COLUMN: Petitions and priorities

From Lisa Levenson's "First Person's," Fall '96 From Lisa Levenson's "First Person's," Fall '96Innocuous e-mail messagesFrom Lisa Levenson's "First Person's," Fall '96Innocuous e-mail messagescan trigger a flood ofFrom Lisa Levenson's "First Person's," Fall '96Innocuous e-mail messagescan trigger a flood ofmemories and reflection. From Lisa Levenson's "First Person's," Fall '96Innocuous e-mail messagescan trigger a flood ofmemories and reflection. In the aftermath of the passage of the Communications Decency Act, numerous petitions to "Save free speech on the Internet" have arrived in my e-mailbox every week, usually from one of two journalism-related mailing lists to which I'm subscribed. If I don't recognize the name of a message-sender, I glance through his or her note, searching for potentially useful or interesting information. I don't sign petitions, because doing so would compromise my journalistic objectivity. Inevitably, though, I scroll until I find the list of supporters' signatures that follows the original post, just to see where it's been. About a week ago, one of these public service messages -- the subject line screamed something like "Save Big Bird!" -- caught my eye. This petition had originated with my high school choral director, Mr. Cannon. I'd been thinking about him since seeing the movie Mr. Holland's Opus that weekend, for the second time. Even more surprising than the sheer appearance of Mr. Cannon's note was the fact that two Penn students were the 19th and 20th people to sign the petition he had so eagerly forwarded -- ironically, a guy and a girl I know because they work in non-reporting capacities for this newspaper. The petition had gone from West Philly to Stanford to Harvard to Williams, backtracking to a church organist in Toledo, Ohio, who sent it to a music professor at Pitt, who forwarded it Mr. Cannon. Anyway, Mr. Cannon didn't add a personal note to any of us in his message, not even a line or two about what script has been chosen for this year's spring musical. This omission upset me, since the second time I'd seen Opus I had cried just as hard as the first, despite strong efforts to the contrary. Maybe I was hoping Mr. Cannon would say that he, too, had seen the movie, and it had brought back fond memories of the songs and shows he had worked on with my class, the Class of '93. Maybe I wanted assurances that the music program in my school district isn't in danger of falling victim to the same misplaced fiscal conservatism now threatening Bert, Ernie and Oscar the Grouch. Maybe I was just hoping he remembered more of me than my e-mail address. Although I've all but given up singing since coming to Penn (except in the shower, or as I paste up this page each night), some of my fondest high school memories remain a set of endless repetitions of a certain line in a certain song from Bye Bye Birdie, or of the sustained applause of music teachers from all over Pennsylvania for our performance of an African carol for which no written music exists. Like Mr. Holland, Mr. Cannon taught us to appreciate music as more than notes on a page. When he retires, I know some of us former students will probably return for a big send-off bash where my classmates who are at Northwestern and Carnegie-Mellon and Duquesne for music and theater have to wear hats and sunglasses so they're not mobbed by fans. What I don't know is who will replace Mr. Cannon and the hundreds of teachers like him, who make students excited about learning and enrich their lives through an emphasis on something other than reading, 'riting and 'rithmetic. The majority of my friends at Penn and other top universities are studying "practical disciplines" like Economics or Communications, planning to go into management consulting, investment banking or marketing. If they're studying Psychology, it's because it will help them understand their future adversaries in the courtroom. And if they're thinking remotely about Education, it's in the context of appointments as professors at prestigious schools like Penn. Like most students, we lend a hand in the neighboring community while we're here, hoping to overcome the guilt we feel when we see other human beings asking passersby for spare change. As soon as we're done here, however, our priorities shift dramatically. Penn's culture is strictly pre-professional; a Penn degree is supposed to pave the way to a graduate program with a bigger name that will add cryptic abbreviations to your signature and some extra zeros to your paycheck. The prevailing attitude seems to be: "If you're planning to enter a field like education or social work, more power to you, but why, then, did you come to the Ivy League?" I get the same confused looks and the same "If she only knew what was good for herself?" tone when I tell family members and friends of my mom that I'm hoping to go into journalism. It won't make me rich, and it doesn't qualify as public service in most books. But at least I'll feel like I'm doing something that really impacts the world, not just playing with other peoples' stock portfolios or manipulating their preferences for toilet paper or shampoo. Of course, if I attend a future reunion as a Pulitzer Prize winner (for a series, say, on changes in family life at the millennium), that's OK, too. I'll share the honors equally with classmates who became social workers, and provided case data for my investigation of inner-city families, and those who became lawyers, and spoke with me about the strain of balancing children and a high-powered career.