An open letter to my students April 3, 2008

The last two days I have walked out of class concerned. Today I asked myself why I was concerned. In composition studies (my field within English) it is considered wrong to try to convince your students of a particular world view or political position. Of course we all do it anyway but I have been trained to have a tinge of guilt, to play the devil’s advocate, or to apologize profusely when I do it.

Tuesday I walked out of class thinking, “I can’t believe they all don’t see how racist these parties are!”. Today I was thinking, “Really? None of them think that masculinity is an oppressive institution that encourages men to act a certain way?”. Then, I quickly backtracked in my mind because I felt that I shouldn’t have been trying to convince you of those things anyway. And if I were trying to convince you of those things, I would have just written a lecture and *told* you them instead of asking what all of you thought and letting the conversation go in a particular direction.

That is the interesting thing about teaching a writing class. Most of you mastered basic grammar and usage in high school and our purpose in this class is critical reading and argumentative writing with a focus on creativity and questioning assumptions. As such, there is no real content-based knowledge in the course (at least not in the way that your Chemistry professor imparts information about molecular structure or the periodic table.) What we have as our subject and content and body of knowledge in this class are our experiences in the world, our interactions with entertainment and culture, and our personal opinions and beliefs.

So, in reality, this whole course is about making you think in a particular way but it doesn’t require you to have any single opinion. I do not intend you all to be conspiracy theorists, victims, or skeptics. But I do expect you to question things you see, wonder why they are the way that they are, and wonder what it would be like if they were another way. I also want you to take responsibility for your own knowledge and expertise to comment on the things that you see around you.

Your final project is about demonstrating that move to me. I want to see that you are capable of picking apart something that might seem mundane, irrelevant, or pointless and showing me why it isn’t those things. You don’t have to come to the same conclusions that I have but you do have to come to a sound conclusion.

It is really important to me that this class remain a safe and comfortable place for the exchange of ideas and I don’t take lightly the power that I (theoretically) hold by standing in front of the room. I don’t think that authority is entirely misplaced but it also isn’t something that I take for granted. I know that tensions were flying high when the discussion of Greek life happened on Tuesday and while part of me was excited to see such a lively discussion, part of me was concerned that rifts were being formed in the class along ideological or experiential lines.

I suspect that part of the problem is that when we open up a discussion that calls for critique of a certain community, the first reaction of any member of that community is to be defensive. When something fundamental about your identity (gender, race, class, political affiliation, religion, group membership) comes under fire it is difficult to negotiate that terrain. And, honestly, I don’t want any of you to change who you are or to become self-loathing because of some article you read in your composition class. What I want you to do is consider the stereotypes, the representations, and the images and battle them (or revel in them) within your own reality.

When I think about masculinity and the conversation that we had in class today, I think it was productive in many ways. It might not have been what I was expecting but it was certainly fruitful. And seriously, I’m not sure what I was expecting. For some of the young men in class to break down in tears and confess that they cry themselves to sleep every night but can’t tell anyone because G.I. Joe and Clint Eastwood have ingrained them with the idea that real men don’t cry? These ideas and ways of thinking are complex and fluid and they aren’t something that you believe or even understand after an hour. And they might not be something that you ever even accept because you don’t *have* to accept them.

None of you are just one thing or fit a perfect and pat stereotype and you all continue to impress me with your insights on a regular basis. I have learned a lot about people since I’ve been a teacher and I also have a lot to still learn but I thank all of you for helping me smash stereotypes in my own brain every day and for challenging the things that seem obvious to me. Some things that seem important for all of us to consider are the labels that we apply to ourselves (perhaps even more than the labels we apply to others). There is a reason that very few young women in this generation and even fewer young men will label themselves as a feminist. That label was tarnished long ago and seen as something that didn’t work for too many people. Caitlin gave me an interesting article in class today about the reputations of fraternities on campuses and feminist responses to it. After reading this article, I understand with renewed clarity what seems wrong with feminism to many outsiders (and even insiders). I think that phenomena like this are true of any social movement and they occur whenever anyone tows the party line and doesn’t think critically about the situation – it also occurs from a desire to express rage or to exact retribution.

Many of you may have had the feeling at one point or other in the semester that you and everything you stand for were under fire and being attacked by the opinions expressed in our classroom. I don’t apologize for you having that experience, in fact I’m glad that it happened but I do sympathize with the difficulty of that situation.

At the end of all of this, I realize that perhaps I am the only one that get to come out of this unscathed, in the spirit of that I share with you a biting parody and critique of much of my own identity, it is a blog that I came across recently and makes me laugh and cringe when I read it. And then it makes me question who I am a bit and why I care about and believe the things I do. Some of you might get a chuckle from this and some of you might not even get the jokes. Some of you might think it is talking about you as well. I can’t know what sort of things you can each encounter that will make you question some of your own fundamentals, but I encourage you to seek them out. There is a good chance that they won’t appear on a syllabus anytime soon but that they will be the best educational experience that you have ever had.

Your thoughts? Reactions? Apathy?