the thing about teaching at a university, no matter how much you think you like teaching and think it’s important, universities are about research. you’re not really rewarded for being a teacher; indeed, at most of them, you are punished if you are seen as a good teacher who wins great evals and awards from students.

and even if you do love teaching, the daily drudge and dreariness of encountering students who are, even at the university where she teaches, ill-prepared for the work and often hostile to it, well it can make you feel as if students are the enemy. in the same way a cashier sees the customer as the enemy i suppose. of course, being an academic with more than a passing interest in social theories which recognize the structural sources of student apathy, ignorance, and so forth then you dress it up in the appropriate language: structural blame and making sure to include the we to which you belong as just another reason: why.

it’s not just that they have been turned into apathetic people with no interest in learning; it’s also that “we” aren’t doing our job — she says. but this is a ruse, an attempt to deflect. to pretend to take some responsibility because, after all, how can you speak in the language of stern, finger-wagging *at* others, if you don’t perform a little defensive self-criticism where you demonstrate that you also criticize yourself. But it’s not at the individual, the writer. Rather, the writer becomes a “we” (which needs a “them”): “OH! it’s not all their fault; it’s also ours.” where her “i” can stand alone, taking responsibility that she expects of others, but must be magnified by a “we” — all of us are not taking responsibility. “we” academics. “we” teachers. “we” — where the “i” recedes. because the writer doesn’t really think she is part of the problem. it’s this we she’s a part of that is. whereas the students, they’re expected to be heroic individuals capable of resisting all of it to leap out of history, heroically resisting.

i’m fascinated by how, everywhere these days, i see this demand for heroic individuals to overcome history and rescue us.