Conscience, Politics, And The Classroom

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judi bandarq onlineI offended a student yesterday in class. We were discussing Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. The novel is a modern-day version of a slave narrative, purportedly written by a woman trapped as a sexual handmaid to a government official in a futuristic, dystopian society. The back story is that social unrest and civil war have allowed a socially- and religiously conservative theocracy to take hold in Northern New England. Due to low birth rates among whites, women with viable ovaries have been captured and sent to re-education camps where they are brainwashed and then sent to become handmaids to the Commanders in charge of this theocracy. They are forced to submit to ritualized rape. Justification comes from the Biblical story of Jacob and Rachel in Genesis 29, in which Jacob conceives a child by Rachel’s handmaid Bilah when Rachel proves infertile.

The novel was published during the Reagan administration and was intended to critique the Right Wing and the influence of Evangelical Christianity upon the Republican party. The Commander’s wife Serena Joy is a take on Tammy Faye Bakker, right down to the running mascara when she cries on camera. The handmaid recalls seeing her on TV, campaigning for a return to traditional social values and family structures. She observes that Serena Joy did not uphold these values herself, being a public figure and traveling to campaign, and also notes that once the theocracy was in place, Serena Joy was forced to live the life she campaigned for—and hated it.

I mentioned the similarity to Tammy Faye to my students, but no one knew who she was. I gave a quick explanation. Then I tried to make a connection to contemporary politics by pointing out the coincidence that we were discussing this book on election day, and that we currently had a Republican woman running for senator. I said something to the effect that Linda McMahon was a highly successful woman who had become the nominee of a party that, if it had its way, would roll back women’s rights.

Now I know this isn’t necessarily true of McMahon. Much as I opposed her election, she is a New England Republican, which is a different breed of Republican, tending to be fiscally conservative but socially moderate. McMahon herself supports basic reproductive rights for women and the rights of states to make their own determination on gay marriage.

For the most part, the students seemed too disinterested in contemporary politics to know or say much about the subject. However, one girl in my class just up and walked out. As one boy said to me after class, “Man, that chick just jetted after you dissed McMahon.” Yes, she did.

I worried all day about this girl and whether or not I offended her. I don’t think there is anything wrong with a professor (or a secondary teacher, for that matter) expressing his or her political opinions. The only objection would be if students were rewarded or penalized depending on whether or not they shared the instructor’s opinions. Otherwise, sharing your opinions might be better, more honest and transparent. I’ve certainly had students who were much more politically conservative than I am who did very well in my courses, and in a couple of instances when students have done poorly in a class and attempted to complain that they did poorly because I didn’t like them or something like that, I could point to those students who did well regardless of their very different political and/or religious outlooks.

Nonetheless, I hate having upset a student, even if it may be the case that she overreacted. The first book we read this semester was Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and I found myself thinking about Huck’s ironic struggles with his conscience throughout the novel. At one point, Huck says, “It don’t make no difference whether you do right or wrong, a person’s conscience ain’t got no sense, and just goes for him anyway. If I had a yaller dog that didn’t know nomore than a person’s conscience does, I would pison him. It takes up more room than all the rest of a person’s insides, and yet ain’t no good, nohow.”

I wouldn’t say I feel bad about what I said, or that I would have said something different if I had the chance for a do-over. I guess I wish the girl had just challenged me and sparked a good discussion in class. That wouldn’t have pricked my conscience at all.