Teachers as Students, Reflecting Resistance

Abstract

A late Wednesday afternoon, the weekly meeting of all first-time graduate students, half doctoral and half masters, teaching in our first-year writing program. One teacher has nearly reached the limit of frustration. Her class has been reading a group of essays about gender issues, and her students' engagement with those readings so little matches her expectations that she seriously doubts not only their abilities to read, write, and think but their very commitment to learning. One article, Bar Wars, by columnist Bob Greene, describes his visit to a bar in which male patrons use Uzi-shaped water guns to shoot female strippers. Some of the students decided Greene is sexist, never minding that his depiction does anything but flatter people in the bar. Worse, the teacher is dismayed that almost none of her students found the bar events evocative or susceptible to analysis. The guys are just having fun, they decided. There's nothing more to it than that. End of discussion.