For those of you who are teachers, educators, or have found themselves in front of a classroom, have you ever had a moment when a student drove you to a point where, profanity bitten back, you wanted to ask them, "just what the hell do you think we have spent the last few months talking about?"
Inevitably, there are instances when our reach and grasp as educators are not equal. There are great lesson plans run amok, a failure to deliver the insightful observation that would make all the other information cohere for the journey people snowflakes, or just a quarter/semester/or year where you were off your game. Life happens.
Many fun and intellectually provocative things happen in the classroom. It is a political space, a primary site of socialization, and when things are going well, there is always the possibility of a transformative moment.
I am just a lecturer. I have not fashioned myself a life changer. Nor, am I a sage or prophet. When I think about my career to this point, with its twists and turns, I am like Luke on Tatooine looking at the twin suns (without the Force), or Nas on his stoop talking about being a regular guy (who hasn't yet recorded Illmatic). Now, don't misunderstand--I like what I do a great deal; there are few other professions that would give me the freedom to talk about about things that interest me, with smart young people, and to learn new things on an almost daily basis. I may not be rich; but I feel blessed everyday.
That is the difficulty is it not? What to do when students want you to cut off their heads and poor knowledge in it like water from a carafe? Or when they want simple explanations for complex problems?
[My answer: "Life isn't simple. At this stage in your cognitive development you are still thinking in binary terms. Life is messy. Get used to it, and develop a habit of honest ignorance. There is nothing wrong with saying, 'I don't know.'"]
As professors, teachers, lecturers, instructors, discussion leaders or the like, we cannot teach ethics. Sure, we can teach philosophy. But, we cannot--nor should we in my opinion--take it upon ourselves to teach young people right from wrong, or to try to make them "better people." That is above my pay grade; I live with that concession. Some of you will disagree. That is the way of the world.
My areas of expertise are in American politics, political culture, social psychology, and all the good stuff about race, power, and identity that comes with it. In one of my classes we have spent a good 7 weeks or so surveying the literature on social inequality and hierarchy--with some detours along the way to talk about race science, eugenics, and the making of White Ethnics in America.
If there was any takeaway at all it would how these examples are cautionary warnings about power, privilege, and the colorline.
I thought we were making good progress. But this email from a very smart, well-mannered, and by all appearances quite reflective student, makes me wonder about the gap between reading, and how information is received, processed, and applied:
After watching the assigned documentaries and doing the readings in class, I think that it is wrong to teach people that the perceived superiority of one race over another is a bad thing. For example, the British were superior to the Aborigines. However, the bad thing was not that they were superior but that the Brits saw their superiority as a natural right to kill these people.
Maybe I'm misunderstanding the assigned readings for the week, but it seems like it's saying that perceived superiority is bad even though there was actual superiority. Maybe the real bad thing was that people abused it?
Moreover, one of the documentaries suggests that the United States was wrong when it came to keeping the lower classes from reproducing. I think it's fine to limit breeding choices as long as this is not done on the basis of race. If it was prohibited for people with lower IQ's to breed, then there would be less dumb people in the world.
The above was not written to get a rise or provoke. This is as genuine an email as I have ever received.
I am at a loss. I have long suggested that one of the errors made in the post-Civil Rights moment, and in the afterglow of the glorious 1960s, was that many of the "truths" we came to accept as a society about social equality, opportunity, racism, sexism, and the like were never actually settled matters. Folks learned to say the correct thing. However, many never truly believed it.
Moreover, there was/is still lots of ugliness in "the backstage," things said in private that many people would never share in public. In the Age of Obama this habit continues. It is enabled by the conservative lie of "post-racial" America. We quite literally do not have a language to call out racist (and other) nonsense because conservatives (and others) have co-opted it in an Orwellian game of manufactured "race cards" and other banal newspeak.
Part of me wants to critically reevaluate the texts that I use, the lessons that I allow students to draw, and how I am not one to actively tell them "what" and "how" to think in class. I use challenging materials--you know the "hard books"--with the hope that if a promising undergrad just digests half of what is offered, that it is a more nourishing meal than some boilerplate pablum taken from a textbook. But reading this email makes me wonder if we/you/I are giving the metaphorical equivalent of a gun to a child. They can't handle it, and in the worst case scenario don't just shoot themselves. No, they shoot everyone around them.
Ultimately, it would seem that those lessons about the good society, and why we have made the choice to be pluralistic and inclusive in the interest of advancing the Common Good, need to be retaught and reinforced every generation--lest they be quickly forgotten. Given humankind's capacity for barbarism, I do not want to think about what could happen if we forgot those hard learned lessons.
Maybe I am just overreacting? This student will likely discard all that we read in class come next semester. No harm, no foul. Right?