This isn't so unusual, though when you work at a place where you are told to suck a dick or eat an ass on a regular basis it becomes harder to do than it used to. It happened during an unnecessary classroom discussion and there is a part of me that feels guilty that I lost control. Another part of me is just bone weary at this point.
We are reading The Great Gatsby. It's the first time I've taught it in a few years and, in addition to being one of my favorite books of all time, it's one of my favorite books to teach. As part of today's lesson, students were required to read The Samuel Vimes "Boots" Theory of Socioeconomic Unfairness the write a response to it and discuss whether they agreed or disagreed. There really isn't an argument for disagreeing with the theory, especially considering the context of the lesson. But that didn't stop one student from raising his hand with a question, though it was more of a comment than a question. He didn't agree saying that there was nothing in the text saying that Sam couldn't afford the boots except for his own unwillingness to save in order to buy them. I then attempted to explain that it's implied in the text. He turned it around to make completely unrelated, made up and absurd implications about the text. ("But her emails!") I further explained that one of the difficulties his generations has (get off my damn lawn) is that they are unable or unwilling to understand implication and subtext. There is a necessity for everything to be explicit. (See the ongoing debate over The Last Jedi.) The discussion wound up slowly eating itself like a verbal Worm Ouroboros. Exasperated, I explained that he was just being a contrarian. He looked at me with a puzzled look and I explained that he was just arguing for the sake of arguing. In other words, he was just being a dick. He took offense to this though I think it was more about being told he needed everything in a text spelled out for him.
Cleverly, he turned that around on me saying that the sign someone has lost a debate is when one person insult's the other's character. From a certain perspective, he may have been right. Class time was bleeding away and I was taking far too much time away from the needs of other students to engage in this roundabout that was going no where. I'm all for vigorous discussion in my classroom, but this wasn't the time to play devil's advocate for the sake of playing devil's advocate, especially when there is an obvious disingenuousness to it. Having been the person that will throw a verbal hand grenade for the sole person of agitating a situation, I eventually saw what he was doing. And I walked right into it.
I usually don't allow this to happen but it certainly felt like this kid was just trying to poke the bear. And waste time. I'm a tangent taking type of teacher and said student took full advantage of it to spend a chunk of writing time to run around in circles to overcomplicate a simple concept just to go against the grain. And I lost my temper.
For a moment, I felt bad about it. Until said student, with a straight face and no irony, asked if he could be excused from the assignment because he didn't have time to finish it. I made sure I was explicit this time.
This is great. It is just great. It's the kind of thing that I want to read from every teacher. I think that any teacher willing to write about her/his experience in these ways should be exempted from mindless professional development, given a laptop, and told to write one essay such as this after which they are free to hit the bars, go to the movies, read a book, go for a run, whatever.
ReplyDeleteVery few of those essays would be as well-crafted as this, but what the hell.