I taught four classes in a row today, on four topics as I always do Tuesdays and Thursdays this semester, after getting up at 5:30 AM to finish grading and updating WebCT. A job candidate is landing in exactly 34 minutes. I expect to be bleary eyed for some time.
In the fourth class, I began to feel seasick and it was not a physical symptom, as I have been on a health kick for nine days and due to my excellent genes, I can already feel my muscles rippling. No, I began to feel seasick because everyone wanted the answers to simple, yes-and-no questions including spelling, to be ambiguous. At the same time, they wanted simple, black-and-white answers to more complex questions. I was attempting to convince them that:
0. It is supremely easy to distinguish between past and future tense verbs.
1. In the feudal world, nobles and peasants, although unequal, had obligations to each other that went both ways.
2. With the rise of the bourgeoisie, there were bourgeois who were richer than nobles, but mere riches did not accord the bourgeoisie noble status. You could be noble and yet rather poor, and you could be quite rich and yet not noble.
3. The 18th century elites might have been interested in the new philosophies of that era, and they may have believed passionately in a number of ideas about freedom, but they did not necessarily believe these ideas applied, or should be spread to one and all.
4. ‘Modernity’ and modernization are not necessarily all ‘good’ or all ‘bad’. So much depends upon who you talk to (beside the white chickens … sorry, William Carlos Williams, but I am getting punchy).
5. Having an ice-box rather than an electric refrigerator is not necessarily a sign of poverty, if the owner of the ice-box is a rural person living in a so-called developing country in 1946. To the contrary: having the ice-box, and a contract with an ice-man who arrives daily, and food to put in the ice-box, could well be a sign that the owner of the ice-box is comfortably well off.
The students would like point 0 to be more ambiguous, and points 1-5 to be simpler. This has made me literally dizzy. If I had an Alpine lake, I would jump in it to clear my mind. As I do not have an Alpine lake, I may open a bottle of wine.
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 
Try #1 this way: “In the classroom, teacher and students, although unequal, had obligations to each other that went both ways.”
And break out that wine, if the Alpine lake isn’t handy. After 12 hours, you deserve it.
I am not sure what country/continent you are teaching, but I know a little about this lingo for 18th and 19th century Britain.
Many who had titles such as Duke or Baronet and great estates were called “land rich and cash poor.” It seems to be a common trope in Romantic, Victorian, and Edwardian, even some early Modernism. I can think of Sir Walter Elliot in Jane Austen’s Persuasion. He had to “lease” his mansion out and hide away in Bath; because Bath was a suitable, enough place “for a man in his position.” In Anthony Trollope’s “The Way We Live Now,” Melmontt were able to swindle all the old gentlemen with titles with his “speculation” schemes, i.e. stock market. Many would not allow marriages out of their class, especially to a merchant, however it was often a merchant or “tradesman” who got a gentleman out of trouble. The land rich and cash poor gentleman would allow a marriage cross over when the merchant had a daughter with a hefty dowry. I have not read the book Vanity Fair, but I know in the 2004 movie, a Jamaican “mulatto” is being bargained over to become the wife of a gentleman because her white merchant father is loaded with first generation cashola.
As far as the refrigerators. I noticed in recent British shows that many may or may not have a refrigerator, and most are the half size, the one that here in American we would consider a second refrigerator, or one for a college dorm or something. I asked Absorbant about it and I think he told me that he does not have a refrigerator. They still have daily milk service, I see that on Midsomer Murders, As Time Goes By, and Keeping up Appearances.
Another story about the milk. I had a good friend and lover for many years, a doctor from El Salvador. He would tell me stories about how screw his mother is/was. I am sure she was, her husband was a banana truck driver and together they managed to put seven children through college in the late 1940s-1960’s, coming out as one of three, a doctor, lawyer, or engineer. Anyway, she would ask the milkman if he had been through the river (or stream). When he denied it, she confronted him with the fish in her milk. LMAO!!!!! He was watering down the milk.
By the way, verb tenses are difficult for some people. Raising my hand. I’m telling you people who can speak more than one language have a gift. There is some kind of connection to speech, the ability to speak, the ability to determine what sounds right or not. I know, I spent many years in speech therapy and I know there is a connection some how. Luckily my mentor takes the time to help me pronounce many words. I am very grateful.
Yes, crack the wine open. I am just now feeling the pain with students, especially the ones who do not READ the assignments.
Hi Undine – You know, I actually did that, citing the university as a medieval institution and looking at the mutual, if unequal bonds among the members of its hierarchy – and it was the tactic which worked!
And yes, I drank the wine. I slept for 8 hours. I now feel great. Now there is the Job Candidate. I want to go Running in my African Sandals but it appears I must go to a Talk and wear High Heels.
CM, yeah … the students do not believe these things though … maybe it is sort of like the time I read a 20th century novel in which there was mild bestiality … I understood the words perfectly, I just could not believe what I was reading, or that I was reading it … language, gift, I know, but even with a gift, you still have to study, this is the thing … right now I would love to just curl up and read those British novels, I thought I had read Vanity Fair but obviously I need to read it again, I had forgotten the mulatto. I also have not read Moll Flanders.
I meant to say his mother was “shrewd.” Perhaps a Freudian slip thinking about how the milkman was trying to “screw” her over. LOL!
“language, gift, I know, but even with a gift, you still have to study”
I’m sure. I am not trying to guilt you about your gift. I know it takes work. Exactly what I think makes writers good writers vs those with good thoughts but never write, —-their willingness to put in the time.
PZ, ChasingMoksha may be right about #0, but as for #1-5, I’ve come to believe that when people don’t want to learn something, they won’t. It isn’t that it’s difficult; it’s that they are resisting–and you can’t wake up a person pretending to be asleep.
People in the U.S. don’t like to think about class consciousness. We’re socialized to perceive ourselves as one big clump and many of us experience anxiety when presented with the nuances class involves. The campesinas in Mexico, much less “educated,” have no trouble discussing such sophisticated notions as the ones you list.
CM – yes, like writing. Or anything, really, I would suppose: all of those Nobel Prize winners and world famous musicians and so on may be geniuses, but they still work.
CS, class consciousness, yes, and pretending to be asleep, yes. It is true about the campesinas in Mexico and elsewhere, and I’ve had U.S. students who got quite upset about this: “How can they understand these things, not being Americans or ‘educated’, when I cannot?” 😉