In higher ed, especially in the liberal arts, there’s a lot of talk about nurturing and empowering the people around you. A LOT of talk. Yet there’s not much of it actually going on; there’s the silo-ization that inevitably happens when you’re just trying to get everything done. There’s also a great deal of strutting and posturing and bullying and displays of whose-is-bigger when it comes to intellect and clout and ability. The person who’s the most overworked and frazzled gets the martyr prize. That’s a contest I don’t care to win.
Last night I had a conversation that nurtured, empowered, challenged and inspired me in a way that has not happened to me since….probably since college, but I can’t remember.
When the end of college came, and I panicked and decided to hide from the world a little longer in grad school, I thought I wanted to study literature. I liked reading, and wanted to find a way to get someone to pay me to do it. I sat in my intro-level M.A. courses that fall, hearing about Foucault and the death of the author and how all knowledge was epistemic and deconstruction and postmodernism were the answer to everything, and I had absolutely no clue what the hell was going on. How was this supposed to help me teach my Tuesday/Thursday afternoon class how to write?
Meanwhile everyone else around me seemed to get it. They knew what the readings were about – they had apparently actually read them, instead of giving up in despair and exhaustion after the twentieth page of psychobabble gobbydegook that didn’t seem to have any relevance or application to anything – and they were comfortable in the classroom. They actually seemed to enjoy it. It wasn’t until later – years later – when I was finally out of school and into a full-time teaching career, that I discovered I enjoyed it too. The classroom is pretty much the only place in higher ed where I feel comfortable and safe about exploring ideas and having exchanges, and it helps me as much as it (hopefully) helps the students.
So here’s where I am right now: I am outraged and disgusted at the level of complacency about gun violence in the U.S. I am sickened and baffled by people who scream about the second amendment without any concept of civic responsibility or why it might not be a good thing to let absolutely anyone have totally unfettered access to as many guns as they want with no questions asked. I am, unfortunately, related to a few folks who think this way. They are a minority, yet they overwhelmingly dominate the discourse, often by shutting it down before it can even begin. This very rational fear of an increasingly violent society has taken an unhealthy hold on me, to the point where I have been finding it difficult to move or get out of bed or get anything done or focus on my toddler daughter. I have, against my will and totally without my own control or consent, been building a wall between me and her so that it will not gut me if, or when, she is violently taken from me. And this is normal and natural and totally understandable, but also very sick. I’m taking steps to remedy this. And because I’ve been feeling trapped and helpless and on the knife edge of madness if I don’t do something, anything, to rectify this world in which an entire classroom of first-graders gets blown away by some maniac with a military rifle and that’s apparently okay, I have gotten the idea to make violence the theme of my spring writing course.
This idea has not been met with enthusiasm. People on Facebook cautioned me about the need to see and respect other arguments (since I wouldn't think of that on my own), "teach both sides” (as if there are only two), “be objective” (in other words, lie to them about my personal stance). An administrator told me that I would have to “be careful not to advocate.” A colleague who I turned to for venting and support said “Oh no, you shouldn’t do it.”
Apparently emotion has no place in serious academic discourse. Which is bullshit.
I nearly bought into it. I nearly talked myself out of it, because I am at heart a coward who hates confrontation and who still can’t remember basic rhetorical theory without looking it up and am not conversant in the research of my discipline and have neither the time nor the inclination to read journals and feel like I’m in grad school forever. I nearly gave up because the people around me not only fail to nurture or empower me, they seem to like feasting on perceived weakness.
But I need to do this. I need to find a way to connect my personal development with my professional identity with my mental health with my teaching and scholarship with my need to do SOMETHING. If not about the issue itself, at least about the discussion that surrounds it. Because right now there really isn’t one – or what there is is truly toxic.
Last night I had a conversation that nurtured and empowered me to do it, and the initial words of this conversation when I mentioned the caution against advocacy were “Oh eff off.”
Yes. Yes. Eff off. Don’t tell me I can’t advocate. Don’t tell me I can’t point students toward the issues of the day, issues that affect them and the society they live in, and ask them to think about them critically. I need to do this for me, and when people see people doing something, they tend to do things as well. This person called it “faith-based gardening,” where you scatter the seeds and let them fall where they may; some of them take root and others fall on rock. Fine by me. That’s gotta be an improvement over what we have right now. Don’t tell me that I cannot have the conversation about how we begin to have a conversation about the thing, seemingly the one thing, that we are not even allowed to begin having a conversation about. I can think of no other social issue that gets shut down as fast, that sends people running to their computers and radio call-in programs less than two hours after 20 first-graders get mowed down in their classroom, shrieking about how dare you even try to begin to have a conversation about making this not happen.
Nurturing and empowering can also mean giving permission to fail. When I shared my fear of “what if the class is a complete and total failure and disaster and makes me feel ten times worse?” the reply was, “Well, then, at least you’ve still taught it.” That’s the kind of thing that can give you the impetus to at least get your ass off the couch and try. If your class isn’t good, if your blog is never going to be one of the best, if it’s going to get lost in the frothing roil of internet insanity and no one’s ever going to find it let alone read it, if you aren’t the most awardest-winning bestest teacher in the whole world, if your purpose and “pet project” gets drowned in the tide of people who all think that every single one of their causes and projects is more important than yours, if it turns out that you’re not the gifted young voice of your generation after all or that, oh look, it looks like maybe you’re not smarter and more sensitive and more philosophically advanced than everyone else around you like you secretly thought maybe you might be, it might still end up being okay.
So eff off. I'm doing it.
