I
I am making grades. I had planned to support a Troop with PTSD by faking him up to a 90 because he really would be in the A- range if it were not for the debilitating effects of PTSD and because he is one of the few people in that class who have an adult attitude toward learning. In the end I did not support him in this way because he squeaked to a 90 on his own.
I wrote my own final. In this multi-section course we are asked to use the examinations prepared by the textbook company and they are awful. 50% of the students fail them, yet they are afraid to take any other type of test because they believe they will do still worse. Learning is not learning, it is doing exercises on a familiar test format.
I have been terribly frustrated because these tests do not test the skills I want the students to acquire. The final I wrote did test these skills, and the students did far better. I have been teaching this course since I was 22 and I have taught it at four universities. Teaching it in a way I know does not foster the acquisition of the skills I need to see in students at upper levels has been the most frustrating academic experience of my life so far.
The worst of it is the feeling of no longer being trusted to write an examination for a sophomore level course. The word for this is disempowerment. I keep wondering, when will I be allowed to grow up? And as someone smart pointed out, it is also a case of loss of academic freedom.
II
In Reeducation I also lost freedom. This was debilitating. On Mindfields it is recommended that one build resilience, but in Reeducation weakness was valued. Resilience Tips 2, 5, 7, 8 and 9 in particular were anathema to Reeducation. Reeducation was also opposed to the fulfillment of these Maslovian needs: a) the sense of autonomy and control, the volition to make responsible choices; b) the sense of competence and achievement; and c) meaning and purpose, which come from being stretched in what we do and think.
To have these needs fulfilled, and/or to be generally resilient was to be in a state of sin. One was to let go of these things and resign oneself to nothingness. As we know, I told Reeducation this plan was not at all logical, and the riposte was that my ability to be logical was a serious problem.
I really did work to restructure myself along Reeducation’s plan – it was in the air, and we were told we must work and suffer and would finally feel free. Now, as we know, I am still trying to restructure myself back.
III
In the past few weeks I have lost my research thread because of having to attend to utterly unreasonable student and service needs. And sometimes I wonder whether my vulnerability to Reeducation was an epiphenomenon of an unadmitted lack of interest in my research field, or in academia generally. Did I enter into this complicated theatre just to suppress those sorts of doubts – or to suppress doubts about the viability of the project in which I was engaged at the time? I never know because I am utterly addicted to intellectual exploration.
We do know that my vulnerability to Reeducation was a result of feeling as out of place as I still do in my town. As far as the town goes, I have given up my attempts to adjust. This lifts a great weight. If I can lift the last of Reeducation I may be able to discover whether I am interested in my research field or not – that is to say, interested enough in it that it blocks the town from view. I already know the answer, of course: the town kills me, and I always perk up as soon as I get on the road.
On a more positive note, I have always noticed that I lose my research thread when I lose my teaching thread, and I lose my teaching thread when I am teaching multisection courses under the direction of undertrained instructors and adjuncts. That, on Friday, will end for this academic year.
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 
It’s bad if you can’t teach the way you want to. This would disturb me a great deal.
As for myself, I often feel sidelined by my more nuanced perspective on the world. For instance, in the Secular Party, I still think most of my colleagues have little idea of the criteria I used to determine the order of my preferences (where the votes would go, in terms of my preferences, if we didn’t win).
My ideas as to what is “religious” (and therefore should be opposed) are very nuanced. For instance, I would consider a right wing political cult to be religious because it works by mystifying its followers. So I would put this kind of mystical cult right towards the end of my preferences, even after the self announced fundamentalists. So it goes.
It is easy to dismiss very nuanced thinking as if it were just so much feminine irrationality. What can you do?
“It is easy to dismiss very nuanced thinking as if it were just so much feminine irrationality. What can you do?”
Very true. What one can do: undertake excellent feminist research? Write it all down and get it recognized?
“I would consider a right wing political cult to be religious because it works by mystifying its followers.”
Just like Reeducation. I am tempted to add to this post: one of the best students I ever had started Reeducation just before I did. She soon started smoking and skipping classes and was very nervous – and would yet come to my office and announce that she was a “dysfunctional worm” (sic). I would say look, I see why you are trying Reeducation but it is not doing you any good, but she was already caught in the cult. There was nothing for it but to give her a C, and others did the same, and she lost her assistantship and so on.
Interestingly, I thought, “She is taking Reeducation the wrong way, what is happening to her will not happen to me because I will not allow it.” It did, of course, and I think that the fact I noticed the danger and ignored it is a sign that I too was already sinking, if less visibly.
Interestingly, I thought, “She is taking Reeducation the wrong way, what is happening to her will not happen to me because I will not allow it.”
This is interesting because it links to notions of uniqueness posted by the Narcissist guy (who, by the way, I think hates himself because he has not had a good and stable career pattern — unlike myself who would hate myself if I had.)
Wouldn’t it be great if, instead of saying to ourselves, “ah, that person got caught out by such and such a situation because they are neurotic, or because they are weak, or because they are unusual and misinterpreted something,” we would perceive, “ah, that human being got caught in a trap — a trap set for humans! It is very likely that I could become caught in it, too!”
The second way of thinking is becoming closer to my natural way of thinking, these days. I’m wiser. There was a certain point when I decided to clean the slate, as it were, regarding the pursuit of uniqueness. I said to myself, “I’m tearing off that layer of expressing personal endeavour that I learned only late, from my Western context. I’m reverting to an earlier collectivist mindset, which is closer to my actual self.”
So, I did that, and except in the times when I need to bolster myself against the mechanistic pressures of the system, by adopting something similar to narcissistic defence (within the range of normalcy), the approach of seeking for what is similar and commonly human in others, rather than for what is different, works for me. It is possible to learn a lot this way, without feeling threatened, and therefore without losing one’s easy individualism.
“ah, that human being got caught in a trap — a trap set for humans! It is very likely that I could become caught in it, too!”
Yes – this is what I finally learned by deconstructing the whole thing. But: what Reeducation would say is that by saying that I am not “taking responsibility” for “my part in it.” (Reeducation thinks we do not know that everyone breaks under torture.)
I can’t even imagine why reeducation would say that. But if you had to account for your “part in it”, what could you say to yourself that was genuine?
You could say that humans are not build with inner wisdom but have to gain it, often through pain, but at very least with an element of trial and error — hence natural curiosity and the courage to err were your “part in it”.
Another part in it could have been your general positivity towards the world — in a word, trust. So that was another element of your part in it.
And beyond that, all but the most hardy of us tend to defer to the opinions of authorities just because they are authorities, once in a while. It is a natural human adaptation, but also something we are all conditioned to do, when we are children dependent upon our parents. We defer to them. This is infinitely human to do. So being human was also your “part in it”.
etc.
Yes. I think Reeducation was designed for real narcissists and abusers, and/or people who tend to delude themselves more than I do. People like my students, who do NOT … and it is also very, what you would call “Western.” Individualistic and so on.
What I used to say to Reeducation: so if there is an earthquake and I am injured in it I am supposed to undertake self-examination to see through exactly what “defect of character” I committed the error of being in a place which had an earthquake, and so on? Tiresome. Reeducation did not get it, but I think that line of questioning and reasoning *is* narcissistic and odd, and you have to have free time and no serious problems to even be able to engage in it.
Thinking about it: the problem with Reeducation was that it was so NEGATIVE. I got depressed by Reeducation and still am, but I am not naturally depressive and what Reeducation hated about me, ultimately, was that I was so POSITIVE.