my first press release

Food for Thought: youth get a taste – literally – of how the other half lives

Instead of reading about poverty in their textbooks, 100 tenth graders at Martin Luther Secondary School had a social studies lesson served up in their school cafeteria.

Rimbach, Germany (June 4, 2007). About half of the Hunger Banquet’s participants represented the low income population of the world, which meant they waited almost an hour on the floor for a small portion of plain rice. The looks cast at the tables where luckier peers were served either soup or a three course dinner were wistful and envious.

The students were participating in an experiment conceived by British aid organization Oxfam International to make income disparity in the world tangible. At a Hunger Banquet, guests are divided up proportionally to the numbers of rich, poor, and middle income people in the world – and they eat accordingly. Bringing the experiment to Martin Luther in Rimbach was the idea of guest teacher Catherine Reynolds, who had participated in and helped organize similar events while a student at the College of William and Mary in her native USA.

In order to heighten suspense, Ms. Reynolds kept details of the event a secret. Students came expecting a meal, but not until they funnelled into the dining hall and opened an envelope revealing their socioeconomic status did the full picture begin to emerge. Only the luckiest students, fewer than 15 %, were invited to join the wealthy society at proper tables and have the lunch fare that the average Rimbach student expects, in this case, lasagna.

At the Hunger Banquet, even ladling lentil soup at cramped tables seemed like an extravagance in the eyes of the 50% of students – corresponding to the half of the world that lives on less than $2 a day – who had to eat rice while sitting on cardboard boxes on the floor. Low income diners were forced to wait in line for water and weren’t guaranteed to get it. Still hungry after eating her ration, one poor student asked a neighbor from the middle income group if she could have an empty pot of lentil soup just to scrape the sides.

After the event was over, small groups met to debrief their experiences. Behavior observed at the Hunger Banquet stimulated a lot of discussion and insight, and many participants reported feeling empathy. “I realized how much luck is involved in who is born into a rich country like Germany,” commented upperclassman Akina Ingold.

Though many students felt similarly to Ingold, no privileged guests reached out to help the poor during the experiment. “The rich immediately put up a wall,” mentioned Clemens Frassine. “They pretended not to see so that they didn’t feel guilty – just like rich nations.” Not only did the dozen students in the high income group keep their eyes on their plates, none offered to give up even a bite of lasagna, let alone a seat.

Most students agreed that the experiment, though contrived, was thought-provoking and had parallels to real life. There was a common objection, however, that the situation of the low income group was not grim enough. In the words of one student, “The poor were allowed to go back for seconds. That was lame!” Surprisingly, few underfed students complained about being hungry. Some were engrossed in exploring new perspectives. And all, perhaps, were relieved that they would soon return to their familiar world and the Dönerbuden around the corner.

Farewell to MLS

When I first stepped into Martin Luther College Preparatory School, the first German school in which I would teach, I was stunned at how empty it seemed. In the classrooms there were no posters about how to eat a healthy diet, no maps of Europe, and needless to say, no German flags. Only a few rooms even had curtains on the windows. There was just a long, uninterrupted series of grey desks, grey walls, and grey chalk boards, stretching across four buildings.

By the end of the year I had forgotten I ever thought the school was bland, because I came to appreciate the buzz of creativity, insight, and - in most cases - hard work that lay just under the surface and characterized the everyday school environment. Students in the 11th and 12th grades were reading the classic English literature that I read in high school: Othello, Fahrenheit 451, Catcher in the Rye, analyzing the work on the same level that we did as native speakers. A group of upperclassmen also put on a more captivating stage production than my high school theatre club - in English. In the club I led, where advanced students could teach English at the local primary school, there were more qualified takers than the parnter school could accommodate.

Even though all students at MLS were capable learners and most put in effort in most courses (even if they didn't admit it), they got the full range of grades, like most students in Germany. There is not much I need to say in comparison about my own high school experience, because grade inflation is basically accepted as a necessary evil in the US. Now I understand why the only professor I had in College who kept a "C" in the middle of the bell curve happened to be a German expatriate.

The only thing that my students at MLS took more seriously than grades was getting a driver's license. Though they fretted nonstop about school exams, consensus was, it mattered most of all to have a friendly examiner (netten Prüfer) when they were sitting behind the wheel. That is because getting a driver's license in Germany entails about 35 hours of driving lessons and 2,000 €.

With such smart students, you'd think I couldn't help but learn a lot myself from being at Martin Luther. In one sense, that's true, for example, my German vocabulary expanded to include things like von wegen (get real), and saugeil (way cool, far out). On the other hand, my English, most notably in spelling, got steadily worse.

Split Personalities

Let's be honest. I am a perfectionist. How often have I heard, "Wow, are you still working on that?" To keep the self-destructive tendency at bay, I concentrate on viewing every task I take on through the eyes of the person who will benefit from its results. Doing so often frees me from the most rigid standards and harsh judgement - my own.

I realized recently that I already knew this to some extent in fourth grade. In May that year I was assigned by Mrs. A. to make a Mother's Day card for my mother. I considered for a brief agonizing minute picture, poem, pop-up, what to do? Then I realized that the real recipient of the card would not be my mother, but my teacher. For my mother we would plan something as a family, or I would make her breakfast in bed, or decorate her bedroom mirror. So, I just asked myself, what would Mrs. A want to hear?

About ten minutes later I brought my letter to her desk for approval. It displayed the straightforward, but overbearing style of writing that my teacher delighted in: "Thank you, Mom, for guiding me along the winding road of life. You are always there for me, and you shower me with love." Mrs. A liked my Mother's Day card so much that she got tears in her eyes, hugged me around the middle, and called for silence in the class so that she could read my composition aloud.

In a parallel scenario I could have made an off-beat, but sincere Mother's Day card there, and I would have given up recess to stay in and keep working at my desk. My classmates would have looked away in bewilderment as they fled out of the classroom to play four-square and Mrs. A would have wished that I had chosen a less abstract or complicated motif.

The utilitarian approach I just outlined is a bit contrary to my rather bohemian philosophy that "the journey is the destination" and one should not change one's standards or values for the sake of the mainstream. But it seems to hurt no one and it keeps me from getting lost in the details. Sometimes.

THE MONICA SONG - now available in English!

(Translated from the original German. See copyright information at the end.)

Monica, hey,
oh had you stayed,
on 'til today,
as an intern in Washington.
and had you fancied to
rendezvous with "W" -
then lickety split, (Wahoo!)
he'd finally be ...on the run.

Because voters are consistent
and not the least indifferent
on the topic of the instant:
moral values and what God allows.
The head-of-state has a green light
to wage some wars, tell a few lies,
and break all diplomatic ties,
if he never breaks his wedding vows.

That set of skirmishes way over in the Gulf States
generates destruction and big deficits,
and yet not the man's impeachment.
There's no fancy out of bounds 'cept - God forbid - he fool around
Modus operandi : "Make war, not love!"
The Prez's Day of Reckoning won't come to be
until he is suspected of adultery.

***

The people'd call out, "Shame on
you. You are a traitor!"
and "Confess at once!" "Betrayal!"
"Our trust in you has hit a low."
Then every detail of the romance
would find its way into the news stands
and from there into the hands
of every gossip, critic, and talk show host.

Then we'd see Ken Starr on replay,
mudslingers in their heyday.
And Iraq and - even - Al Queda,
'd fade from news to history.
We'd see Bush would feel compelled
to hang his head, throw in his towel.
And just think how very swell:
we would all breathe so much easier!

Monica, in your hands you hold the trump card.
The choice is not hard.
The time has come to send him back to Houston.*
I know he may not be your type. But if you say,
"I'll do it if your price is right."
You would get ...
... a flood of contributions!

***

"Fuck Bush," that's what you see,
expressed so candidly,
from Berlin down to Paris,
sprayed on buildings, in alleyways.
I won't say that's in good taste.
I wouldn't say it to his face.
Still I'm begging you, make haste,
Monica, do it anyways.

German lyrics copyright Bodo Wartke 2005. To see the original, go to www.bodowartke.de, then 1. Click on 'Zum Lesen' on the lefthand side, 2. For the second albumn from the top (Live in Berlin) click on 'Titelliste aufrufen,' and 3. Go to track number 28 and click on 'Text anzeigen.' Then learn German!
To hear the melody of the song, look at his performance broadcast on YouTube.

*The capital of Texas is actually Austin, but nevermind.

Divination Class

I've spent most of my year as a foreign language teaching assistant feeling like I don't have much authority. The students may dutifully employ the German formal address of "Sie" with me, but they have no scruples about tuning out my requests and challenging my directions and competence. I recently experienced, however, that it is possible to convince them that I have access to mysterious, hidden sources of wisdom.

It started as a small joke; I wanted to open a lesson on career choices with a satirical spin on a job assessment test. With the help of Google, I had found a survey supposedly administered in the circus, a litmus test for the Ringling Brothers to determine how to corral newbie members into the professions of clown, animal trainer, ringmaster, and acrobat. I gave this test to my students. I told them to answer it accurately and I would score their tests at home.

Of course I had no scoring sheets. And it was too much work to sniff out which answers belonged to which professions. Could you say which member of the circus is most or least likely to be afraid of thunderstorms? So I decided, based on intuition and random association, which professions I thought fit my students. Or absolutely didn't. And in doing so I didn't limit myself to the circus. I wrote my scientifically confirmed results in an official-looking ballpoint pen in the corner of each paper.

With the same air of self-mockery and exaggerated irony I returned their "aptitude tests" to them. Their knowing chuckles assured me I had played a reasonably funny joke and that no one was too depressed at being assigned the fate of "real estate agent" or "teacher." Until I came to Lisa "the wonder child," who has a reputation among the teachers for spoiling a lesson by hitting the figurative nail on the head in the first five minutes of class.

Linda said, "Computer scientist?! But - mein Gott - how did I get to that result? All computer scientists who I have met just sit all day and stare straight ahead" - (she demonstrated with her hands on an invisible keyboard) - "and never go out."

When I said, "Well, it's based on the answers you gave," trying desperately not to break a smile, she looked so down-trodden that I felt a small twinge of guilt.

I continued on with the lesson nevertheless and figured that when Lisa's shock wore off she would be able to convince herself that whether or not she liked skipping better than jumping rope has nothing to do with being destined to end up working in software development. But then I began to wonder how many members of the class actually had seen through the aptitude test. Almost all of them were excited to see their "results," and they called across the classroom, "I'm a make-up artist, what about you?"

But at the end of class, the students indeed started to use their powers of reason to work out my playful deceit. Two pupils put their two quizzes together and determined that they had answered four of the - five - questions on the test identically. Confused at first and then relieved, confident of my trickery, they said, "We have everything the same, but she is a fashion designer and I an architect. Hmm."

I puzzled for a long time over the unintended outcome of my lesson on career paths. I wanted them to know that you can take an aptitude test to learn more about yourself, but critically evaluate the theory that certain personalities are suited for specific professions. Instead they wanted to believe that their course in life is written in the stars. I am baffled that I can tell them a million times in vain, "the United States is singular" and that they have to do their part (i.e. homework) if they expect the lessons to be interesting. But they plod forward, insisting that even in English a coffee cup is female, unable to motivate themselves to prepare a short article at home. Yet I can look into my teacherly crystal ball, report what I see in their futures, and the branding goes so deep that I scare myself realizing how much power I have.

Size Matters

When you return to America after a long hiatus, you feel like you have shrunk, because there is no place in the world where all the objects around you are as large as in the fifty, nifty, thrifty, and colossal United States. I shared this insight recently with the handful of German teenagers who have a love of language or a sense of pragmatism and show up Friday afternoons at school for the English conversation practice I offer.

Actually, I shouldn't say "insight," because America's love affair with larger- than- life qualifies as known wisdom. The country's vast plateau still captures the imagination as the land of ever- expanding frontiers. And inspires justifiable disgust with its bulky cars, mammoth houses, and shopping centers the size of small countries.

Since I don't like to spend long hours recounting ideas that other people have articulated better, I posed a new question to my students: what objects, (anything that you can touch), are smaller in America than in Germany? Silence. So I changed the conversation back to what everyone had planned for the weekend. But five minutes into the chatter about a drunken rampage at a party the previous weekend, I got a nagging feeling not to let the thread of the original conversation die so easily. "Come on, guys, I know most of you haven't been there, but you learned that there was an America before you learned to talk."

"Carrots," said Isabelle.

"Carrots?" I asked. "Our carrots look just like your carrots."

"You have mini carrots."

"Oh, those." I didn't know whether to be offended or bemused. "You mean the ones shaped like fingers?" (How did she think they get like that?)

"Yes," she said, "these."

"But that's a marketing tactic. They're cut like that. It gets kids to eat them." You can also buy them before they go under the knife. America is the land of the strange, but let's not exaggerate.

After that our conversation stalled again, so I gave up and waited to try the question out at home on my globe-trotting friends, the anthropologists and geographers in Heidelberg. Here's the list that we came up with (comparison US/Germany). Please add your ideas.

• churches (store-front neighborhood church v. gothic cathedral)
• chocolate bars (300 g bars are not unusual in Germany - by God, that's nearly a pound!)
• the first letter of nouns, "size" or length of words in general
• high school teachers' shoulder bags (because teachers move from classroom to classroom in Germany)