subtext

The other morning in class one of my football boys, who recently had reconstructive surgery on his knee because of injuries playing, picked a dime off the floor and pointed to a large tablet hanging on the wall. “Look Mr. N, A dime!” Then he laughed. Before Christmas I had written on the tablet the poem from the Ted Kooser/Jim Harrison book which reads: “Sometimes all it takes to be happy is a dime on the sidewalk.” It was an epiphanal moment for me, and I’d be willing to bet for him as well. He had been brooding lately because his football coach had told him he was not big enough nor good enough to play football in college. He thought it to be wrong for a teacher to be so discouraging. He had been rather negative and gloomy as a result. Then he found a dime, and the poem he had been casually reading for weeks clicked in his head and he had to share it. He had made a connection, a dendrite grew.
I bring this up because of the discussion that came up in my doctoral class tonight. Is it ok to try not to bring your ideology into the classroom blatantly? I know that it is impossible not to bring it in. One’s ideology is always present whether one is up front about it or not. However, I also think that part of our purpose, my ideology if you will, is to allow space for the students to discover, construct, define what their beliefs are. As a teacher, I have to not be the moral authority telling them what is right or wrong with their world view, because to do otherwise would be to hegemonic ally impose my belief onto them. Often for that to occur, I have to listen to what I consider to be repulsive thoughts: ranging from neo-fascist interpretations stemming from Ayn Rand, to poorly interpreted versions of Christianity, to unintended slams against teachers. They are after all children. I could argue with them, or simply tell them they are subhuman for thinking such neanderthal thoughts, but that would do nothing except cause them to dig deeper into their beliefs. I try to create a language rich environment in my class. My students write about their lives and their concerns. Their ideas are half-formed most of the time, but it is not ethical for me to tell them what their ideas should be. They invest so much of themselves into their writing and are very rarely able to separate themselves from the words on the page. I try to “improve” them in subtler ways, by simply exposing them to the opportunity to engage through words with their lives in ways that are meaningful to them. The texts I select to use focus on themes around love, beauty, responsibility, and transformational experiences (my ideology, as middle class and sappy as it is), but I do not belabor the point nor ask them to agree with me. I point out figurative language, rhetorical devices, or just nice sounds in the use of the writer’s language. Anything else they get from it is just a dime on the sidewalk.