By Tom Dodge, KERA 90.1 commentator
Dallas, TX – School is out for me, and out for good this time. I came back to the classroom after retiring seven years ago and am sorry to say that I probably learned more than the students did. One thing I learned was that I was a bad teacher by today's standards. Times have changed for the teacher.
There have always been a few students and administrators who are unreceptive to unpopular ideas. Now, though, I think they have the power to shut the teacher down.
In the 1960's I irritated a few students and administrators at Mansfield High School by opposing the Vietnam War and assigning Mansfield resident John Howard Griffin's book, "Black Like Me." For 25 years at Mountain View College, I presented unpopular ideas in class, but no one ever suggested that I watch what I say.
I should not have been surprised by the change. I had heard of recent incidents in which teachers were silenced for not being "team players." A Kansas teacher gave F's to students who had bought their themes on the Internet. When parents complained, school officials ordered the teacher to raise the grades. An art teacher in Wimberly, Texas lost his job because somebody saw a witch in one of his murals. The mural was painted over.
But this was high school. Now I'm wondering if this great obsession with pleasing everyone has not reached the universities as well. A Harvard professor was criticized by the college president for making a rap record. A University of Texas at Dallas humanities teacher was skewered recently and written up in the newspaper for showing art in class not approved by a student's parent.
In my own case, I was just given to understand I was a bad teacher. But no one warned me about this new pathological appetite for grades among many students. If you don't give them, some of them report you. So, when complaints came in, I was obliged to give an accounting of my bad teaching. Did I say that William Wordsworth's illegitimate daughter Caroline was the result of the only shot this timid poet fired in the French Revolution? The college could be sued over such a remark, I was told. Never mind that it was a cut to Wordsworth, not to women.
I may also have failed as a teacher because I misjudged the depth of this national administrative fear of disharmony. A newspaper columnist in Texas was fired for his comments after September 11th and the President's press secretary defended his firing by saying, "You have to watch what you say." Bill Maher, a crank and a curmudgeon, is being phased out of network television for the same reason. So I was aware of this rolling fog of repression, but still cannot believe it has rolled into academe.
But the chilling e-mail I received from the aforementioned offended administrator leaves me puzzled. It said: "Due to changes, we will not be offering you any courses in 2002-2003. Please turn in your keys and other materials."
I simply taught the same way I had always taught in the past, probing for the verities. But, today, probing for the verities is a little dangerous. So, this time around, I failed as a teacher. But my consolation is that at the end of my life I won't have to look back with sadness, realizing that I had done everything right.
Tom Dodge is the author of "Oedipus Road" and "Tom Dodge Talks About Texas."