Annalisa Castaldo

The Disgusted Teacher

     In her paper, a student mustnot only support her belief in the death penalty, but also presentcounter-arguments to the readings. In response to an essay whichclaims that the death penalty is used in a racially biased way,the student writes, "Mostly blacks are given the death penaltybecause blacks are more violent and commit more crimes than otherraces."

     A student's assignment asks whetheror not the U.N. should put a stop to infibulation in the ThirdWorld. The assignment is couched in and refers back to readingsabout multiculturalism and respect for other systems of belief.The student bypasses these questions and, as his main argument,suggests that infibulation should not be stopped because womenwho have had the operation, unlike American women, do not cheaton their husbands.

     A student comes into the UniversityWriting Center, seeking help with a first year composition assignmenton homosexual marriage. Her ideas are unfocused and she has nosupport for her view that gays should not be allowed to marry.After a half-hour, the student finally reveals that she is havingtrouble because, like Queen Victoria, she doesn't believe homosexualsactually exist. The frustrated (and gay) tutor bursts out with,"Well, you've been talking to one for the last half hour!"

     It can happen at any moment,to any instructor, that sudden, unreal feeling when a studentvoices a view that seems simply wrong. Not unsupported, or badlythought out, but simply, obviously and completely wrong.Women are biologically programmed to be neater than men. Vegetariansare cold all the time and die early because they don't eat enoughprotein. Children placed in day care grow up to be psychopathickillers. These kinds of views can surface anytime, but they seemto come up more often and to be more of a problem in first-yearwriting classes. They come up more often, it seems, because first-yearwriting classes are small, discussion-driven and tend to focuson building arguments by examining such controversial topics asabortion and the death penalty. First-year writing classes alsofocus on the student's ability to present and defend an opinion,rather than master a set of facts or theories. They are more problematicin these classes than elsewhere because the opinions form thebasis of written work. During a verbal exchange, an instructormay choose either to ignore or to reveal her reactions to an argument.Papers, on the other hand, require grades. In a class where thegrade is based on mastery of facts, the feelings may be separatedfrom the grade. This is difficult when the argument is the reasonfor the grade. Can a well-written, coherently argued paper whichclaims that AIDS is God's punishment for perverted sexuality earna high grade?

     The standard method of dealingwith a student's belief which is antithetical to one's own isto remain objective and deal with the offensive material on thelevel of argument. Many feel that to react and then grade on asubjective level would mean enforcing a viewpoint, which wouldbe a misuse of our authority as teachers of writing. In fact,many writing instructors begin their classes by assuring the studentsthat it is the way the argument is presented, not the contentof that argument, that will be graded. Most instructors feel thisis the only fair method and that a liberal (such as myself) shouldbe able to put aside her personal beliefs and respond to a conservativepaper in the same manner as a liberal one.

     This is how I handled the firstcase--the student who believed blacks were inherently prone tocrime. I did not attack the rest of her paper, although I am personallyopposed to the death penalty, but I felt that I could not letthis specific sentence go unremarked. I suggested, in a neutraltone, that this point was controversial. She agreed. Did she haveany proof or support? Not only did she not have proof, but shedid not entirely believe the statement herself. Rather, she wasresponding to the requirements of the assignment that forced herto present counter arguments to the essays she had read. Unableto think of a better argument, she had rejected the author's claimthat African Americans were treated unfairly by the justice systemby simply assuming that they were treated fairly. Once that decisionhad been made, she had very little choice but to claim that theauthor's statistics on the race of death row inmates proved theinherent criminality of African Americans.

     With her thought process uncovered,I was able to turn the tutoring session toward a discussion ofpossible counter arguments (my disgust at the sentence did nothave to come into play; she was never made aware of my feelingsbecause the reason for those feelings was easily discarded). However,later I spoke with an African American tutor who had seen an earlierdraft of the paper. She told me she refused to deal with thatsentence because she had been afraid of getting into an argumentwith the student. So she had simply skipped over it. She recognizedthis solution as problematic because the argument---unsupportedand inflammatory---certainly weakened the paper. Therefore shefelt torn, but did not see how else to behave.

     Neither of us, of course, hasany way of knowing if the information I imparted would have beenas well received from an African American tutor. But her beliefthat she could not confront the student---that this would be amisuse of her authority as a tutor---caused me to reconsider thepath I had chosen in this and other cases. I wondered if maintaining,or attempting to maintain, a politically neutral and objectivestance when a student's thinking deeply offends us is, in fact,the most useful approach. This exchange made me reflect on othermoments in my teaching career when I was literally disgusted bya student's beliefs and how I reacted to that disgust. I realizedthat there were times I had felt that it was impossible to stayneutral and yet unfair to the student not to.

     One of these moments involvedthe discussion of infibulation, which was contained within a papera student wrote in one of my first-year composition classes. Fortwo weeks, I had been attempting to complicate my class's thinkingabout multiculturalism. Much of the class remained resolutelydetermined to be good liberals and allow other cultures to dowhatever they wanted, no matter how odd, barbaric or inhuman itappeared to them. When I created the paper topic on this issue,I specifically wrote that women from within the culture were appealingto the U.N. for help in stopping infibulation so that I couldpush the students to recognize that a culture is not a monolithicstructure, with every person believing the exact same thing asevery other person. I expected to read papers which ignored thisaspect of the paper topic and insisted that "A Culture"be allowed to do what "It" felt was best. I did not,however, expect a paper which argued that the practice of infibulationwas actually a good thing.

     My reaction to the paper wasnot the neutral, objective stance I was able to maintain whenfaced with the argument about African Americans and the deathpenalty. I am not African American, but I am a woman and a feminist.My reaction was therefore much more personal. I not only failedthe paper; I also wrote a comment longer than the paper itself.However, despite my personal anger, I couched my comments in termsof the weakness of the argument--the lack of support, the failureto take into account the whole assignment, the logical flaws.By the time I was done writing my comments, I felt perfectly justifiedin failing the paper.

     The truth of the matter is thatI could have failed almost any paper in the class for the samereasons, if I had wanted to. The student's arguments were perhapsa bit weaker, but not by much, than his peers. I wanted to failthe paper because I found the beliefs expressed there not onlyoffensive but dangerous. However, I did not feel that I couldtell the student that, just as the African American tutor didnot feel she could confront the racism in the death penalty pusedmy superior skill at constructing and supporting arguments tomake the student's paper seem worse than it was. In other words,I took the question that ended the first paragraph of this essay,"Can a well written, coherently argued paper which claimsthat AIDS is God's punishment for perverted sexuality earn a highgrade?" and answered "A paper that claims that AIDSis God's punishment cannot be well written and coherently argued."But this is dishonest because it refuses to accept any views butmy own.

     Not only was it dishonest, butmy belief that I could not confront the student on any politicallevel without misusing my authority as an instructor preventedme from seeing what I now believe was the true conflict. In thisand other cases where students express beliefs their instructorsfind offensive, it is because of separate warrants---the ideologicallybased axioms which underpin an argument. All arguments and beliefsare based on such warrants. An example is the belief about whenlife begins (as used in the abortion debate). In this case thewarrant is clearly stated, but most often they are submerged inthe writer's mind because they are considered to be facts, notbeliefs. Even when warrants are clearly stated and argued, theyare often still treated as facts (as with the question of whenlife begins).

     My student was a first-generationcollege student who came from a strong Hispanic background. Hiswarrants---as he made clear in class and in other papers--werethe absolute sanctity of the family and the maintenance of thefamily in troubled time by a strict adherence to the chain ofauthority: women obey men, children obey parents, and so on. Thefact behind this chain of authority appeared to be that it wasthe only way to maintain both financial independence and culturalunity in an unfamiliar, sometimes unwelcoming world. I could neverhelp him to articulate his beliefs and learn to understand boththem and the way others might perceive them because I was toobusy attacking his grammar in lieu of engaging with his views.

     At the time I felt I was beingas fair as I could. I now think that engaging this student inan actual political discussion would have been more useful forboth of us. It would have allowed my anger to dissipate somewhatbecause I could have explained to him why I found his views upsetting.It would have given him a chance to understand that some of hiswarrants were problematic within the university setting (or atleast in classrooms run by women). Most important, it would haveprevented me from the authoritarian move of failing the paper"objectively" through my superior critical skills. Asit was, the student left my class without learning that therewere other ways of looking at his world (and perhaps with a lowergrade than he deserved).

     Engaging a student's warrants,that is, attempting to explain clearly why things they see asfactual are actually ideological and subjective, has two greatbenefits. The first is the creation of an actual intellectualcommunity. It is, I think, too easy to feel that our criticalthinking skills are superior to those of our students and thereforenever to reveal our own warrants, even to ourselves. To take thebeliefs of our students seriously enough to argue with them meansputting our own beliefs and warrants out in the open, intellectualdebate, in which both instructor and student are willing to haulout the big guns, will also foster the development of criticalthinking. Whatever we say to our students at the beginning ofthe semester, most of them see school as an exercise in givingthe teacher what she wants and whatever critical thinking skillsthey develop in First-year Composition are not transferrable tothe real world. Perhaps idealistically, I believe that lettingstudents know all of my reactions can let them use the criticalthinking skills we cherish in a way that matters to them.

     I want to make clear that I amnot proposing we fail students who disagree with our politicalor social beliefs. I believe, however, that pretending that wehave no political or social beliefs can ties us in knots and keepus from treating our students as the critical thinkers we hopethey can be. If we only engage in debates on safe subjects, andretreat to issues of grammar or paragraph organization wheneverwe feel threatened or offended, we value neither our studentsnor ourselves. If we do engage our students, if we let them knowwhen their ideas are unacceptable to us as people rather thanas teachers, they can have the chance to defend their warrants.And even if the warrants remain unacceptable to us, we can onlyapprove of the skills required to defend them.

     A different model--less objectivebut even more fair--is suggested by the third case in which thewriting tutor used her own sexual orientation to educate a student.The tutor could have remained silent, allowing the student togo on holding to her belief that homosexuality was a media creationand also allowing a part of herself to be erased. She could havecontinued to try to work within the confines of the paper topicin an objective way, concentrating on helping the student to supportarguments she did not believe. Her comment presented the studentwith absolute proof that at least one of her warrants was wrong.Homosexuals did exist and they were not all living in Hollywood.The student's warrant was wrong: it was not a case of bigotrybut of incorrect information. The tutor could show her she waswrong if she were willing to step out of the objective, instructormode and react as a person and a homosexual.

     Of course, not all cases arethis simple. The African American tutor could hardly have launcheda sneak attack because her race was and is always apparent. Mystudent's warrants about women's fidelity were wrong in my world,but acceptable and even important in his. But education is basedin the belief that students should be challenged (certainlySocrates never worried about remaining neutral in a debate). Ateacher is not a robot and we should not require of ourselvesthat we grade, teach, or think like one.

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