Honorary Doctors

Honorary doctorates have long been an interest of mine, for reasons that are hard to articulate. It's curious how guarded and jealous humans are when it comes to titles, and it's rather fascinating how elevated the title of "Doctor" in particular has become in America. Territorial arguments abound about who is entitled to call himself "Doctor," even with earned doctorates (those outside of academia may wonder why anyone except physicians use the title, whereas those within academic point to the history and note that an M.D. is a professional doctorate). Honorary doctorates, of course, raise all sorts of suspicions. They are used for fund-raising or entice guest speakers; they are given to those who are less than deserving. They trivialize education and demean earned degrees. Some universities do not ever give them, as a matter of policy and practice. But still they proliferate, and we are weirdly fascinated when rock musicians or movie actors receive honorary doctorates. They probably shouldn't actually use the title, though. As this writer points out, celebrity figures, even if they are superstars in their field, who invoke or prefer the title "Dr." after receiving an honorary doctorate may be regarded as vain, supercilious, or worse.

The honorary doctorate, as the writer of the linked article also notes, has been diluted through its overuse as a reward for those giving commencement addresses. Even Kermit the Frog received an honorary Doctorate of Amphibious Letters, which is cute but awfully silly.  Yet I would argue that the perfectly legitimate purpose of the honorary doctorate, whether the person uses the title or not, would be to honor those like Maya Angelou (the main subject of the article above), who, even though she did not have much in the way of formal education, achieved great things in a field with academic connections (literature). 

Other deserving figures in the past have been similarly honored with doctorates. These include Mark Twain, who apparently liked wearing his Oxford cap and gown in all sorts of circumstances, and Samuel Johnson, who had a master's degree but was given an honorary doctorate by Trinity College for his dictionary, among other things. Others took to calling him Dr. Johnson (an honorific still applied as shorthand), and it fit because this man was a true leader in his field of scholarship. More recently, the classical guitarist Christopher Parkening -- a pioneer in his field who founded a guitar program at a university when he was only 22 -- never earned a college degree, though he was awarded a much-deserved honorary Doctor of Music in 1983. 

Mark Twain

Discussions abound about who should be called "Doctor." Some say the title should be reserved for medical doctors, but Ph.D.s push back by noting that the original word had specific connections to teaching and scholarship. Confusingly, not all countries use doctorate degrees for physicians, and historically, physicians and surgeons used the title "Mister."

The value of a true honorary degree (given to honor accomplishments) can best be understood by the examples that seem meaningful and even moving. When I mentioned to my wife the other day that Benjamin Franklin had little formal education but did have an honorary doctorate that he cherished (he referred to himself as "Doctor"), she about fell off her barstool. (Yes, this was in fact a "cocktail napkin" conversation.) The fact that this undisputed genius, a man generally regarded as one of the greatest humans who ever existed, a man responsible for countless inventions and scientific discoveries, did not have a college degree is astonishing. But I think she was more astonished to think how Benjamin Franklin, even with his many accomplishments, still had a need to be considered "educated" in a way that was certified by credentials and paper. We can call this vanity, but it speaks more to the continuing value that degrees have in the minds of people. That's not such a bad thing. As younger men, Franklin and Twain -- both from modest backgrounds -- were too busy (and too cash-poor) to indulge much time in education, but they still valued education and wanted to be associated with the academy. They certainly have that status now, so why shouldn't they have enjoyed it while still alive? 

Home Alone

In this finely written and witty recap of Season 2 of Stranger Things, reviewer Rebecca Farley calls the setting of the series "the land where parents do not care where you are." It's a funny reference to the non-concern of Nancy and Mike's parents in particular, but it's also a telling window into the show runners' understanding of the 1980s. Elsewhere in the recap, Farley shows some awareness that things were indeed more or less like this in the 1980s, so I don't think her joke is a sarcastic jab at the show not being realistic, as in, "Oh, come on, what kind of parents don't know where their kids are?"

Such a reaction from a younger viewer would not be surprising, however. As the movement celebrating "free-range parenting" demonstrates, giving kids freedom is not a new concept, though people somehow have to argue for its return. The cultural resistance to this kind of childhood liberty is pretty recent, springing largely from stoked-up fears about child abduction but also as a kind of generational reaction to what might be called a more "hands-off" approach to parenting in the 1960s-1980s. The children grew to become the parents they thought their own parents should have been, for better or worse.

Generation X is sometimes known as the generation that dealt with epidemic-level rates of parental divorce, but they (we) also grew up in a time in which parents were often exploring their own options and, perhaps in response to their parents' stricter parenting style, giving kids more freedom and the ability to explore.

This was not all bad. While there may have been times when we needed more guidance and supervision, we also learned to be independent and to take care of ourselves. We developed skills in things like cooking, shopping, and car repair. We learned to drive as soon as we could. There was certainly no need for a term like "adulting," which is not to say we were all mature or even all that together. (This was also the era in which things like PDAP were born.)

The fact that Nancy and Mike's father has no idea where his kids are is funny, but he would hardly be the only father in the neighborhood to be that nonchalant about it. It's an in-joke about the times, but it's also pretty true to reality. His reaction reminds me of the parents in films like Nightmare on Elm Street, where the terror originates with the misplaced revenge focus of parents who are otherwise out of touch with their kids as they indulge in their own passions. (In this same episode, Nancy's mom is drinking and talking on the phone. Maybe not by chance that this character shares the same first name as the first and most venerable of Elm Street's children.)

Allowing kids independence is not such a new concept, however, and not peculiar to the 1970s-80s. In my American Literature class, my students read an 1880s story by Ambrose Bierce called "Chickamauga." The story is ostensibly about a young boy playing in the woods who happens upon a Civil War battle. Without fail, there are always students in class who are primarily appalled or concerned about a young (fictional) child of about 5 who is allowed to wander off by himself! (The war itself is not as concerning as the safety of this young child.) I have to explain that children playing by themselves, even at such a young age, was not unusual at the time, and it's only in recent decades that we have come to be so panicky about childhood. (On the other hand, that is also an overstatement, as the Victorians had their own hangups and anxieties about childhood that manifested in other ways.)

Children have long been a staple of horror and suspense, of course, because we naturally fear the corruption of innocence and because the state of childhood is so unlike any other time of life. Bierce's story isn't primarily a horror story, though it can be read fruitfully that way if one chooses to dwell on the imagery, and it certainly is a story about the horrors of war. The whole thing reminds me of the way we tend to think other countries are more "dangerous" than America, even with our outrageous rate of gun deaths and other societal ills. Childhood is a kind of "othered" land, a place where we no longer live, so we naturally fear it (as well as idealize it) and consider it as somehow more dangerous or fraught with difficult than adulthood. Considering the previous prevalence of childhood disease and the basic responsibility parents have to protect and nurture kids physically, perhaps this is not surprising. Perhaps those parents in Stranger Things really are bad parents, and that's why their kids are subjected to all manner of supernatural trials. But those kids sure seem to be having a lot of fun even amidst all the danger.