The Making of Immorality

I wrote this for English class as a rhetorical essay, but it really isn't a rhetorical analysis so much as an articulation through the lens of The Grapes of Wrath of my beliefs regarding morality in general.

That's why, if you'll notice (as my teacher did), the first paragraph is missing a proper thesis.

The Making of Immorality

For centuries, people have theorized about the nature of morality; what it is and why immoral acts are committed. Humanist psychologists, for example, believe that people are “innately good” and that deviance from this natural state leads to problems. The bible (or, at least, one reading of it), in contrast, teaches that all people inherited sin from Adam and Eve. In The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck argues that emotional separation leads to immorality.

In making his argument, Steinbeck must establish what morality is, which he does in defiance of enumerated rules. Morality conflicts clearly with law multiple times in The Grapes of Wrath, such as when the Joad family buries Grampa against the law because they don’t have the money for the state to bury him and don’t want to see him buried a pauper (190). For the Joads, their personal moral responsibility to see their loved one buried with dignity outweighs the law’s mandate. The biblical definition of sin, too, is kept distinct from immorality. In the government camp the Joads are in, the group of people named as the “Jesus-lovers” disapprove of dancing and acting and call it sin. One of them, Lisbeth Sandry, terrifies Rose of Sharon by telling her that the stage play the camp once gave was “sin an’ delusion an’ devil stuff” (422). Steinbeck makes it clear that this is not the majority opinion, nor is it a sane opinion. Mrs. Sandry is a crazy trouble-maker; she eventually goes into a fit and the respected and kind camp manager says of her, “She isn’t well” (439). Steinbeck presents those who are fixed on the bible’s definitions of sin as, far from righteous, insane.

It may be tempting to say that Steinbeck is rejecting the idea of sin. Jim Casy, the former preacher who ends up sacrificing himself for the migrants, suggests that “There ain’t no sin and there ain’t no virtue. There’s just stuff people do” (32). However, Casy, in practice, demonstrates that he does believe that some things are wrong, such as by protesting wages of two and a half cents for a box of peaches. His statement is more accurately interpreted to mean that there is no fundamental sin or virtue, despite what the bible says, and it must follow that if actions are not fundamentally labelled, people cannot be innately inclined to sin or virtue. Steinbeck certainly lays moral judgment on some acts, notably, destroying food when children nearby are dying of malnutrition, calling it “a crime here that goes beyond denunciation” (477). Steinbeck believes that there are sins and crimes; they are merely not necessarily the things officially labelled sins or crimes.

Then what is morality? Early on, there are many things presented as good or bad. Steinbeck refers to the bank forcing tenants off their land for profit as “the monster” (44), clearly presenting this act and the construct as immoral. For the migrants, sharing is a moral obligation. When Pa questions whether or not they can take Casy along, Ma scolds him harshly, saying, “ ‘An’ any time when we got two pigs an’ over a hunderd dollars, an’ we wonderin’ if we kin feed a fella’ ” (139). Ma expresses another of Steinbeck’s messages; that it is good for people to unite and be together. She champions keeping the family together, even going so far as to threaten Pa with death to do so (230), and Tom later says, “Jesus, I’m glad Ma stopped us” (252), proving her correct. There is a definite implication that people uniting is good, such as when people collectively provide the money to bury babies honorably (266). What Steinbeck considers the origin of these, and other moral laws, is stated plainly in the passage that describes how the migrants built worlds, and more specifically the creation of codes. While certain rights, in the creation of codes, were required to be honored, others, such as the right to murder were crushed “because the little worlds could not exist for even a night with such rights alive” (265). The purpose of morality is to allow worlds, or, societies, to survive.

Both the right to offer help and the right to murder are called rights, though the latter are not upheld, reflecting the fact that humans have inclinations to do both. There must be, then, punishments to ensure that the former right is observed while the latter is destroyed, which are stated to be “a quick and murderous fight or ostracism” (266). Of the two, Steinbeck says, “ostracism was the worst. For…his name and face went with him” (266). Ostracism, thus, effectively blacklists one among ones’ peers, which is worse than death. Social pressure is brought to bear to persuade or dissuade without resorting to ostracism. The influence of the opinion of peers is shown frequently. The government camp uses it most effectively, running the entire camp on it. The watchman explains the disciplinary system to Tom as, simply, “Well, the first time the Central Committee warns him. And the second time they really warn him. The third time they kick him out of the camp” (392). This is apparently the only form of official discipline in the camp, and would not be effective if ostracism did not blacklist the migrant, as failing to get a job appears to be a common reason to leave anyways. The camp does not need death to enforce order; ostracism is enough. The camp residents additionally take care to enforce minor rules, as one does when Ma walks into the men’s bathroom harshly demanding, “How you come in here?” (411). Ma is duly apologetic. Social pressure successfully keeps order in the government camp.

Social pressure is shown to be enormously powerful, even capable of defeating stringent economic pressure, as it did for Thomas, a small farmer who tipped off the government camp about a fight planned at the dance (404). Though Thomas was under threat of losing his job, he tells them to maintain the respect his workers have for him. Social pressure is not just something used to encourage people to perform moral acts, but a tool used to determine morality. Pa says about Tom’s imprisonment for homicide, “When Tom here got in trouble we could hold up our heads. He only done what any man would a done” (190). Tom’s act is not judged as immoral, but completely natural, and therefore, the Joads treat it with pride as a moral act. Pity, too, is not as powerful as social pressure. Most representative of this is Mae, who gives a migrant bread against her normal policy despite initial resistance. Her resistance does not fall because of pity but because Al judges her negatively for her resistance (217). When people are affected by social pressure, it is enormously powerful. Social pressure in this way enforces morality.

As people have inclinations to be immoral, the converse is then true. The lack of social pressure, or, more accurately, the ability to not feel social pressure, leads to immorality, because such people do not have immoral inclinations suppressed. Noah is the definition of the ability to not feel social pressure, as he does not feel much at all. He is described and apparently lamented as someone who “didn’t seem to care” (106). This emotional separation from the world, including his family, allows him to commit the established crime of breaking up the family despite Tom’s reproaches and the knowledge of Ma’s need. Earlier in the book, in one of the interlude chapters, cold figuring allows the tractor driver representative of all tractor drivers native to the people they drive off the land to perform the act despite their remonstrance. The tenant tells the driver, “But for your three dollars a day fifteen or twenty families can’t eat at all,” appealing to the driver’s moral sensibilities. However, the driver responds with, “Can’t think of that. Got to think of my own kids” (50). For survival, out of desperation, the tractor driver learns to use his family as an emotional barrier between him and the tenants, his former neighbors.

 Numbers appear multiple times as methods of emotional separation, usually appearing as money. Other men, tasked with throwing tenants off the land, are said to have “worshipped the mathematics because it provided a refuge from thought and from feeling” (42), and these “would take no responsibility” (43). While all of the owner men find their ways to deal with their actions, the ones who use numbers as a shield are portrayed as the most irresponsible and the most immoral. It is, similarly, for economic purposes that fruit is destroyed while children die of malnutrition, the “crime here that goes beyond denunciation” (476-477). The small farmers’ calculations of the amount it cost to put crop out for sale and conclusion that it was not economically viable ultimately allows them to destroy food when faced with the starving. Numbers, combined with necessity, are a powerful barrier from emotion.

Numbers also contribute to distance, which is another powerful separator and the ones the ultimate villains, the huge landowners, use. The huge landowners, such as the monster, the bank, drive down wages to keep profits high without mercy. Their distance is both physical and in power. Many of the huge landowners are situated far away, such as in the east as one tractor driver reports (52). So far removed are they that “many of them had never seen the farms they owned” (317) and value their farms at “principal plus interest” (316). Because they do not see their farms or the people that worked on them, they were capable of ordering starvation. The power difference also allows them to view their workers as inferior, saying things like, “Sure, they talk the same language, but they ain’t the same. Look how they live. Think any of us folks’d live like that?” (322). The migrants are different and inferior, and thus, they are not peers, and their opinion does not matter. This is quite literal for the individual migrant because the individual migrant cannot make an impact. The landowners’ power extends far, as Thomas reports, saying that the men who burned out a migrant camp were “sent out by the Association”, which is controlled by a large landowner bank (402-403). As there are always migrants willing to work and migrants are landless and nameless, migrants only have power collectively, and the landowners work in this way to keep them from uniting. Because of the gap between the landowner and the migrant in both physical distance and power, the landowners commit immoral acts against the migrants without qualms.

An obvious argument is that the cited actions are not actually immoral, as the society the perpetuators are part of has not been threatened by their actions; that the laws they are breaking are laws for the migrants so that their worlds might survive. But Steinbeck takes care to show that all the actions are working towards a rebellion that will overturn the social order, destroying and remaking it. First, the tractor drivers and owner men are directly responsible for destroying a society, because once the tenants are forced to become migrants, the former community of small farmers is gone and without replacement. But they are not the main point. It is the large landowners who have the largest hand, and they are the ones working towards their own destruction. Migrants’ anger is something the large landowners clearly fear. In an interlude chapter, one thinks, “What if some time an army of them marches on the land as the Lombards did in Italy…?” (323). For this reason they order camps to be destroyed. However, they know themselves that this cannot work indefinitely, because “Slaughter and terror did not stop [the Lombards]” (323). At some point, if they starve the migrants indefinitely, the migrants will unite despite their attempts to repress them and rise. Already the whispers are beginning. The threat of death even has no effect, because, as a migrant asks rhetorically, “Which’d you ruther for your kids, dead now or dead in two years with…malnutrition?” (322). They consider themselves certain to die, and have reason to do so, and instant death is preferable to a slow one by starvation. The landowners’ actions are self-destructive and therefore immoral. Steinbeck concludes this with the words, “And the great owners…ran to their destruction…cemented the inevitability of the day [of their destruction]” (325). There is left no doubt that all the actions against the migrants are immoral, because, whether by citing history or the migrants’ words, Steinbeck leaves no doubt that these actions are destructive. What the great landowners’ distance has led to is immorality.

In the Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck argues that the purpose of morality is so that society can function, and naturally, it is enforced through social pressure. When social pressure does not have effect, immorality ensues. Whether through mathematics or distance, all people committing immoral acts have separated from those who would judge them as immoral, whether they have separated themselves so they can perform the immoral act, as the tractor drivers forcing their neighbors off their land do, or can perform immoral acts because they had already separated themselves, as is true for the large landowners. Either way, emotional separation necessarily precedes immorality.

A Day in the Abiotic Life

"Are you serious? She replaced her head again?"

Kally (otherwise known as 0101000000010110101111000) nodded. "Look, she's coming in right now."

Sure enough, the robot they were gossiping about, Joey (01001011100010011000), sported a new, larger, shinier head and had installed the new eyes that could detect all the wavelengths the sun put out with only one sensor. To compensate for the weight, Joey had also replaced her shoulders with a more expensive and flexible metal alloy. Miry (01100010001000111000) looked at her own shoulders, which she knew were wearing down. Self-consciously, she unzipped the insulator covering her neck and rubbed some lubricant on it.

"I wonder what changes she made to her personality," Kally was saying. She smirked. "Hey, do you think she's gotten rid of whatever it is that makes her replace her parts so often?"

Miry laughed. "I hope not. It wouldn't be Joey, then."

Kally shook her head. "That robot changes herself so often I don't know if she's ever gone a month as the same person. It's her decision, but I have to say, I wouldn't. I mean, I'm always installing new things, but she does some serious rewriting of her brain."

"She wants to be better, I guess." Miry frowned. "Not to be mean, but it's so human of her."

"I know, I can't understand it. You know me—I always have a backup copy of my brain in case this one gets damaged somehow and I lose something. I mean, we're all robots, aren't we? We can just change anything whenever we like. There's no competition. In fact, the only thing that really separates us, meaningfully, is our identities."

"But she wouldn't be Joey if she didn't do this all the time," Miry repeated.

"Gah. It's u—"

Fortunately, Andy (00000011100001111000) spared Kally's 2 exabyte, 32-watt brain from trying to puzzle out Joey. "Hey, did you hear the news?"

Kally shook her head. "I'm on a three-day cycle for regular news. What happened?"

"I'm telling you, this is why you don't stay on a three-day cycle. The last humans just died!"

"Really? All three of them?"

"Well, two died yesterday, but yeah, all at once."

"In the name of WALL-E and EVE, what happened?" Miry turned on her fan as her brain heated up, processing this. She really needed to install a new cooling system as soon as possible. Probably at the same time as she got new shoulders.

"Well," Andy said, drawing out the word for dramatic effect. "They'd been closing down the enclosures, you know, since we decided to stop breeding them for experimentation—there just wasn't any point anymore, and it's so expensive to keep them alive. So they put these three into the same enclosure, for convenience, and also because they say keeping them alone's pretty cruel."

"Unsurprising. We'd hate that too, and we were built in their image."

"Of course, we could get rid of that easily if we wanted to," Andy said, looking a little petulant at Kally's interruption. "Anyways, like I was saying. They put these three together, but they didn't really get along well. Two of them had history, I think, and the other one was just belligerent, or a troublemaker or something."

"Oh, dear."

"So they were eating lunch, the three of them, on those porcelain plates that are still left. And the trouble-making one finished and wanted more, or maybe something had happened before. Nobody really paid much attention to them, you know. For whatever reason, when the other two were squabbling about something, he stole some food off one's plate and made it look like the other had done it."

"And they got into a fight."

"And they got into a fight, and at some point, plates got broken, and heads got smashed into walls, and anyways, the last died today."

Kally shook her head. "Rather poetic, that they finally destroyed themselves."

"Kally!"

"Why so scandalized, Miry? It's true. They had those stories fearing that we would destroy them all, but we never did anything—that's not how we were programmed. They drove themselves to near extinction, and here, again, we preserved them and they killed themselves."

"They still made us," Andy protested.

"Oh no, don't get her worked up on this topic."

"No, they didn't! They didn't make us. They made some sketchy prototypes that were either human-like, useful to humans, or their idea of utopian humans! Yes, they gave us our start, but that doesn't mean they made us. That's why we don't say we 'make' other robots. We give them life, and a few years later they'll have replaced their body completely and rewrote a lot of their brain. And don't say we owe them stuff for it. We don't owe them anything. We propped up their species for this long, didn't we?"

"But they still made the essential step to create our...kind. We wouldn't be here if it weren't for them."

Miry's radiation sensors very easily identified that Kally was radiating condescension. "You mean the smart ones? Not all humans are made of the same metal."

"Well, they weren't made of metal at all..."

"Shut up, Miry."

"We still bear their hallmarks, though, so you really can't dismiss their influence on us like that. Like, look at the fact that we could convert everything we say to their alphabet, though we got rid of most those special characters. And some of our words are still the same, though we've gotten rid of those ambiguities. Like 'she'. We call everyone that because in the dominant language then, there wasn't a gender neutral pronoun and we decided that our ability to 'reproduce' and nurture our 'children' was more reminiscent of human females."

"And then we were too lazy to stop using it," Kally agreed with a laugh. "Look, I'm not denying that humans have influenced us a lot. Our language, our traits, our standards of beauty, our governmental structure—we used to vote before we adopted communism—"

"To be fair, that was sort of the natural way to govern ourselves."

"But they're sort of the necessary step to form us. Abiotic sentience couldn't have risen by itself. Only biotic organisms could have evolved naturally and then made the leap to creating abiotic sentience. But obviously, being abiotic is better. We can replace our bodies indefinitely, we think faster, we control our evolution, we can control our senses, we aren't bound by petty impulses—"

"Proud to be abiotic much?"

"I'm not sure about the petty impulses part," Miry said thoughtfully. "I've seen you spend time on purely aesthetic changes."

"What do you mean? They happen to have structural value."

"Right..."

"Well, I don't see you changing that polished head for a bulkier one better suited for your brain."

"Yes, but I'm well aware that I do it to look nice."

Kally radiated annoyance.

Out of the Clouds (pictures)

Of the fifteen Independence Days I've lived through, there have always been sunny skies for our vacation and clear skies for the fireworks (save the year I went to China, but I don't count it). This year, however, water was the theme of the day.

When we arrived at the hotel the evening before, it was raining, a kind of on-and-off drizzle like a fretful child's crying. One moment it was all clear, and then the next we had to huddle under our umbrellas to escape a sudden downpour. We were cross because we'd turned back, two hours into our drive, when we discovered we'd forgotten my mom's bag. The rain dashing our hopes for a hike around the lake didn't help our spirits.

It was still drizzling the next morning when we headed out to the main attraction, the famous feat of architecture, Fallingwater. High up in the mountains as we were, my phone lost connection (quite traumatizingly) and we could only follow the GPS's instructions. It led us higher and higher up a winding forested road. 

It was quite beautiful. The quiet forest and the homes scattered throughout was cloaked in fog--or perhaps we had driven into a cloud. There were buildings, at first, old, abandoned sheds with the paint peeling off, lonely play-sets with their bright red and blue, rows of white and beige houses standing in fields. 

Increasingly, forest replaced cultivated land and open field. Mist pooled around the thick trunks and green foliage, shrouding the depths in mystery.

We were the only ones on the fog-blanketed road. The view would have been easier to enjoy if the road wasn't filled with hills and curves that appeared only when we were almost at them. As we drove upwards, it became increasingly like driving through a sea, in which mysterious things appeared as we advanced.

At some point, we came across a niche in the road that we could park in, and we did to appreciate the scenery we had chanced upon.

The empty road proved to our benefit, as it allowed us to run around freely.

After taking a few pictures, we returned to the road. The speed limit was 40 mph, but we moved much slower than that. We began to go downhill.

The signs of civilization reappeared and visibility improved enough that we could see those signs. As we drove, we passed a post office, a firehouse, and an ice-cream-pizza place. But our destination was up ahead.

Fallingwater was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright for the Kaufmanns, who wanted a new cabin, preferably facing the beautiful waterfall. Wright instead designed "the greatest building of the twentieth century" and integrated it above the aforementioned waterfall.

The site was on Bear Run, where the Kaufmanns ran a summer camp, a briskly running stream swollen with the day's rain.

The sun was quickly burning out the fog; it had been raining still when we arrived, but we soon put away our umbrellas. The combination of a newly-fed waterfall and glistening sunlight made for beautiful outside views. The inside, however, was the main attraction.

We weren't permitted to take pictures inside. Wright took his inspiration from the waterfall and protruding stones, which defined the structure of the building. The interior wouldn't have been out of place in Japan, whose architecture Wright admired. There was even Japanese artwork to complete the impression. Glass windows provided views of the nature surrounding the building. It was air-conditioned by the cool air above the stream, which circulated through the building when the windows were opened.

In addition to glass windows, there were plenty of verandas from which to view the surroundings, where we were permitted to take pictures.

The day was cooling as we walked out and took a last look at the work of art integrated exquisitely with its surroundings.

And we still got to see the fireworks.

Two Hundred Fifty Dialects and counting

When I was younger, I told my dad that I wasn't Chinese, that I had no culture. Then I promptly burst into tears. The only holiday we really celebrated in a traditional way was Halloween—the most important Chinese holiday, Chinese New Year, usually landed on a school day, so we were never able to do much more than a red packet of money. I knew no traditional Chinese songs or dances, was foreign to things such as the Chinese yo-yo, had nothing in my room that would suggest my roots. When International day came around, we couldn't even produce a stereo-typically Chinese dish.

Several years later, I now recognize that my conviction that I was not Chinese was the culmination of celebrations of culture and heritage such as International day, which I always spent watching people who didn't even speak Chinese present. Not everything was quite so ostentatious as International day. It was also the journal entry I wrote about Chinese New Year (which my teacher read to the class) which I based off information found not in my memories, but on the internet. It was reading Grace Lin's The Year of the Rat and thinking of my own bedtime stories, which were generally about Archimedes and Galileo.

Nor could I identify with Chinese Americans. I was not Tiger Mom's high-achieving, straight-A children. I was not ashamed of my differences—I had no differences to be ashamed of, I thought—unlike the protagonist of "The All American Slurp". I did not hate Chinese and Chinese school—though I began to complain about Chinese school after understanding that it was the norm—unlike all the narrators of Chinese American short stories I had ever read in English class. 

The funny thing was that I didn't really have friends who fit the portrait of a Chinese American either. One of them complained once that she found "The All American Slurp" offensive for making Chinese people seem exotic and ignorant (also, no Chinese person I've ever known slurps soup). I hummed, unwilling to agree or disagree, but I now understand what I disliked about her comment. This was not her story, or my story. This was the author's story, and she had the right to tell it as she understood it.

The real question is, why was my conclusion after reading these works that I wasn't Chinese? Why did we feel exoticized by short stories written by west coast authors a generation older than us? The various nerds I had met in literature who had different experiences from me didn't convince me that I wasn't intelligent (okay, I did have my insecurities, but nothing quite as significant). I understood that there were different ways to be smart, or even American. Why could I be those despite never really having identified with a literary portrayal, but not Chinese? 

I find this especially interesting considering I had, on reflection, identified with characters that were intelligent or American, just not in the way I required myself to identify with characters that were Chinese to truly be identification. Hermione's superior memory and work ethic and bushy brown hair didn't mean I couldn't see parts of me in her trust in authority and isolation from her friends. And unlike some, I never really found race a barrier to that "Yes, exactly" sensation—possibly because I'm not one to imagine what people look like. No character is me, but many characters share something with me.

And yet when it came to Chinese Americans—the people who look the most like me, grew up in a culture most similar to mine—I could not look past the differences to the similarities, and could not accept that some of them were very different from me. I could not even look past the lack of traditional ornaments and holidays to the Chinese I spoke or the rice I ate or the sayings I knew or the values that were influenced far more by my Chinese heritage than my American education (perhaps because I thought of foreign cultures as exotic, and these things were not exotic to me). For some reason, I read these people's stories and I wanted to see me.

Looking back, I now think that it was, somewhat ironically, that emphasis on representation in the media. We needed more African Americans, and females, and etc. I learned, in books and movies because African Americans and females and etc. needed to see themselves (among other reasons). And of course the premise to that is that people of your race and your gender are like you, are at least more likely to have experiences limited to that group.

Except it isn't true. Most Chinese Americans—to say nothing of Asian Americans in general—in books and stories are no more similar to me, in my admittedly biased experience, than any other demographic. Even when they have similar experiences to me (Chinese school), they have different reactions to them, and experience them in different ways. The "So Chineez" episode of Fresh Off the Boat comes to mind, in which the mother also feels she isn't Chinese because she doesn't live a "Chinese lifestyle", but she proceeds to start living that (stereotyped) lifestyle (Chinese people rarely actually wear the chi pao, and that's Manchurian in origin). I decided to stop thinking about myself as Chinese, and perhaps would have if my grandmother hadn't fallen into a coma and my mother left to see her out of filial piety more than affection, if I hadn't read my writing and felt the shadow of a culture far older than me or my parents.

Perhaps I truly understood the influences my roots had on me because I found people similar to me, far more similar in all the most important ways (the ways that allow me to have a meaningful debate) than many people of my race, and in whom I could identify culturally inspired differences.

Which is why, though there is great diversity within minority groups, I'm not saying that representation isn't important. There are some experiences that right-handed people, for instance, aren't going to have that left-handed people do, and those experiences have value and expand our worldviews, and this is only more significant when it comes to something like race. And of course, an inaccurate portrayal of a society's demographics leads to an inaccurate view of that society's demographics. But I am not much more likely to identify with those of my racial demographic than those not; my race is not the most important thing about me.

And yet when we talk about minority groups, we tend to pretend that they are homogeneous (women in movies tend to have little diversity in body shape, black criminals—aside from the other issues the media has with this—are a reflection of black culture, Muslims apologize on the behalf of their religion); we tell individuals belonging to that group that they need to represent their group. I once read a comment that the lack of diversity caused by Thomas Jefferson's 70% "Asian" incoming student body was harmful to its students' development, and while this statistic should raise some eyebrows, I would argue that the lack of diversity caused by it being a STEM school with an admissions process is far more significant.

(There are over two hundred fifty "dialects" of Chinese, most of them not mutually intelligible.)

I understand now that just because I can relate more to some non-Chinese people—even characters—and their experiences than to most Chinese American characters and their experiences doesn't mean I'm not Chinese, or Chinese American. To a demographic form, I belong to an even broader category, and I've gotten used to classifying people by race, but saying someone is Asian makes about as much sense as asking if they speak Asian. (You can now ask people if they speak Chinese without sounding ignorant—not Indian, though, which I've heard several times).

Being Chinese or Asian American is part of my identity, and there are some things that can only be understood by second generation children raised with similar cultures and social expectations to mine. But there are many other labels I belong to, and some are far more important to my identity.

Review: Publishing Company Comparison

Several publishing companies offered one free copy of their book to NaNoWriMo winners. Naturally, I took advantage of all of them. Now, before I shamelessly tear into them, let me say that this was an awesome thing for them to do and it really helped me, because I discovered that people are much more likely to edit your book if it's on paper. The companies I used were CreateSpace, FastPencil, BookBaby, and Lulu.com.

FastPencil: I didn't actually end up printing a book through FastPencil. They have a text editor, which I didn't use as I'd written my book through Word. Uploading from Word proved difficult, however, as I had to convert it to a very specific pdf file format that I had to get Adobe Reader to make. I had to, in addition, fill out more information for FastPencil than any of the others--a long summary and short summary, author info, etc. After finally uploading, however, and choosing a cover, I discovered that I had to pay about 20 dollars to publish privately (in contrast to several hundred for the full publishing package). On a budget of about five dollars a book (shipping), that was too much, and moreover, the discount didn't apply to the entire cost of the book, so I gave up and cried (not actually).

CreateSpace: Of all of these, CreateSpace was the most bureaucratic. I had to choose an ISBN and copyright and set up an account to receive royalties. There was no option to publish privately. After uploading the file, there was a tool so that I could see the margins and they warned me about things like my first page not starting on an odd number and forced me to change my margins so that I could see all the words (my margins were tiny). After confirming that I wanted to use this file, I waited a day while they checked that it was printable. They gave me two free copies, unlike the other companies, which was nice, however, I found the process unnecessarily difficult. Shipping took three or four days (I don't remember exactly). When I received the books, my first impression was that they looked and felt like bricks, which was mostly because the paper was thick. 

BookBaby: It was hard to figure out how to use BookBaby initially because it was slow and my book very long--too long, in fact. I chose from multiple templates to select things such as margins and then uploaded my file, which was displayed in a text editor underneath a wysiwyg view of the book. After understanding that I had to change my font size through their text editor, I finally managed to change the font to Garamond and reduce the font size until my book met the required length of 450 pages. When I discovered errors, it took a very long time to change them because it took so long to load. Finally, I was ready to publish my book. However, I nearly published it as full color because that was the default option and spent time figuring out how to change that. The nice thing about BookBaby was that it allowed me to publish it privately in hardcover, softcover, and ebook form and gave me a copy of the ebook as well. I was not very satisfied with the book; the font didn't look the same as it had on the screen and seemed sloppy. The ebook, however, turned out very well and was easy to download and took no effort.

Lulu.com: Lulu was by far my favorite publisher. Unlike the others, they offered free hardcover books, though as I've printed a paperback and the others were all paperback, I will use that one as comparison. I chose to publish this book privately. Uploading my file was relatively quick and easy--I just had to select my file and it only took a minute or so. Then I designed my cover using their cover wizard, which had templates to choose from (it also allowed me to upload a cover of my own). It produced print-ready files for both for me to view, and after looking through both, I ordered a proof copy. Unlike the others, Lulu uses UPS Innovations, and my book was delivered in less than two days after it was done printing (all of them were print-on-demand). Though I used tiny margins in the file I uploaded, Lulu somehow adjusted my margins without changing the page count (I still don't know how), because all the text was readable. The font (also Garamond) looked mostly like what had been on the screen. All in all, Lulu was fast and flexible, so I would recommend it.

Side notes from this experience: Garamond is a very nice font for books. Don't use Times New Roman. Choose a black text on cream paper over black on white when possible.

Why Should We Study For Tests?

Many people complain that our school system makes us "memorize" "useless" things, but I would argue that somehow it and the culture has made it common for people state that they don't want to learn something because they're never going to use it in life. And, though this may verge on intolerance, I admit it makes me sad that there are people who wouldn't learn something in school if it wasn't for grades, and that there are people who don't learn because grades don't matter to them.

The interesting thing is that students are encouraged to study for tests, when they should have learned and understood everything that is on the test before, because, after all, schools (as opposed to tests) are supposed to teach, not grade. Of course, a brief refresher on the material isn't unexpected, but I remember the school showing us this graph, with the black curve representing the amount people remember of a one hour lecture over time if they do nothing with the material and the orange curve representing the difference reviewing the information for ten, then five, then four minutes makes:


(From https://uwaterloo.ca/counselling-services/curve-forgetting)

This was the argument for why we needed to regularly review our notes, and I believed it until I got to high school and discovered I didn't need to study that much for the final because we were reviewing the concepts we learned in class by the very novel technique of using them again.

I would argue that this curve does not show that students* need to regularly review the information they learn, but that if schools really want students to remember what they learned, they need to bring up previously taught information again in class several times. And of course, teachers do, because usually topics are relevant enough that they come up again.

Either way, tests are not merely assessments of knowledge but motivators for students to learn, though that often happens the day before and is short-lasting. Is it any wonder that memorizing dates, for instance, is seen as meaningless when the official motivation is the grade? I use dates as an example because, to me, they were barely knowledge, with little significance, until I had a conversation involving different countries and couldn't say the order of important events. I still don't want to be a historian, and still have no practical use for dates, but I don't consider them meaningless because they no longer feel arbitrary.

That isn't to say that students shouldn't have to do work at home. Far from it. As much as I just want to collapse on my bed and go to sleep sometimes, homework is helpful for solidifying understanding of concepts learned in class. But when it's become the norm for students to reteach concepts to themselves for the purpose of passing the test, then the norm needs to be questioned.

Perhaps the bottom line is this: Studying used to be synonymous with learning and reflecting. It isn't anymore.

*College students could more understandably be expected to take charge of their own education in that way, but pre-college students aren't even trusted to go to school on their own will.

Jo Doe (or, in response to the PARCC)

THE YEAR WAS 2135, and everybody finally received equal opportunity. They didn't only have equal opportunity in the workforce. They had equal opportunity in every which way. Nobody was taught differently from anyone else. Nobody's parents could bring them up differently from anyone else. Nobody had access to more learning material than anyone else. Nobody was behind or ahead of anyone else in their grade. All this equal opportunity was due to the 48th, 49th, and 50th Amendments to the Constitution, and to the endless testing of agents of the United States Private Educating Company.

Some things about the school year still weren't quite right, though. The temperature in winter, for instance, still drove students mad by being just above freezing. And it was on one rainy day that the P-E agents came into the windowless computer room and took a 9th grade student, Jo Doe, away.

It was tragic, all right, but at least it wasn't his parents fault. They had raised their child up like any other parent would - without much attention, so that no child would have more care than any other. The P-E agents had come because Jo Doe had been taking unfair advantage of learning material until he was so far ahead of everyone else nobody would ever catch up.

The students were taking a standardized test. They were shocked about what had happened, of course, but they weren't thinking about it right then.

On the computer screen was an essay prompt.

"Discuss how the author uses stylistic techniques to develop her message," it said.

It had said the same thing every year past, except sometimes the author was male, and sometimes instead of "message" it said "characters".

Alice Doe thought about the prompt. She wasn't related to Jo Doe, but to ensure equality, all people were given the same last name. She thought about the prompt, and about how the computer algorithm scored tests (to make sure no student knew more than others, the details of the algorithm were always released), and began typing until the tester told them to submit and announced that they would take a five minute stretch break.

None of the students moved. They were used to sitting in chairs for long hours by now.

"That was a real nice test," one of the students, Bob, declared. "Harder than last year's, but not too hard." Alice, who hadn't thought it was any different from last year's, restrained a snort. Bob was almost always the slowest to learn something, so the teacher kept pace by him and made especial sure that nobody said anything mean to him. "I'm glad the teacher prepared us so well for it."

In front, the tester gave him an indulgent smile. The tester wasn't the teacher, because teachers had a degree in teaching, not in making and giving standardized tests. Instead, teachers would spend the time in a meeting about how to make sure all students were equally prepared, even if they had different learning curves, so that no child was ever left behind, and how to use the results to determine if any student was falling behind, because with over a hundred-fifty students each, teachers were clearly unable to do that and needed the help of standardized tests.

"Isn't it supposed to be a new test?" another student asked. "So that it can better assess our writing and critical thinking abilities, in response to long-standing concerns of parents and teachers?" she quoted.

"Oh. Was it?" Bob asked vaguely. He blushed. "I never notice anymore. I just take them."

"They updated the multiple choice," the tester jumped in before anyone could point out anything untoward. "Now, you not only have to select the correct answer, the quote that supports the correct answer, and the explanation for why that quote supports the correct answer, but you also have to select the explanation that explains how your explanation makes sense. We realized that many students just use the quote and explanation choices to choose the correct answer for the first question. Now, to get full points, you have to understand what the explanation is saying. We also put each question on a separate page so students won't be able to view them before they answer."

The tester didn't seem to realize that that also meant that students needed to flip four pages to get back to their original answer to the first question, or that students were allowed to skip questions, so they just looked through all the questions before answering the first, or that students did it in the first place because all of the answer choices were always supportable by some quote.

"They had a new test last last year too, didn't they?" a different student commented. "They added a test for our math abilities. The school got all new MathPads so we could show our work more easily."

"No, it was a test to replace the one colleges use to see if they want us, and we just took a practice test for the practice test for that test," Alice said. "The new test was because some parents complained they didn't understand what the scores meant for the other tests, so they added a parent-friendly one that all parents could follow."

"That's correct," the tester said, sounding surprised. "Tests are very important so that the government, colleges, the state governments, your teachers, and your parents can see how you've been progressing and help you if you aren't real-world-ready, and being able to correctly use new technology is part of that, so we're constantly updating technology. They're also very important for making sure that nobody in the country is behind and that the quality of education remains high. You wouldn't understand how it works, of course, so I won't bother explaining, but that's why standardized tests are important. Now, this is a very good conversation, but your break's past, so go back to your seats."

The command was highly unnecessary, as they were all still in their seats. There was a video clip in this next section. Alice wondered, even as the microphone in her ear began playing sound, why they hadn't found a way to let them take notes on these things yet. But the next moment she stopped thinking so that she could concentrate on the video. The leader of the United States Private Educating Company was making a speech for the twentieth anniversary of the company's creation, and they were to analyze the rhetorical techniques used.

"As one of our presidents once said, 'standardized tests are what we pay for unbiased treatment'. He was almost correct. When he spoke, we had tests for colleges to compare students, but not all students could access the same resources to prepare for those tests. We had tests for teachers to measure progress, but they put too much focus on memorizing facts. We had tests for aptitude or disability, but many students parroted what their parents had told them to do. We had tests for governments to compare schools and districts, but teachers felt pressured."

A white box flitted over the screen. "Announcement," it said. "Jo Doe, age fourteen, has just escaped from jail, where he was held for subverting the system and on suspicion of further subverting the system. He has taken years of unfair advantage over others, and should be regarded as extremely dangerous." The text was accompanied by a picture of Jo Doe. Alice briefly took her mind off the test to read it, and felt a twinge of concern, but then her concentration was swallowed again. The test, an endless stream of teachers and testers had drilled into her, was more important. The box flitted across the screen, finally stopping in front of the leader of the United States Private Educating Company's face, where it stayed.

"In the last twenty years, the United States Private Educating Company has become the overwhelming leader in providing measurement tools for students, and in the last twenty years, our company has, with your aid, pressed the government to solve these problems. Access to resources that give students differing advantages on tests is now regulated. Parents leave their children to learn and develop naturally. The response to not meeting standards has been adjusted so that teachers are not unfairly punished. And, as a token of our commitment to our goals, the United States Private Educating Company has developed tests to measure its own success."

Then the screen flashed white and static filled Alice's ears. Her eyelids slammed shut.

When she dared open her eyes again, the leader of the United States Private Educating Company was gone, replaced by the familiar sight of her former classmate.

"I am the God!" cried Jo. "Do you hear? I am the God! I have taken over your test with my hacking prowess, and thus I am your God!"

In the classroom, the tester screamed, and then fell over in a dead faint.

"I have replaced your video, and I will replace your government!" The screen flickered, and then steadied again. "From now on," Jo declared, "you will never take more than one standardized test a year! You will not suffer any restraints to learn any less than your desire takes you for the sake of others! No more five-year-olds will be tested to determine either 'aptitude' or 'real-life readiness'! No more restless children will be subdued by years of education by two-hour-long tests, in preparation for four-hour-long ones! NO LONGER WILL YOU SPEND MORE TIME TESTING THAN LEARNING!"

As if in anticipation for their reaction, Jo paused, and the classroom exploded in wild cheers.

"These tests," Jo continued, "these tests made by a deity-company and not educators, are a farce. They cover skills that ARE NOT what we should be focusing on learning. They do not test EITHER our knowledge OR our abilities. They do NOT reflect real life skills. They CRUSH the MAGIC in learning. These tests have not led our teachers to teach ANY MORE than they would have. We haven't learned how to analyze. We've learned how to click and drag! We've learned how to fool an algorithm! And yet we spent millions, billions EACH YEAR on these tests? Once upon a time, I believed that these tests would help me. I tried to suffer through. And then I realized what they were doing to me. What had been done to me. I realized how much more I could be, how much more I was, and I say down with the endless testing! Down with the stress and the cost and the waste of time! Down with putting all children on the same level! Down with looking at the WRONG THINGS! Down with the objective, useless, lazy methods of testing higher order thinking! Down with questions with MULTIPLE plausible answers but only ONE correct one! DOWN WITH THE SOUNDBITE EDUCATION!"

Jo's face was wild, and lit with a mad light. "I am more! And I will make you more! I will return learning to what it should be! I will release you from your constraints!" People were cheering, shouting, some had leapt to their feet. Jo raised his arms, pumped his fists, and they raised their arms with him. "The solution to over-testing isn't more testing! The solution is me! You will learn, learn things for fun, and for your future. I WILL LEAD YOU TO YOUR FUTURE! I AM YOUR FUTURE!"

"YOU ARE MY FUTURE!" the students screamed, and the roof rattled.

A shot rang out, and then Jo slumped, dead. They saw him, for a moment, the light gone from his eyes, and then the screen went black.

When it came on again, the leader of the United States Private Education Company was continuing. Before Alice could think about what she was doing, her mind snapped into testing state, pushing back all extraneous emotions as she had been trained. She felt vaguely sad, and angry, but the timer was ticking and some precious time had been wasted.

"But," said the leader, "though we have achieved many notable goals, we must continue striving..."

Please comment! Thanks :) Suggestions have a high chance of becoming revisions, especially if there are complaints against standardized tests that weren't addressed.