Would you want to send your kid to a "Public School Social Justice Factory"?

Great Debates
201

I disagree. I think there is very deep confusion as to what “marxist literary criticism” means, and that’s probably why Human Action asked you to describe it. Because when various liberal people throughout the thread say “marxist literary criticism”, we’re talking about this, or maybe just “literary criticism that examines literature from the perspective of someone who is aware of classism” (two different things, from where I’m standing), and it seems like you’re describing something entirely different. So let’s leave aside which definition is appropriate until we understand what your definition even is, for the sake of being able to communicate with each other. :slight_smile:

Meanwhile, yeah, I’m sorry, but it’s not “indoctrination” to expect someone to be able to understand the arguments for or against a position. It’s just good rationality. Marxist critique is a lens through which you can view a work. It’s not the only lens, and in many cases, it’s an inappropriate or inadequate lens. But for many works, such as those from Simone de Beauvior or Jean-Paul Sartre, failing to look at them through the lens of Marxist critique will leave you with a thoroughly incomplete understanding of the work, whether you ultimately disagree with what they have to say or not. It’d be like if I tried to read Ben Shapiro’s work without the context of modern conservatism, or “I Fucked Ann Coulter In The Ass. Hard.” without the context of knowing who Ann Coulter is - I’d just end up horribly confused. I don’t have to agree with them in order to have that context, mind you - I just have to understand their perspective and where they’re coming from. And if I can’t do that, I cannot understand their work.

202

That’s all fine. But sadly your open minded approach isnt universal.

Question: What is the racial makeup of your students? How big of a part do you see the students race in their opinions?

203

I dont know about that. It seems to me that at most liberal rallies and protests it’s basically who can outdo each other on being far to the left. Basically who can yell “I hate Trump” the loudest.

204

“Most”? Of the last five liberal protests and rallies you’ve attended, what percentage of the speakers would you say engaged in that behavior?

On the very off-chance that you haven’t attended five liberal protests and rallies in the past quarter century, you should reread the post you disagreed with, and realize how perfectly your post exemplifies it.

205

It should be. And its one of the reasons we want to teach lit crit through a variety of lenses.

Looking at the Great Gatsby through a feminist lens you look at Daisy as a possession. At her relationship with her daughter who she wants to be beautiful and stupid, because that’s the best role for a woman. At her culpability in the tragedy that is Gatsby. You look at Jordan as a representative of the “new woman” of the 20s, and compare her against Daisy. Gatsby himself becomes incidental.

A Marxist reading will look at Gatsby’s class struggle. At the role of the Wilsons. At the difference between West Egg and East Egg. At Nick, who is from the same class as Tom and Daisy, but doesn’t have their wealth. Gatsby’s story is important from a class perspective, but it isn’t the entire story.

A psychoanalytic reading will look at Gatsby motivations. At his personification of Jesus. Perhaps the role of fathers in his life.

Each of these will have a different focus and a different context. All are valuable (in the sense that lit crit is valuable) in understanding the text and the context of the book - and hence the context of the society. They aren’t judgmental readings, we don’t tend to say whether Jordan or Daisy is a better woman or whether the Wilsons are good people just because they are poor.

When we teach History we also want to teach multiple perspectives. The Civil War is meaningless without the context of slavery. But it also does a disservice not to understand that by getting rid of slavery in this country we were going to cause the economic collapse of an entire region. Both perspectives - slavery was a cruel institution, and the South was dependent on it for their economic existence, need to be taught. The rise of Nazism only makes sense if you also talk about the economic collapse of Germany post WWI and the role that Britian, France and the U.S. played in that collapse.

If you take an Ethics course, you’ll study utilitarianism, deontology and hedonism. There is no move in that study to turn you into a hedonist, but it is valid as an ethical system. And if you major in Medicine, Law, Business - you’ll probably take an ethics class.

Studying these things is important because it does teach us to see things through other lenses. That makes for good lawyers, good doctors, good business people, good therapists, good policemen, good teachers - who need to be able to see through other eyes to do their jobs well. It may not be terribly important for an electrical engineer, but we still need people who work with people. And, Gatsby as Jesus fits that cocktail party of a certain type of nerd.

206

Derleth didn’t think it was unrelated - maybe you should take it up with him.

Literary criticism is one thing, but it presupposes reading for comprehension. Try that first. Same with this -

Marxist/feminist/leftist literary criticism needs to be applied to texts like 1984 before they try it with Third World lesbian post-colonialism. They need to pay special attention to the notion of crimestop.

Regards,
Shodan

207

Well, it’s a good thing the Edina public school board isn’t doing those things. 200 posts and people are still beating the shit out of a straw man.

Ah, yes, the old “Kids today are terrible, but of course MY kids are an exception” story.

People under 30 today are as smart, as open minded, and as critical as people have ever been in the history of the world.

208

I can ask him, and I’m also asking you – do you think SSM is related to the concept of marxist literary criticism? I think they’re entirely unrelated.

Hopefully this means you’re recognizing that marxist literary criticism is entirely different from teaching kids to be marxists. We were hoping you’d actually admit that you made a mistake (and I know you’re capable of it – I’ve seen it with my own two eyes!), but that may just be dreaming.

209

As an academic myself, I want to register that the above represents a common (and somewhat understandable, somewhat) misunderstanding of this language of “I’m teaching this course from an X point of view.”

We have to be careful with that language because many students misunderstand it to mean “you better share my point of view or else.”

For the huge, huge majority of academics who choose to say from the outset what their school or point of view is, the intention is to lay bare their own biases, precisely in order to signal that their word isn’t law.

As an academic, I’m more suspicious of things written by people who claim not to have an ideological point of view. Things written by such authors are less likely to be worth my time, because they are less likely to contain the kind of self-reflection, self-criticism, and intellectual empathy, that is necessary for good, constructive, critical academic work.

Not claiming to have an ideology is different from claiming not to have an ideology, of course, but still–“Here’s my ideology” at the outset of the course is somewhat comforting as opposed to either “I have no ideology” or simple silence on the matter.

But like I said. We do have to be careful about how we talk about our own ideologies–students practically universally come to university traumatized by authoritarian teacher and parent figures in their upbringing–and unfortunately, there are of course such instructors at the academic level as well, I’ve experienced one myself, but importantly, this is very much the exception–and we academics are so used to non-authoritarian norms we often forget the implications of those experiences.

TLDR: “I’m teaching from X ideological point of view” tends to indicate fairmindedness in the prof making that claim, rather than, as Shodan and many many others have assumed, some kind of authoritarian declaration of expected allegience or submission. It’s the lack of such a disclaimer that’s more suspicious.

210

I’m lolling silently in my mind.

211

Shodan, when I teach Huck Finn, I talk about how Huck and Tom have different understandings and experiences because of class differences: Tom sees himself as a fully-entitled member of society, and while he may break the rules, he really doesn’t question them. He also believes what he reads in books and what he is told unquestioningly, and uses the “authority” of being well read to claim the role of leader whenever the boys play. Huck also tends to accept that Tom is entitled to be the boss–he buys into society’s assessment of him. But at the same time, he’s also able to question the default assumptions of those around him much more freely because his position as an outsider also gives him more freedom. This is a Marxist reading of Huck Finn. It’s also pretty standard. If I were teaching your kid and we had this conversation about Huck Finn–one of many different lenses we bring to the book–would you call that indoctrination?

When I teach The Odyssey, we talk about the killing of the handmaids and how to modern eyes it is profoundly disturbing because from the point of view of a woman who needed protection, developing relationships with the suitors was likely making the best of a bad situation. We also talk about Penelope, and Dorothy Parker’s excellent poemabout her, and we talk about how different cultures defined the ideal man and the ideal woman differently. Those things are looking at the Odyssey through a feminist lens. Again, would you call that indoctrination?

In another class, when I teach Marx, I start with Adam Smith, and the pins, and the idea that the “industrial revolution” was more about specialization and division of labor than about machines. And then we read Horace Mann, who talks about how education is the great balance wheel on the machine of society, because it provides economic mobility and so prevents the hostility of labor against capital. And THEN we read The Communist Manifesto, which was published one year after the Mann we read, and we focus on the idea that Marx sees labor as becoming increasingly homogeneous and unskilled. Then I let them figure out that Mann and Marx contradict: that education doesn’t matter if skilled labor is becoming meaningless. Then I ask them who was right, and why, and they generally stumble (awkwardly, this is like teaching beginning band) onto the idea that Marx was making a very reasonable prediction based on current trends in his society, but that he didn’t foresee how many skilled jobs would arise in this new society–everything from the people that design the machines to things like entertainment and medicine and advertising. All that takes a little over a month. Is that indoctrination? Am I making little Marxists out of them?

You can’t make thinkers out of kids if you don’t talk about real ideas. If you decide issues of race, gender, and class are off limits, you don’t have many real ideas to talk about.

212

This is a fantastic post. I do hope Shodan and Urbanredneck consider it carefully.

213

“It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.”

  • Aristotle

It’s kind of funny to me that there’s a very famous quotation by a great thinker that directly supports the very idea that you seemed to ridicule.

214

I think they’re tangentially related through the idea of critical thinking, which isn’t directly related to critical theory, either. My thesis was that, once you begin to close-read texts, you can apply that to religious texts, at which point you are likely to realize that the Bible is a document created in a time and a place with an agenda to it, like every other document, and that once you begin to question the dogma built up around Biblical “literalism”, the “literalists” have no response. They can strike you down, but that doesn’t qualify as an argument.

215

You know, just because brainyquote attributes it to Aristotle doesn’t mean he said it. The closest quote I can find is from the Nichomachean Ethics:

“…for it is the mark of an educated man to look for precision in each class of things just so far as the nature of the subject admits;
it is evidently equally foolish to accept probable reasoning from a mathematician and to demand from a rhetorician scientific proofs.”

216

I can entertain the concept without accepting that Aristotle said it, which is probably what he wanted me to do anyway.

217

I’ll second this. Shodan and Urbanredneck, please ignore my feeble snark in favor of Manda Jo’s excellent post above.

218

Great, entertain away, but now without a false attribution.

219

Not only would I want my kids in Manda Jo’s classes, particularly if I’m intending them to go on to a top 100 4 year college or university as most parents in Edina are going to desire for their kids, I want to take Manda Jo’s classes.

220

It’s pretty universal. I’m sure there are exceptions out there, but that’s what they are: exceptions. From your other posts, both in this and other threads, I can deduce that you’re pretty distrustful of public schools, so you may be inclined to see the exceptions as the norm. Since all the other teachers in my department were very conservative, if they DID let their opinions be known, it would be probably make you very happy. This notion that all teachers are liberal is just plain wrong.

I’m not going to answer the your questions at this point, as they seem baited to me, and I don’t want to turn this into a debate on race. Or is there some subtle racial subtext I’ve missed?

More kudos to Mandy Jo for a great post.

May I also request that we delineate between K-12 education and post-secondary education? I’ve taught both, and the parameters are somewhat different in college classes, as students are adults–ostensibly, anyway.