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Like @triciamatthew I have seen this defensiveness from students as they shadow box what they imagine my politcs are. I get the shocked notes about how "fair" I am, as if they were waiting for me to drain their blood. profession.mla.org/academic-freed…
What Corey Robin called "the reactionary mind" has conditioned a generation of students for a war. When it isn't there, they'll provoke it. If they can't provoke sometimes they eventually learn something. But the lost time and respect and growth is a real bummer.
It doesn't help that this conditioning - from parents and popular culture and intentional identity communities - coincides with Ed policy that has made students deeply attuned to giving the teacher what they REALLY want.
Even students prepared for the culture war are generally well trained students if they're in our classrooms. They have a conflict between figuring out what the authority figure wants so they can do academic mimicry and wanting the conflict they've trained for
All of my students fundamentally want my respect and approval. But that desire can conflict with the many incentives to play "gotcha". So they throw out fire bombs: Irish slaves, iq tests, no real wage gap, natural order of things, police are good, etc.
Because they think I want the war. Sadly, some of my colleagues do! But I don't. I don't want an unfair fight. And any fight down is unfair. But by the time they figure it out, half the semester is over. So much time lost
O have had students spend all semester recycling narratives like bias against conservatives in everything...as they get every accommodation and kindness from me and their fellow students. they would acknowledge all of it... and still repeat the narrative
And I wondered what learning could have happened if we weren't playing these roles. Alas, I will never know. The work must be done.
There is another version on the other side where minority students are so isolated and confused that they need you to perform every identity allegiance known to humankind.
You need a dashaki and to pour water out for the ancestors and smudge for colonization and refute standardized tests and class is only 70 minutes long AND YOU MADE SLIDES
Why did I make sliddddes
