Making the grade
I just finished the first round of grading and I’m amazed. So far, I’ve handed out about eight A’s. The attrition rate for classes this semester was abysmal, with nearly a 50 percent drop rate. For some reason, that doesn’t bother me. Most who managed to stick it out ended up significantly better as writers. I’m thrilled. Even the most trivial of topics were well argued and not inflated. I told them that falling short of the requested length was a more forgivable sin than bloating the paper with useless, boring, crap.
They actually listened. I’ll never get over that I suppose— talking to a room full of people that actually do listen to you and act based on what you say. Maybe it’s because I’m easily amused— or maybe it’s because life outside a classroom just isn’t like that most of the time. One of the reflective essays had a fascinating question in it:
“Why do you care about this stuff?”
The student who wrote it has had a complex life— eight years in the military, time in prison, conversion to Islam, and then back to school. He was fascinated with the way I confronted hard questions about racial and gender equality.
I deal with these issues not because I am promoting a political agenda in the classroom, but because the rhetoric surrounding these issues is so fascinating and strong. I find it useful to examine the basic assumptions (backing and warrants in Toulminian terms) which undergird political arguments. Examining the Declaration of Independence in particular is useful, in my opinion— both as an example of an enthymeme and for the things it leaves unsaid. It says that “all men are created equal” and yet avoids defining just what a “man” is. I suspect that no one really thinks about that much in high school, or in general— it says we have “unalienable rights” and yet it doesn’t say how those rights are apportioned— do women count? Not in 1776. Do people of color or Native Americans count? Not in 1776. I find it fascinating how Americans accept this document without wondering exactly what it meant. Now that’s effective rhetoric— it slips right past people, unnoticed, as a mythic declaration that every American assumes includes them. It doesn’t. After hundreds of years of struggle, the situation may be better— but the rhetoric is still hazy, and intentionally so. It’s more effective that way— if you don’t question.
The student’s question was a good one— why should I, as a person “automatically guaranteed entry into the white male patriarchy with all its attendant rights and privileges” (as one of my professor’s is fond of reminding me) care about things like gender and racial struggles? He really wanted to know if I started caring about this stuff because of school, or because of real life. The answer is real life, mostly. But it’s hard for me to separate the two. Right now (and hopefully for a long time to come) school is my real life. And I like it.
I like giving people the tools they need to fight for what they believe in— without guns, without fists, without hurting anyone. Yes, it can hurt to break down some treasured assumptions about what it means to be patriotic or a good citizen. But this is mental fight, and it needs to be raised to a higher level so that we won’t be embarrassed in the future by the hollow rhetoric of talking heads. I want to teach people how to take that junk apart and make better decisions. It isn’t about conveying politics. It’s about transmitting the tools needed to “not get fooled again.”
As long as some people are not free, none of us really are.
Very interesting.