As many have pointed out before me, using ideology in the classroom does not come easy.

While I was most excited to begin teaching this sequence of readings, my experience has been turbulent at best. I have had no issues with students not contributing to the discussion but rather the content of the contributions has left me disturbed and frankly, afraid. One of my classes, on reading the Epstein essay, came up with a solution to the HIV/AIDS crisis: tattoo people who have HIV so when someone has sex with them, they can see that they have the disease and not have sex with the infected person. The idea came from one person and was readily accepted by the class as a whole and quite enthusiastically, I might add. They are convinced that people with the disease will ALWAYS lie about it and NOT use protection. I found myself in an extremely tricky position; I wanted to scream and shout and yell at my students but I wanted them to listen to the problems that surround this ‘solution’. Four students emailed me later that week that they don’t agree with that solution but that is is still 18/22 students who think that tattooing is a viable option to ending the HIV/AIDS epidemic.

The same set of students, on reading Savage and Vaid, said that bullying is grossly exaggerated and they have never seen anything like the sort so it probably doesn’t exist anymore.

I can identify this as a lack of empathy in my students perhaps, but this battle of different ideologies is something I have not been able to fight. I have, to the best of my abilities, tried to get my students to see the gaping holes in their perspective; videos, and discussions about certain tattooing events of the past have not scratched the surface at all. Just earlier today, I had a student who said he/she supports LGBTQA people but if their child identified as LGBTQA, he/she would try their best to get them therapy as it is not ‘right’.

With this set of readings I am finding it extremely difficult to be detached from the reading material and the discussions that follow. The students don’t raise their voices or get angry; they just say things simply and that freaks me out.

I cannot figure out how to manage this set of opposing ideologies in the class; me versus them.

The advertising anecdote that Murray used in his essay reminded me of something similar that I faced. For the first TV commercial I wrote, my boss kept asking me to ‘clean up the script’. After the sixth revision, I got really annoyed and I handed him a blank sheet of paper, “Is this clean enough?” He looked at it and then told me what he thought should be changed.

It makes for a funny story but I feel that those revisions where I didn’t know what needed to be changed/removed/added just frustrated me and made me doubt my creative process. And that brings me back to what we discussed last week; about writing being one’s baby. Criticism directed towards the piece of writing seems to be then targeted at the person who wrote it, not the piece itself.  I mean sure, I did revise it to what I thought was wrong but I never really knew what was wrong till my boss sat down with me.

But Murray lets the students arrive at their own conclusions!

Murray’s style of teaching sounds highly appealing and somehow like a utopian concept. One-on-one writing advice? Hell yeah, I’d take some of that please and add fries to that. But, his students display the desire to learn, the desire to correct themselves. Sure, I had it the first time I was revising and maybe the second time but after that, I was just pulling my hair out and dreaming of the weekend.

I don’t see that desire to revise in my ENC 1101 students. They don’t want to do this. They don’t care about conferences or pre-draft workshops. Maybe Murray’s students do exist, but certainly not in freshmen composition classes. It sounds like an urban college myth, the perfect class where each student is curious enough to explore on their own and only use the teacher as a sounding board.

Thus endeth the rambling session.

Paulo Freire’s “Banking” concept explains the difficulties I have been facing with my ENC 1101 students. They have been the depositories in high school. They were told how to write an essay; the hamburger model etc. But now, they are in college and have been suddenly told that they must ask questions and engage with the material that they are studying. The syllabus gives them the freedom to explore their own critical thinking process but it is an extremely difficult for them to understand the concept of critical thinking.

And this is where I feel twisted right now; in an effort to explain ‘how’ to think, are we not using the banking method? Relying on the workbook, exercises etc. to show them the way of thinking? I am talking, and they are listening and following. . .Maybe this makes sense, maybe not. I just wanted to put this out here.

Also, I was reminded of an Indian saint, Adi Shankara, who attacked a teacher at a Gurukul because the teacher was making the students repeat shlokas without explaining the meaning. His shloka, Bhaja Govindam (Pray to Govind), talks about the inanity of learning pointless rules when one could be spending that time praying to God.

I am not religious, but I read a lot of Hindu scriptures while growing up and this reading reminded me of this story. Just thought I’d share it with everyone.

Over and out. May the force be with you.