subtext

Today I am frustrated with my classes. My students are becoming more and more reticent about reading. A new student entered my zero hour from some Christian private school. She was shocked by my class. Not the freedom to read and write what she wished, but that I wasn’t going to teach: I wasn’t going to stand at the front of the class and lecture, what Robert Scholes in Textual Power described as the teacher showing off at the front of the room. What I was shocked by was the arrogance of a child who after being in my class for less than an hour had already made assumptions about the “quality” of my teaching. I was already in a foul mood from dealing with the students who had not brought anything to read, who rapped while they were suppose to be answering a quick write, who blew off the reading journal; the new student’s comments were the last straw. Some days I hate teaching; today was one of those days. The day to day managing of behavior is so wearing; it is amazing that any academic learning takes place at all. If it ever does.
My wife and I were discussing why we weren’t happy on our walk yesterday. We have most of the trappings of a soft middle class middle age American life: two ‘professional’ jobs, a comfortable house on the park, cars, electronics, a house full of books. Yet, we are dissatisfied with what we do. Lisa went to a gathering of neighborhood women Saturday evening because she felt that if she made an effort to be friendly then maybe friendships could develop. But at the event, the women sat around talking about their scrapbook projects, babies, and other people. Lisa felt that she was stuck listening to the adults of the old Charlie Brown cartoons, “Blah, Blah, Blah.” This reminded me of sitting in the English workroom eating lunch last week. One of the teachers remarked on some celebrity who was dating another. I casually asked, “How do you know this stuff?” And was immediately reprimanded by another teacher, “It’s popular culture, that’s all. I know it isn’t intellectual but . . “ I felt as if I had said something personally attacking her. Eleanor Roosevelt wrote: “Small minds discuss people, good minds discuss events, great minds discuss ideas,” I’m tired of the swamp of people and events. Is to want more elitist? Was Mao right to send the intellectuals out to work on the farms?