Whiny Dante

"I'm not even supposed to be here today!"

I'm not! I'm at work, have been tutoring math for the last several hours as a favor and will now be receptionist-ing for the next several hours as another favor because our front desk person just had a sudden illness in the family. And I'm a nice person. But not so nice I don't feel like channeling Dante. Not the vengeful one, the whiny one. Seriously, I don't even think I'm that nice. Why am I here again? Normally I identify far more with the vengeful Dante. I would offer some Smarties from the jar on this desk to whoever can name the quote, but I doubt it's that hard and frankly, I don't want to have to mail them. They'd end up powder anyway. No candy for you!

Academic Rant #571

After reading several essays with variations on the theme "the Spanish conquest was necessary to create our wonderful modern world" with a range of kickers like "if the natives hadn't resisted Christianity, there would not have been the need for so much bloodshed," I have a few reactions.

I teach math for the GRE and GMAT and verbal/reading/writing skills, as well as logic problems for the LSAT, and I am well acquainted with the feeling when a student doesn't grasp a concept or can't seem to learn it in the way I would prefer. It can be frustrating, but it's not taxing in the same way that reading crap like that is or attempting to find a response to it that will actually challenge the student to learn or open their mind a crack. There is a real difference in the nature of the work, and it is rarely addressed in the academic community.

This reminds me of a conversation I had a week ago with a friend who teaches Ethnic Studies at the local community college. She commented that she often feels like she should be getting hazard pay for the personally grueling work of having to (as a woman of color) teach the mostly white classes of hundreds about racism or sexism or classism. I'm the last person to get on board with a "grad students/professors' lives are so haaaard"-fest, because we are incredibly privileged, comparatively, but the treatment of the humanities in relation to the sciences is pretty disturbing. What is our real goal in providing an education? Frankly, I enjoy math and I may like getting a faster computer every few years but I wouldn't really give a damn if everyone in the world completed their education unable to calculate the area of a cylinder. Especially if they did graduate with a comprehension of their privilege or the resources to organize resistance, an understanding of the implications of their choices, and enough knowledge of the history of capitalism, imperialism and oppression to make different choices in the future. If we actually graduated people that had become better human beings with empathy and a comprehension of their position in a larger community, I wouldn't care if they couldn't chart formal logic problems or reverse-FOIL a quadratic equation. The first set of qualities is simply more important.

But creating better and more socially responsible human beings is not our goal. So the humanities teachers -- who do the actual work of making citizens, as best they can -- not only don't get supplemental pay to recognize the importance of that work, they actually get astronomically less funding and resources than the sciences. And as per the comments from A. yesterday, with the current funding situation all we can do is teach giant lecture courses that are by nature designed to limit or destroy any possibility of critical thinking. Again, I'm not trashing the sciences. But our priorities are all kinds of fucked-up if this is the kind of "education" we think is the most important to provide. I seriously question whether it is possible to work towards revolutionary change while also working within an education system that is designed to maintain the status quo.

Don't even get me started on the grade inflation and consumer commodification of education that means that these racist or otherwise narrow-minded students will still graduate with a degree in liberal arts having never opened their minds an inch.

Script-ure

I'm more than 1/3 of the way through these exams. Apparently "Quetzalcoatl" and "Christ" are synonyms. I have now read more exams that contain some variation of the phrase "Cortes was seen as Christ (or Jesus) returning by the Aztecs" than the phrase "Cortes was seen as Quetzalcoatl returning." Of course, BOTH of these statements are actually inaccurate, which was discussed at length in lecture, but so far only one student has commented on that (there are not many A's in this bunch). It's kind of amazing how strongly people will cling to their scripts. If we spent days and days in lecture (and in the texts) discussing the way in which the conquest largely hinged on the indigenous allies of the Spanish and was not this "great man" narrative wherein twenty white guys defeat thousands of natives because of various areas of superiority, what 90% of the students seem to have heard or taken away was "the conquest was this great man narrative wherein twenty white guys defeated thousands of natives." Whatever version of the script they learned in high school, or grade school, or Disney movies, they just carry forward. It doesn't matter that the entire class is an attempt to disrupt that precise script. They simply block out the parts that problematize it and hear any restatement of it, even in the negative, as a reaffirmation of its truth. It's really quite astounding. I seriously have no idea how one combats the ability of people to hear the exact opposite of what you are saying. Back to grading warrior mode. (Thanks, C.) Slash, burn.

Blatant Hatred No Longer Favored by Majority!

Apparently voters are not quite as enticed by hard-core hate speech and violent homophobia as they were just a few years ago. How touching! Salon article on the GOP's attempt to court libertarians by being more subtle with the hate (a strategy American politicians have learned over many years of couching anti-black racism as "economic" or "tax" or "family values" concerns). Sad that it's supposed to be heartening that many Americans now want to keep their hatred for LGBT folks on a low simmer instead of a full boil. I don't think it's so much a sign of growing "tolerance" (I hate that word!) as much as it is a sign that many right-wing voters currently want to focus the full blast of their hatred on undocumented laborers and pretty much anyone who looks like they weren't born in the U.S....or, to make it easier, just anyone non-white. Since middle-America's image of gay people is typically the flaming white guy from New York who is now the staple sidekick character on countless movies and TV shows, this puts homophobia slightly under anti-immigrant xenophobia on the scale of Which Group Do We Hate More at the moment? These are still the two major civil rights issues of our generation, and I think, much like the rape case indicated yesterday, we're going to keep seeing a growing backlash after a brief period of liberalism and seeming cultural openness.

On another topic entirely, I beat a large group of LSAT students with my giant formal logic stick last night. That just sounds dirty, but it's the most appropriate metaphor for what happened. They were like deer in headlights. I felt bad for them and kind of wickedly enjoyed it at the same time. Now I need to beat up these midterms today. Formal logic goes back in the drawer, because using that standard...weeeelllll, let's just say they'd pretty much all fail. I'll just use my consistency twig and my accuracy wrist-slap. They still better watch out! Happy Friday!

Maryland is for Rapists.

This is revolting. This is why I cannot fucking stand the law.

Maryland Court Rules Consent Only Needed Prior to Sexual Act in Alleged Rape
Cases.

I cannot believe the sick appropriateness of this, but Maryland's state motto is "fatti maschii parole femine," loosely translated as "manly deeds, womanly words." In the sense that "womanly words" have no ability to stop "manly deeds," I guess this ruling is consistent. The only word this court is able to hear from women (yes, I'm essentializing) is "yes." Can they not conceive that you cannot say a meaningful "yes" unless you can also say a meaningful "no?" It reminds me of the rape case in Italy when I was studying there where the judge said rape could not have occurred because the woman was wearing jeans. Jeans = consent. Yeah...I have no words. Which I guess is really their goal, in the end. Fuck you too, Maryland.

Quote of the Day

I am feeling sick today (I blame my job) and I have a long day of class and standardized test teaching ahead. The most pathetic part is that I am actually looking forward to a quiet weekend after this so I can actually grade the remaining 60 of these greenbooks (they're green here, trees or something). Here is this morning's quote from a student's midterm:

"After the concering (sic) of the Inca people and the transport of the gold to Europe the Spanish wanted more. You could say that they were greedy."

Love the understatement. I'm still waiting for one of them to discuss the religious reasons for the conquest. I guess they'd like to pretend that wasn't part of it.

I Vote for Dead People.

This morning, fittingly, I need to vote. I welcome the opportunity to vote on certain issues (parental notification of abortion?) on the ballot this year and I abhor the notion of voting for individual candidates whose affiliation begins with a "D." It reminds me of trying to wash a dirty dish with a dirty sponge -- sure, it may look a little cleaner, but would you really want to eat off of it? You may just have removed some of the obvious crusty bits and left behind some nice flesh-eating bacteria. (Yes, I also need to wash the dishes this morning -- we had a late night yesterday. Just embrace the metaphor.) This is a vestige from my days in the party, this loathing of voting for reformists and thereby taking responsibility for their almost inevitably horrible actions once in office. Democrats are the party of war in this country -- Republicans might start them more, but Democrats are the ones who drag them out. I dwell in skepticism.

On the other hand, skepticism that is not also skeptical of itself risks becoming its opposite. I don't want to be like the abolitionists who refused to donate some of their money to buy Frederick Douglass and other runaways out of slavery because doing so would "taint" them with participation in the slave trade -- that smacks of a self-indulgent, bourgeois (you knew it was coming!) need for purity, something most people in dire situations cannot afford. So I never entirely know what I'm going to do on the individual elections until it's actually time to mark the damn ballot. Unless it's the presidential election -- then I just write in Jon Stewart.

So that brings me, on the day of the dead, to the question of who, alive or dead, I would actually vote for with all my beliefs at least mostly intact? Nelson Mandela and bell hooks are about the only ones I can come up with who are alive. As for the dead: Trotsky, Lenin, Che, Fannie Lou Hamer, Bayard Rustin (nonviolent, sure, but at least he'd end the war), Emma Goldman, Rosa Luxembourg, Frederick Douglass, Malcolm X, Toussaint L'Ouverture...all activists, I left the theorists off because much as I love them, they can be unpredictable and, let's face it, academics are soft. I am bizzarely tempted to add Jane Austen -- what can I say? -- I have an inexplicable love for her. Anyone with that much ability to see through the BS would be nice to have around.

Who would be on your dream team ballot?