Things to Say, IV

I would be loathe to see students stop at their emotional reactions to a text, of course.  After all, a good deal of the destruction of public discourse has to do with overly emotional reactions to how certain situations, words, and concepts make us feel, as opposed to whether or not they are actually true or false, good or bad, useful or otherwise.

But the fact remains that, while a merely emotional reaction to any text is inadequate, an emotional reaction is better than no reaction at all.  And too often, as a teacher, that was what I saw: not that my students (some woke, some not) would get angry or offended by what I presented to them, but that they simply would not care.  The most that would happen was a sort of mild approval or disapproval, usually evoked when they perceived a text as being in agreement or not, respectively, with what they felt they believed.

But oftentimes, their understanding of the text or concept was so superficial that they didn’t really know whether they agreed with it or not—and they didn’t know how to react—and hence, apathy.

What they really needed to learn was how to recognize when a text was opaque, and how to dig into it.  But they needed such a vast array of tools for that task, so many of which were lacking, that it was impossible for me to provide them with everything they needed.