Why Not Cry

For those not reading Snarky Girls (and I suggest you do), I received an answer to my previous posting entitled “Teaching the Snarks”. Thus, feeling my challenge returned, I am going to extract a few comments and highlight them to see if my point is being demonstrated in the details.*

As the posting begins, notice how the default response is the pejorative. Mocking the dull is not difficult work. Worse yet, it misses my point. So, let’s skip to the assumptions she makes about college: “why wouldn't you want to take the time to learn the words and ideas you don't already know? isn't that what college is about?” I think I must state the obvious here: Our assumptions of why people should seek higher education are often not those of our students; the sad truth is that most people in school are here to find jobs, graduate students included. Inga and I might find agreement in our mutual disaffection for the all too absent idea of education for education’s sake, but let me draw your attention to a really incredible passage.

Scrolling down I find something that was well worth the wait—her honest amazement at the efforts of others: “who won't i diss? the student who graduated as validictorian of her high school and couldn't spell to save her life - but who came to visit stella or me every day of every week for the four years she was in school. who else won't i diss? the mother of two whose husband has treated her like shit for the twenty years they've been married, whose self-esteem is non-existent, but who persists through two degrees and takes classes just because they might help her learn something she's not good at yet. i won't diss the grad student in counseling from China, who puts in so many hours each week going to class, stuyding, and working his internship that he rarely sees his wife, who i won't diss either, as she, forbidden from taking classes because she is merely in the states as her husband's wife, but is a published author and former teacher in both china and south korean, sits in on classes, unoffically auditing, just to practice her english.”

There! These are the examples I can point to when I explain to those less-than-enlightened relatives who think that being a business executive is the best use of one’s education and time. Well, I have been employed in an office where the bottom line was the goal, or at least the owners’ caprice and the bottom line, and it was not a wonderful way for me to use my time. Instead of their ridiculous demands, I prefer to work with human beings in the constant effort of self-improvement. Even if I don’t believe in Truth, I can believe in trying to correct the mess I call “me.”

Yet what was really missing from most of Inga’s response was that sense of self-reflexivity I asked for at the end of my previous posting: “If failure is to be the subject of the day, might not some of this disappointment reflect on our own failings?” The closest we come is when she asks “what sort of snarky girl cries?” Well, I assume you would cry because you care, because you don’t want others to repeat the mistakes you tried so hard to avoid, and because you want to like your students, but sometimes they make that almost impossible. So, what is wrong with crying over that? Would that the tears run like dust before the approaching storm for sadness such as this.

*For the record, I enjoy the humor of the Snarky Girls and respect them for their continued commitment to teaching in a society where this activity is not accorded the respect it deserves.