Light the Path and Let Them Lead the Way

I had the following email conversation with a student this week:

Me: [to all students] Please remember to bring your first graded rough draft into class next week in order to receive credit for it.

Student: [several days later] I can't find my rough draft anywhere!

Me: You did not turn in a rough draft.

Student: [several days later] Does that mean that I won't get credit for it?

I teach writing. I like to think of my purpose more broadly than that, however, extending my job from teaching prepositions to instructing young minds in how to think critically. I assign readings inspired by current news items (celebrity voyeurism, the ethics of torture in the war on terror, polygamy, you get the idea), and maintain high expectations while being patient and nurturing with their mistakes. I really love my job. There are times when the communal discourse is so passionate and thoughtful, ideas flying around and myself in the middle, sharing pithy bits of theoretical knowledge and telling jokes, writing down interesting ideas on the board. And then there are the times when my students sit, stone-faced like statues of really dull gods; when they forget to turn in work, and to finish the readings, when they skip paper conferences (for which I do not get paid), and when they skip class.

We've had a lot of those times this term.

Somehow my 20-year old students have made it through two decades of life, apparently without thinking much the entire time. I know, this is incredibly hard to imagine. If you're like me, your brain is constantly awake with thought. Not all of it brilliant or even interesting to anyone else, but it is nevertheless active, questioning, engaging the world in an ever-changing dialogue. Maybe you hold fake conversations in your head, like I do. Devise fantastical scenes of drama and happiness; repeatedly compose your wedding vows and future Oscar acceptance speech. Imagine an alter-ego who is a UN human rights lawyer or a diplomat, because reading about politics gets you excited.

You probably READ.

Not so my students. I don't know what they do. And I wish I could just dismiss them as stupid, but the fact is that most of them are pretty smart. Not all--I've definitely had the wrestler with the thick folds of skin at the nape of his neck and across his brow, connecting his eyes and giving him a look of permanent idiocy; the pretty dumb blonde; the illiterate football player; the plain dumb kid with no extracurricular talents in evidence; all of whom happened to be studying primary education (oh mama and we come full circle!)--but most students are intelligent. They just don't care, or they expect to coast through class without trying. Maybe they assess my youth and casual teaching style and think, what does she know?

Here's what I know:

The world is composed of arguments and conversations. Most of the information in these arguments and conversations is highly subjective, laden with unseen biases and smooth-sounding logical fallacies. You either learn to read these dialogues for what they are, or you thoughtlessly vote to invade Iraq.

My students invade Iraq every time, because they don't appreciate the power of language and they don't want to do the hard work of thinking. It is very, very disheartening.