Wielding Influence

Earlier this week I went to the library to vote early. The line was longer than I've ever waited on election day, so I ended up just coming home. Too bad I couldn't get a sticker that said, "I Tried to Vote." ;) Anyway, whilst I was there contemplating whether or not to stand in a line longer than a wait for a Disneyland ride, a book on the display caught my eye. It was called "Save the World On Your Own Time." Since I'm all about world saving, I thought this might be a clever book about doing good in the world, even with a busy schedule, or something like that.

When I read the inside jacket however, I discovered that it was a full-length complaint about university professors who pontificate their politics or their morality or their pet causes to their students. I have mixed feelings on the subject. While I don't appreciate heavily biased slants in the classroom, I have also appreciated my professors bringing up issues or perspectives that I may not have been previously aware of. Sometimes I have agreed with my professors, and sometimes I have disagreed, but it has interesting to hear their own views. In fact, usually their philosophies would either validate my own, or remind me why I beg to differ. I subscribe to the idea that "those who do not know their opponent's argument do not completely understand their own."

I admit that if I ever become a secondary English teacher, I don't necessarily want to tell my students what to think, but I want to give them some things to think about. Here's a moment of honesty on my part: what is this blog really, if not my soapbox? (After all, I don't have any cute kids to post pictures of just yet.)

Teachers/Professors can go overboard, that's for sure. When their agendas interfere with learning the subject, or threaten to prevent their classroom from being a safe place for different opinions, then there is a real problem. (English classrooms can be an especially interesting platform for indoctrination. I had some English professors who made their tenants especially clear.) I feel cheated as a student when a teacher either presents their ideas too adamantly and too often, or when they don't share them at all. It's a balance. The author of the book I mentioned may or may not have taken the "balance" view, I don't know.

The word "discrimination" has become as filthy as a brown banana peel at the bottom of a smelly dumpster, but it's not always a bad thing! It's also means "the power of making fine distinctions" -- distinctions that are necessary, and help define who we are (and aren't) and what is important to us.

It seems to me that we tend to appreciate educators who teach "values" when they are our values, and hate them when they aren't. (Was that grammatically correct? Oh well.)
While it is possible (and good) to teach with minimal bias, it would be impossible and even unfortunate to attempt to teach without any bias at all. The politically correct way of thinking is that because we don't all have the same values/ideas, we should avoid teaching or talking about them as much as possible. I disagree. Maybe we should be careful about teaching values, but we should not be so absurdly PC that we are afraid to talk about them. We don't want to teach religion in the classroom, for example; but we should certainly be able to talk about religion. The freedom to talk about moral issues, political issues, values, etc. is a right that is afforded to teachers in law, but many educators still shy away from those discussions out of fear. I think it's unfortunate. If teachers were trained a little to be able to mediate and facilitate meaningful class discussions, etc. with confidence, I think that would be more worthwhile than training teachers to drill their students in cold, unhuman facts and figures.

In some ways I agree with the author who urges "save the world on your own time," but in other ways, I see education as a good venue for "saving the world" if we can appropriately, and openly talk about the concerns and topics that affect us.