Wednesday, June 23, 2021
My Teachers: Anonymous
I'm devoting Wednesdays on the blog to profiling my classmates, teachers, and students.
In the Autumn of 1981, I began college. I was from far away, and hadn't fully taken into account the cultural differences I would face in going to a state school in Virginia. Most of the students there had friends from high school on campus somewhere, and just seemed to know how things worked better than I did. I wasn't even good at walking there-- my pace was to fast compared to the laid-back Virginians.
I figured that at least my classes would provide some common ground, but that idea was quickly squelched in my introductory history class.
The professor was an older man whose name I do not remember. He probably was in his 60's, meaning that he was born before 1920, at the height of Jim Crow-- in fact, he probably grew up around veterans of the Confederacy. He had a deep affection for the Old South, and referred to the Civil War as "The War Between the States." He was dismissive of the Civil Rights Movement, which ran contrary to "states' rights." Slavery, other than as the economic model of a certain time, was not a part of what he taught.
I knew, even then, that he was wrong. He was wrong in what he ignored, he was wrong in what he believed, and he was wrong in what he taught.
That experience shaped me nearly as much as those with the good teachers I had. I knew from then on that some of my professors would be wrong, and it was up to me to discern which of them (and when). Sometimes our teachers truths are misguided, or just not true.
I know that, as a teacher, I have sometimes been wrong. That lesson is there, too.
But as an 18-year-old kid far away from home, that first important lesson was a hard one.
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My husband learned that lesson early too. During the height of the Cold War in his government class at Johnston HS (named after a confederate general) in TX, his government teacher announced, "the only good Russian......is a dead Russian." He too learned that his teachers can be wrong.
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