I've Got Something to Say!

Yikes, I never planned to keep quiet for so long. It actually served a purpose in giving me plenty to talk about. Let's see if I can remember it all...

The Fall semester is officially over, well sort of. I slogged through the grading process--I try to get psyched up for grading by thinking of it as a way to gauge what the students understood from the lectures/textbook. I'm trying really hard to be as fair a grader as possible, especially since my exams involve short answer and essay and not so much multiple choice. But once I hit exam #30 (or #55 during finals week), a lot of these concerns go out the window and I just want to focus on finishing. I guess I'm doing an adequete job since altogether the grades fall in the expected "curve." Hurray, my students are normal and I AM an effective instructor.

I put a lot of effort into this semester's History 1302 courses (1302 covers the second part of US History--1865 to some point in the 20th century). All the subjects I find completely fascinating occur in that time period, it's my freakin' field of study! Yet it's only the second time I've taught 1302. For some reason, I'm always assigned to 1301, which encompasses, in a nutshell, Colonies-Revolution-Constitution-Indian Removal-Slavery-Industrialization-Civil War. No, that's no fair and way too trite, but who wouldn't want to discuss Malcolm X over Thomas Jefferson?

This semester, I dealt with my first open quasi-Republican who "outed" himself on the class message boards. I want the message boards to be a place where students can express their thoughts on class topics because they sure-as-hell don't want to express them in class. And I try to ask questions that relate the topic to something contemporary. The student posts are...interesting. Besides the thoughtful, correctly spelled posts, I get a whole host of misspelled, barely intelligible, and frustratingly closed-minded posts, too. I don't expect them all to be winners, but I do expect them to, gee I don't know, proofread their messages and think through the question a bit.

So the quasi-Republican posted this insane rant about tree hugging hippies and how if you can't afford flood insurance, you shouldn't be living in New Orleans and Social Darwinism is actually a good idea. The original question concerned the Robber Barons (and the rich in particular) and if they have a responsibility to share their wealth with society through charitable donations (J.D. Rockefeller, Bill Gates). You can easily guess his answer--HELL NO and then proceeded with the aforementioned dribble. I wavered between hot anger and pity after reading his post. It all sounded like Bill O'Reilly bullshit soundbites, which made more sense after I found out the student is in the Marines. But the real problem I had with this particular (and a subsequent) post is his outlandish generalizations; for example, bums (his word, not mine)can get assistance from the federal government, federal government gets money for assistance from taxpayers, I as taxpayer am forced to support bums, therefore, government should stop using my taxes for all programs. Also, his wide definition of bums include the homeless, low incomes, and single mothers. Does that make sense? Uh, bottom line is that this guy made very sexist, single-minded comments that reflect his gender, age, occupation, and total lack of life experience (By the way, I do know that not all members of the military are conservative).

Which brings me to another point: I love watching The Daily Show and really dig the Colbert Report. Talk about precise satire that cuts to the heart of what's wrong with media, president, politics, cult of celebrity, etc. As I watch, I start to forget that their satire is based on ACTUAL news or tv shows or press conferences or whatever, that they lampoon existing opinions circulating in public space. So reading this guy's posts are surprisingly shocking in that I don't expect someone so young to be so sure of himself and yet so loudly wrong. I don't want to turn consevative minded students into liberals, but I do expect them to learn how to look at a situation from all angles, to THINK CRITICALLY, to differentiate between the plight of the discriminated and exploited verses a no-good bum!! Is that so wrong? Is that too much to ask?

This post has turned into a rant and perhaps altogether not a very interesting one. As you can see, my next few weeks of vacation are sorely needed.