The Curriculum: Education’s MacGuffin

In literature, a MacGuffin is an object or goal that motivates the characters, setting the plot in motion. For example, the plot of New Hope centers around the Death Star plans stored in R2-D2. Without the Death Star plans, Luke, Han, Chewbacca, and Obi-Wan do not team up to rescue Princess Leia. The fundamental weakness of MacGuffins is that, almost by definition, they are narrative ploys. We do not actually care whether the Rebels get the plans and save the galaxy just as long as our beloved heroes get into cool space battles and use the Force.

This does not mean that MacGuffins are bad; they are unavoidable. It is not even necessary that a character never abandon their MacGuffin. As a character changes, it can only be expected that their goals change along the way. The boy who spends the entire story trying to win a girl may decide that he does not want her after all as in the case of Stardust.

The trick is to find the right balance in which the MacGuffin does not become too important that we lose sight of the fact that it is the characters that are more important. This is the problem with just about any story where the hero has to save the world. The point of James Bond is not that he saves the world but that he should find himself in extreme situations involving some combination of sex and peril and make pithy comments. This was Sean Connery’s insight into the character and every subsequent portrayal of Bond has succeeded or failed depending on how well the actors understood this. On the other hand, a MacGuffin needs to be taken seriously as something more than a plot device. It is this latter problem that presents the greater challenge.

The real problem with MacGuffins comes when the author blatantly abandons the MacGuffin when it is no longer convenient, demonstrating that the MacGuffin was nothing more than a cheap ploy by a lazy writer. For example, most of Phantom Menace is spent trying to get our heroes to Coruscant so that the Republic can send a fleet to save Naboo from the Trade Federation when it should have been obvious to the characters, from the beginning, that the Republic lacked the resources and political will to go to war with the Trade Federation. A Republic that cannot enforce its own laws against slavery and whose currency is flat out rejected in the galaxy cannot be of much military use. Thus, Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan should have never left Naboo. Act II of the film should have been them fleeing the Trade Federation on Naboo and trying to put together a resistance army. Along the way, they could have no recruited an adult Anakin as a fighter pilot.

We see a similar problem with the Star Wars sequels. The first part of Force Awakens centers around the MacGuffin of a map to Luke stored in BB-8. All of a sudden the plot switches to Star Killer (Death Star III). Having wasted the later part of the film blowing up this new Death Star and with moments left in the film, R2-D2 wakes up and, deus ex machina, hands over the critical information to find Luke. How much better it would have been if the film had continued with the quest for Luke. Kylo Ren could have still killed Han (the best scene in Star Wars since the originals). Force Awakens could have then ended with Star Killer blowing up a planet. This would have better set up Last Jedi by explaining why the New Republic simply surrenders without a fight.

Last Jedi offers a master class in how not to use MacGuffins. Luke proves useless and not worth the search. Canto Bright serves no other purpose than to allow the dreadfully boring Finn to suck the film emotionally dry. This sets up the Last Jedi’s ultimate sin of deciding that the backgrounds of Rey and Snoke didn’t matter when they were the central questions of the film. Ultimately, a bad MacGuffin amounts to the writer, much like the post-modern professor, mocking the audience for caring about a work of fiction while still intending these same fools to continue to offer their financial support.

This balancing act for MacGuffins is useful for understanding the role of curricula in education. Recently, I have begun homeschooling Kalman for kindergarten. We are using the K12 online curriculum and he has several live online classes a week with a teacher through iQ Academy California. I think the teacher is fantastic and we have developed an excellent relationship. The irony here is that our communication is far more frequent than if she was a conventional teacher. Since the foundational assumption of our relationship is that I am the teacher who needs the guidance of a professional, communication becomes a necessity. If she were a conventional classroom teacher, we likely would fall into the moral hazard of saying that it is her job to teach and my job to be grateful to her for taking Kalman off my hands during the day.

I do not think there is anything impressive about K12’s curriculum. It is highly paint by the numbers. This is perhaps necessary as an essential part of the system is that it needs to be idiot-proofed for parents. I am reminded of the joke from Herman Wouk’s Cain Mutiny that the Navy is a system designed by geniuses to be run by idiots. K12’s program is also way too easy for Kalman and I have needed to make things more challenging for him. In essence, they want to teach him phonics, while I am trying to teach him to read; they are teaching counting when I am teaching addition and subtraction.

What I admire about Kalman’s program is not the curriculum but the support staff, as I mentioned. In addition, the system gives us a list of things to check off every day. This has the advantage that even when Kalman is not into the material, he just has to get through his assignments and he is done for the day. Furthermore, having specific things to check off keeps us grounded.

In essence, the K12 curriculum works well when treated as a MacGuffin. It gets the ball rolling for our lessons and gives us structure as we try to check everything off in our daily lessons. As with any good story, it is the side things that are of true importance. One of the hardest lessons in teaching I have found is that you cannot teach anyone anything. You cannot teach someone who does not want to learn. If someone is interested in something they will learn it regardless of you. Teaching is really about facilitating, creating the right conditions for students to teach themselves.

What I hope Kalman takes away from his time homeschooling with me (whether it lasts through kindergarten or 12th grade) is that I value academics. I could inform him of this fact and even preach passionately about it but teaching does not work. Instead, what I offer is that every day I am willing to spend several hours with him, going through the curriculum and any side adventures. He sees my excitement and knows, good day or bad, I am with him. Succeed or fail, we are a team. What Kalman might learn that can be presented on a transcript is simply a MacGuffin that should not be ignored but not taken too seriously.

Stardust: On Being True to a Book

I am a very big fan of Neil Gaiman's work in general. He is one of this most consistently interesting writers in fantasy. So I was looking forward to the film adaption of his novel Stardust. The story deals with a young man named Tristran Thorn who lives in the town of Wall on the border between England and Faerie. Tristran attempts to woo the love of his life, Victoria, by promising her that he would bring her a fallen star. With that in mind, he crosses over the wall into Faerie. As with any decent work of fantasy though, things are not what they seem. The fallen star is a girl named Yvaine. To add to everything, Tristran is not the only person interested in Yvaine. There is a witch out to cut out Yvaine's heart in order to restore the youth and powers of her and her sisters. The witch has been given the last bits of her and her sister's youth, which makes her young again. As the story goes on and she has to do more and more magic she ages. In addition to the witches, there are the princes of Stormhold, who are after Yvaine for a jewel she carries which they need in order to gain the throne of Stormhold.
The film is a lot of fun. Maybe not at the level of Lord of the Rings, but it definitely matches up to Narnia or any of the Harry Potter films. What I would like to talk about here is not so much the films but how it was adapted.
When reading Stardust it occurred to me that it would be a very difficult story to do as a film since there are a number of different story lines to deal with. Any film version would have to take some extreme liberties with the story. In particular, I took it as a given that any film would change the ending, which is unfortunate because its a really powerful ending and not one that you would expect. (Spoiler Alert) In the book, the witch finally catches up to Yvaine and Tristran at the Faerie side of the border to England. The witch has at this point used up all of her magic and is now left old and powerless. The witch says to Yvaine: I see you and know that it is you but I can no longer sense your heart. Yvaine responds that the reason perhaps why she can no longer sense her heart is because she has given it to Tristran. Yvaine then kisses the witch on the forehead and walks on leaving the witch defeated and forced to face the wraith of her sisters but still very much alive. On reading this I thought no Hollywood film would leave an ending like this alone. They are going to have to stick in a final fight with the witch and have Tristran and Yvaine kill her. Guess what that is exactly what the film does. Instead of the book's final confrontation, the film has the witch finally capture Yvaine at the wall and takes her back to her sisters so they can cut out her heart. Tristran tracks them down and we have a very predictable special effects showdown in which the witch and her sisters are finally killed.
What is so wrong with an ending that has less special effects and more heart to it?