were an essential part of stepping into the modern world. If they worked, learned, contributed to society, everyone would benefit, and China would be able to keep up with the rest of the world. Of course, the Chinese were also worried about what people said about them. Their reputation, as it were, as a nation. Only when they were embarrassed by footbinding did it finally die as a tradition.

Imagine, however, the frustration of an outsider living there and seeing this thing happen right in front of his face. Maybe someone was there, watching a growing girl, and seeing her pain, hearing her cries against the practice, and the women in her own family telling her to shut up, that this was the way of Chinese women, and the pain was something to be proud of because it made her special. It would be painful to watch, but to interfere would create even more problems. But how could someone not complain? There is torture going on right there in front of you, but no one else recognizes it as pain that can be stopped, or should be stopped. They think the pain is part of the system, and if other women have done it, why can’t this woman do it? And who are you, outsider, to tell people what is or is not right for another culture?

So there I was in Bangladesh, seeing torture in front of my face. In my case, I saw child labor in my own home. A ten year old girl, miles from home, no way to contact her parents, working for nothing because her money was sent home. She worked from 6 am til midnight and then slept on the floor. She ground spices, onions, garlic in a tiny hot room, over 100 degrees, while my mother in law napped in the air-conditioned bedroom and yelled at her servant for not doing her work quick enough. She slapped the girl because she doesn’t understand how the refrigerator is put together. On talking to her, I found that she missed her home terribly, and longed to be there. She also wanted education, and when she got a taste of it, she proved herself an “A” student, with initiative, pride and inquisitiveness. And then I’m told, her work is not torture. Servants have been doing this for centuries. And I heard this defense: “Do you expect my mother to work? She is an old woman. Buy already ground spices? They don’t taste as good! She’s had servants all her life, and these young girls are the only ones that come because older girls all work in the garments factories. Older women have too many demands. They won’t sleep on the floor, and they want a day off. As if!! What choice does she have?”

My empathy for this girl was linked to my sense of shame. I was teaching courses to Brac field workers and listening to them tell me how they are fighting for the education of young girls and they tell me the sad stories of girls separated from their families. These girls commit suicide, they run away, they are raped, killed, burned, locked up, and no one protects them. Once they start working, it is very hard to get them back to their family. The family wants the money, and they know the girl can work. Again, poverty, women of wealth not working, working children taking up their burdens, the honor of the wealthy carried on the backs of the poor. The circumstances are different, but as an outsider, I faced the same opposition as the outsiders in China faced. As I continued to fight to make my mother-in-law recognize her shame, she refused to see it. Instead, she turned against me. She asked, Why should I care about this working girl? Oh, but of course, he’s a white man! That makes an excellent story to stop this interference. And then, the shame turns to me, and when I refuse to be ashamed, and I continued to act “shamelessly” in asserting this girl’s right (and other working girls, other children’s rights) to education, to be home with her family, not to be exploited by those who use the poor to their advantage, then I am reduced to a womanizer who wants to educate the girl so I can marry her …. Wait, what? That’s one way to drive a man out of your house.

My moral code, which finds child labor abhorrent, finds no traction in a country where the wealthy exploit all of the poor, from the youngest to the oldest (oh, not them. They just die on the streets), and since everyone does it, no one wants to stop it. There are some (5% I would say–a percentage noted by Appiah before footbinding found firm opposition), and it was those some that gave me hope, that gave me more impetus to step up. How could I work with people in Brac who fight child labor, and then bring my 12 year old nanny with me to a ceremony at the school? Shame on me! But then, how could our university use 12 year old boys in their kitchen, working from 8 am til who knows when, and not feel shame? Even the most educated turn a blind eye! Again, everyone does it. Who cares what these kids think and feel, they should be used to it! I mean, it is in their blood, right, not to go to school, but to work for the wealthy? It is the “tradition.” Instead, their moral code, which says a white man worried about a brown skinned girl is equivalent to prostitution, rears its ugly head and drives out the instigator. It works too, I can tell you. Will the country every feel ashamed of what it is doing, aside from a few who stand outside the system?

Maybe Appiah’s chapter on honor killing in Pakistan can give me more to reflect on in this situation.

I worked on two areas of agential struggle–elopement and the use of the term “gold-digger” to curtail women’s use of their legal agency. In both, society is struggling with women and their push against patriarchy, but they aren’t both examples of women’s agency in the same form. It could be that elopement also benefits men, especially during the days when an engagement was a contractual relationship without the benefits of full marriage. Men (and women) have committed to the cow, as the metaphor goes, without getting the milk. Well, maybe they test the milk a little bit, but as has long been the case, this might result in other premarital problems, and at some point, possibly a break in the relationship without both parties taking equal responsibility for any … issue that might come to life.  There are labels for those women too.

Just acting out, and even rebelling against someone, or something, does not equal agency. It might, in the short term, but what is the result? If the story simply ends with acting out and rebellion, it is not seriously dealing with how to get through that crisis, and the resulting labels that might affix themselves to someone in that position. In that case, society uses labels and expressions as scare tactics on those who might pick up those tools, legal or not. Agency can therefore be contained by these labels, and in this way, shift the actions of particularly the youth of society, to avoid derogatory terms, shameful or humiliating labels, which might overcome someone over time.

Chapters are nice though, and I hope to go back to using the short chapters I developed in the draft of Addiction, now titled The Thread of Life. The dissertation had forty page chapters, roughly speaking, divided into sections between six and fifteen pages or so, centered on texts, eras, writers or ideas, with nice transitions (were they nice? I hope), introductions and literary reviews. All writing has to have some pace to it, and the longer writing needs its own pace of information… going back to a novel, I can reorganize the flow of information, and that’s a bit daunting, only because I know it can lose a reader’s interest if they don’t have enough (the right level) of information, so they want to keep learning more, and also they feel they know what’s going on, sort of.

Even with the fiction writing, however, I know there is a certain “market trap” out there, for writing and writers, for novels. The corporate machine, with publishing houses and editors, reviewers, expect structure of their own. The Thread of Life reflects my knowledge of market driven writing too, and in some points, I hope, resistance to that market’s expectations. Is it though? I don’t know for certain, but I know I am not happy with much of what has come forward in terms of excellent fiction. Then again, I need to keep reading more of what’s out there. I was really happy to discover the poetry of Rodney Jones, right here at SIU, as a strong, creative voice, but he’s not a novelist. Maybe I should think of different models for my novel. On the other hand, that sounds like the perfect storm for procrastination. Maybe I can finish a draft by May. And if my blog followers don’t hear proper updates, ask me about it.

However, this is also an illusion, because much of that student tuition is state money, in the form of student loans! Yes, students are borrowing that money which the state might otherwise simply give the university, but that has become the huge debt crisis of our generation, student loan debt. I’m still compiling the numbers, but it looks like almost half of the tuition money is given out as loans, which puts the state, or in this case federal, contribution back in the driver’s seat, in a twisted way. Why doesn’t the government just give it directly to the university? The loan process is a way of putting the burden on individuals instead of the state, and this is creating a crisis.

Some out there will ask, so what? Aren’t the students the ones who benefit? Yes, in the short term, but overall, society benefits, and so do those big corporations and wealthy tax contributors. If we have more dentists, more doctors, more researchers, we find more cures, keep the populace healthy and that benefits everyone. We have more qualified engineers for hire, we have more highly educated individuals to export around the world as experts in various fields, whether to discover oil, lithium or new resources. We can improve agricultural methods, recycling, desalination and so many other problems to benefit the world, if we have an educated populace–and if we give that education to poor or rich, not based on money, but based on the desire to learn, and the ability to perform (the willingness to learn and work hard in class).

Our country used to understand these equations. What happened?

She’s half a world away, living in Dhaka, and she hurt her foot one day, a few weeks ago. It’s been hurting, and so finally she got an x-ray, and it clearly shows a crack in one of her bones. I told her to wrap it, get some kind of cast or something, but definitely stop walking around! This is a serious condition, but she isn’t listening to me so I’m calling out to everyone — help!

I told her to call her department chair, and tell him to send a car or something if they want you to go teach! I hope she’s still working on that. In the meantime, Alisha and I are waiting for her to get some break time again. I hope she can make it to see us this spring.

Let’s see, I also live in university housing, and in the past five years, the rent has gone up an average of about ten dollars a month per year, so I guess that’s it for my raise (it went up last year, when I didn’t get a raise, so I’m already at a loss because of that). The university will take it back in housing. Oh, and then there are the fee increases. As a graduate assistant, I get my tuition free, but not the fees. Last year they went up by about $250 per semester. That’s more than fifty dollars a month. Wait, where does that money come from? No raise to help pay that. I guess, as I’m living on loans, the university thinks that I have that money… or rather, I can get that money from the government… but then, wait, no more subsidized loans. I don’t want to live on loans! So then what…

I can pick up a second job. Yes, after I teach, after I take my three courses a week, and after I try to spend a little time with my daughter, the time I need to buy groceries, sleep and eat, cook, do laundry, then I can find another ten hours a week to work at…some place like a gas station? Denny’s? Where else can I pick up odd hours of jobs? Evenings? No wait, I have to take care of my daughter then. Weekends? Day time hours? Serve breakfast? Hard to find the time, and the employer who is that flexible. Work from home? Nice idea, but I haven’t got a foothold there yet, except for this blog. Maybe I can find someone to pay me for that, though to really do a good one, I have to research and work at it. Sigh. I haven’t been able to do that on my own, but maybe getting paid for it would help.

Depressing. I guess I have to get creative. I could do some online prostitution… I think that pays well. Kind of degrading, and I don’t know if I could get much of a paying audience. Drug dealing? I don’t want to lose my daughter, too risky. Theft? Now I’m really stretching… not built for that either.

Of course, in terms of the university, it would be much better for me to quit the assistantship, and try to get a regular job. That would be a hell of a lot better. I could take fewer courses, only in the evenings, and work full time during the day. If I got back into management, like I did before, I could easily earn more than $2000/month. If I was an adjunct at the university, I would make about $2500/month, and have better insurance. That’s about twice what I make now. I’d have to teach more classes, but I could take fewer courses as well, and use my loans to pay tuition. Of course, working a full time job means I’d be tired, and perhaps it would take longer for me to finish my degree, but ultimately, that is the better choice. If the union can’t settle, perhaps that’s what we should all do. Quit our assistantships. I’ve quit other jobs because they pay crap and overwork me, and this isn’t really any different. I hope SIU realizes that before they find themselves offering assistantships only to those who can’t make it anywhere else. To students who can’t even maintain a regular job. I’m sure they’ll do a great job teaching 101 and helping the university retain students. (hee hee hee)….

Play is always important, and not just video games. While we were camping, John and his son were playing a game of “shoot on sight” or some variation. They had guns with plastic pellets, but powered only by rubber bands and air–one air gun that could shoot machine gun style, in a stream of plastic beads, while the others were variations of crossbows and sling shots, powered by tight rubber implements. Father and son were equipped with glasses and padding cause those little pellets could hurt, and there was John, teaching his son how to defend a post, to stalk and hunt, and to use the advantages of natural cover. They had a blast, but it was not just play. It was also learning. His son was fighting back, and that’s the best kind of education, learning how to defend yourself and stand up to aggressors.

John hunts down his son Alden

My daughter is also into this kind of play, but she didn’t like the gun element. She likes bows and karate. We already joke that she is in ninja training, but I think she would really like it. In the classroom, this attitude is also important. I enjoy those classes most where the teacher allows the student to present ideas, to challenge the teacher, and to talk out their positions. Debate, in a sense, and also banter and explanation, looking for examples and proof. This is not the kind of play I’m looking at in Deland, but much more serious. As I think about my learning at the university, in relation to my job hunt (and job), my experience here should inform my ability to teach, but particularly at SIU, I have found this lacking. Luckily, I already had enough previous experiences both to build up my sense of professionalism, and also to recognize this lacking at SIU.

What have I done here other than teach 101, and a few other core courses? Until this year, just study. I gave a few paper presentations, and led a panel at the AEGIS conference, which was nice, but the department did not give many opportunities, despite their assertion that “professional development is of prime importance.” I had much more professional development during my BA and MA degrees, which might reflect on the quality of education outside of SIU as much as about what professional development should be. What else could I have done, someone might ask. I could have sat on graduate committees to determine (yes, not just to witness discussions about (which was also denied us)) course offerings, to review potential peers, to participate in hiring decisions, to discuss policy. How much power does a single graduate student voice have even if they participate, and don’t just sit idly by? Not much, so there shouldn’t be any fear of usurping power. Having a voice is enough, just to get it out there, and to defend it and justify it to others, who actually might listen. Instead, I have not even had the opportunity to overhear these discussions, which I did previously in my MA experience, and as an instructor at NSU.

Based on what happened while at SIU, I have added little to my resume. I have been working on it outside of the university, however, and I have already built up an extensive list of accomplishments, so I have high hopes for something after my graduation (or at least hopes). I cannot say that when I walk into this new position, that when they say, “can you help us determine which of these students should receive a scholarship?” I can say “yes” because of anything that I have learned here at SIU. Sure, I’ve spent lots of time reading papers, but there was no input on that process from the university itself, except for a few pre-semester sessions on grading, most of which, I was the one leading the commentary (which was sometimes lacking from the group leader). I guess I was supposed to develop that skill by osmosis.

What was lacking? My ability to “play” at a higher level. We were stuck as students, prompted by the department to become professional, but given few opportunities or tools to do so. Sorry this post has become a bit personal, but I think it reflects to the wider expectations of students today. We don’t want to just sit and receive information. We want to get up and play, to prepare ourselves for the real battles but in controlled circumstances, where we can discuss strategy and find out what works, and what being professional is all about. Unless we get these experiences from our professors and departments, we are handicapped in the job market. I have been saying this all along while here at SIU, but no one has listened. I’m still saying it.

In Bangladesh, they have worker rights… on paper. Domestic servants are locked up, abused, children workers grow up without rights, and in those areas where they start to realize their worker rights, like in the garments’ industry, they are caught up in the anti-union name calling that is politics between the wealthy and the 99%. Owners have risk, for sure (I know some of my student followers have parents in that business), and there are agitators in the strikes and rallies–planted or legitimate, outraged, angry, suffering workers…

One thing is for sure though, that those workers from Bangladesh that go out are accustomed to not having rights. They won’t speak up, and if they do, they’ll be told to keep quiet because talking back is one of those things that workers in Bangladesh learn from an early age, not to do. Even those students, like the ones I taught at NSU, who have the voice to speak out, meet very heavy resistance. It starts in the home. The political culture in Bangladesh is inflammatory and carried by those who fight tooth and nail to stay on top. There was no student politics, for instance, at NSU, because of the hostility towards politics–especially the politics of speaking out. It helps those in power though, and wealthy nations have always realized the double edge of educating its citizenry–going back to the fight over blacks in public education in America, and throughout so many other histories.

I guess that boils down to a realization on my part that awareness has to be part of any educational project, and teaching that rights, awareness and speaking up have a place in education. Let that double-edged sword into the classroom, but luckily that is just a sparring match. Is it empowering though, or just setting up the student for trouble? Shouldn’t it be part of civilized debate? Sometimes, I think it is setting up students to fail because the empowerment they feel doesn’t really stack up in the real world, where wealth and power are extremely subversive and don’t follow the “rights” agenda. If we think globally, and not locally… Still, if those workers knew their rights in Saudi Arabia, maybe they could have … possibly … never mind.

After posting yesterday, I realized that I didn’t get to one of the main points I wanted to discuss in that blog. Public servants are not public slaves. They do not have to work for less than a living wage. As a graduate assistant, I teach courses here at the university, but my compensation is less than adequate. As a “half time” employee (with my assistantship) I teach two courses, and as a dissertating student, I am not taking classes. In some universities, research institutes (like SIU), full time faculty might only teach two courses. They might teach three a semester. They are paid more than twice my salary. Granted, I have a tuition waiver, but as I’m not taking classes, I only need to enroll to get my assistantship. That’s odd. I have to enroll for hours I’m not attending, and the university is not paying a professor for me to sit in his/her class.

On top of that, I live in student housing. Every year, the rent goes up. Every year, there is inflation. And yet, since our contract expired, we have not had a raise. Fees have gone up too. Where do I get that additional money? In two years, we are squeezed to pay back more and more of our small paycheck to the university. If I did not have student loans, I could not survive. I could not attend school to get my degree without taking on a second job (and as a single parent, that is my second job already). Could I afford child care while I worked a second job? What could that job be, where I work evenings and weekends. In a store? A cashier? A waiter? Is that really what the university wants, as I’m on the cusp of becoming a professor at some institution? Can’t I teach my two courses and make a living wage? Isn’t it profitable to the university to have 20 students in my two sections, and charge each of them 1800$ for the course? Let’s see, that means the university gets about 36,000$ for a course with 20 students. I teach two courses, and the university earns 72,000$ per semester, and I get paid about 6,000$ for the work. Even considering the room, the support staff behind me, the cost of photocopies and my office computer (shared by 6 TAs) I think the total cost cannot be more that 20,000$. The rest, goes to the university pocket to use on developing housing, the student center, athletics (oh yes!) and to fund other teachers who might have smaller classes (like my graduate course professors). Is it fair to me as a Graduate teaching assistant? Absolutely not.

As a GA, I want the new contract. As a student, I want a good contract for my professors. If it comes to a strike, it is not because the union is being unreasonable, but because the administration needs their money to do other things and can’t stop to consider that their valuable employees are struggling to make ends meet, or are worried about losing a more or less permanent job. Come on students, stop complaining about “my dollar” because it is not being spent effectively. Support the unions, and keep an eye on those administrators who speak about fiscal responsibility. There is something else going on, and that money is flowing somewhere… under the bridge.

From what I know of the discussion between union leaders and her labor representatives, they seem to have short term memory problems. Every time the two groups meet, the university lawyers start by saying, ok, what is it you want again? We forgot. Ok, tell us, and we’ll see. Then the next time, they say the same thing to the union negotiators. Is this negotiation? I have not heard of a single concession on the part of the university that they have offered to appease the unions, just to get them to consider something. Nothing. Empty air. And now the chancellor talks of preparing for a strike. She should be prepared, as it seems that’s what she wanted from the start! I can imagine that it is part of an agenda somewhere, somehow, and… let me think about it for a minute.

Dr. Cheng came here from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Yes, the same Milwaukee that brought Scott Walker into politics. The same Scott Walker who wants to remove collective bargaining rights from state workers, particularly from teachers. In Illinois, the unions are considered strong, though I don’t know if they are stronger than the unions in Wisconsin. Clearly, there is a concerted effort to undermine unions in the nation, but are they connected? Some master mind is either laughing at this, or there are others laughing at the paranoia, but I have seen videos of political schemers discussing their plans to reduce the role of unions in the public sector, to give greater strength to politicians in setting university agendas, policy, etc. and certainly to remove teachers who are deemed dangerous or powerful in their ability to stay within the university, and to speak out against certain public policies. Universities are, after all, inherently political, and not at all “neutral” and removed from political action.

Given this environment, I fully back the strike because I don’t see that the university is preparing for peace. They are preparing for a stall, as they’ve done so far, and a stalemate, as far as they are concerned, in the hopes that the union efforts will fail, and that after two years without a contract, the university will be able to dissolve the unions and create whatever kind of contract suits them best, arm-twisting the less than faithful into accepting it or getting out, and leaving newcomers with fewer rights, and no ability to recover those rights, placing them effectively within the hold of the new chancellor that will come along after Dr. Cheng and show the real fangs of the administration.

Students of SIU should stop crying about “we are paying for our education” and start wondering “where does that money I gave the university go?” and look at the trickle down that reaches graduate teaching assistants and the faculty. If we enter a crisis, there are a number of university administrative units that can be pared down even more, but the faculty are the reason we are here, or so we believe. We want quality education, not quality offices for the top brass. SIU has never been considered a top educational facility, though there are some wonderful scholars here. That should be the emphasis, and despite a few sound bites from Dr. Cheng to that effect, I see her as nothing more than a corporate lackey here to crack union resistance and make the faculty pliable puppies for a future dictator. Thank God I’m on my final year here, but I pray that this university fights through this crisis and reaches a point where education is the true goal, and money is only a means to get there, not the end in and of itself.