![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
Ask a Teacher: My daughter's teacher is a misogynist
Q: My daughter is a sophomore in high school, and I recently attended her back-to-school night. She has always loved English, and she is an avid reader and creative writer. She really likes her advanced English teacher this year—a middle-aged man who has been at the school for over two decades. She was eager for me to meet him at back-to-school night and told me she thought I’d like him a lot as well.
I enjoyed meeting her English teacher that night, until the last minute of his presentation. He seemed down-to-earth, funny, and thoughtful about what he was trying to accomplish with the books he has assigned this semester. But then a woman behind me raised her hand and said that she noticed all the works this semester are by male authors (Shakespeare, Salinger, etc.) and asked whether he would be teaching any works by women during the year. His response? “Yes, this semester there are dead white males all over the place.” Everyone laughed. “I’d really like to teach women authors, of course, but they’re hard to find. I keep reading works by women to find something to teach, and I’ll think I have one, but then I get to a passage and think, ‘Whoa, I’d get arrested if I taught this.’ Either that or they’re just not complex enough. So, I’m reading some things now that might work out, and I hope they do. We’ll see. I’ll let you know.”
My jaw dropped. There was no time to respond because the bell rang to indicate our session with him was over. I am appalled by this statement, and I’m paralyzed about what tone to take when I address the situation. I tend to give people the benefit of the doubt and mute my outrage, as I express that I am “trying to better understand” their position, but in this case I don’t think I can pull that off with any sincerity.
I have considered taking his statement at face value by providing a list of the many female authors whose work is neither pornographic nor insufficiently complex—Edith Wharton, George Eliot, Zora Neale Hurston, Louise Erdrich, Amy Tan, Margaret Atwood, Sandra Cisneros, Ursula K. Le Guin, Virginia Woolf, the Brontë sisters (I could go on and on and on … ).
I resent the idea of spending any time trying to phrase my concerns in a way that won’t alienate the teacher or cause him to treat my daughter differently. He is completely out of line, and I also worry this sexist stance toward female writers means he has the same stance toward the girls in his classes as well.
How do you think I should communicate about this situation with the teacher, the principal, and my daughter?
—Outraged Mother
Dear Outraged,
Jesus, take the wheel! Whew. OK. I see two related but distinct problems here. The first and far more correctable is the content of the teacher’s curriculum. The overreliance on the dead white guys of Ye Olde Vaunted Literary Canon is an issue endemic to high school English courses, one that many teachers are working to rectify. Fortunately, as you note, there are myriad beautifully crafted, thematically rich works that also represent a diverse range of voices and perspectives.
He fundamentally does not recognize the intellectual equality of women. There is no other explanation—none—for classifying every female author he has ever read as too simplistic or too gratuitous to be studied in his class.
Buuuuuuut that brings us to the second, much less fixable problem: the mindset driving this man’s instructional decisions. Your daughter’s teacher is funny, likable, down-to-earth, an experienced veteran of his profession. He builds positive relationships with his students and speaks thoughtfully about his work. He is also a misogynist. (One of the unsettling features of life as a woman: interacting with people whose many positive traits exist harmoniously with a demonstrated inability to recognize you as fully human.) In his comments, this teacher revealed that:
1. He is self-aware and savvy enough to know that an English curriculum built entirely around the works of “dead white males” is no longer acceptable as a relevant or adequate exploration of literature, but unfortunately,
2. He either does not trust himself to address any sexual content written by women without becoming dangerously inappropriate, or he believes that his students are a liability—land mines he must step around—and that permitting any such content in the classroom could invite a random explosion of false accusations. (So thank God for that old prude Shakespeare!) Furthermore,
3. He fundamentally does not recognize the intellectual equality of women. There is no other explanation—none—for classifying every female author he has ever read as too simplistic or too gratuitous to be studied in his class.
You’re right: You don’t need to entertain the farce that this veteran English teacher is trying his level best to find one teachable book written by anyone other than a white man and simply can’t. I think you’ve got a few options for how to craft your approach without indulging his premise. First, do you know the woman who posed the question in his classroom? Her thinking clearly seems aligned with yours; if you can, reach out and see if she’d be amenable to working with you to address this. Two angry women on the same page about what they heard aren’t as easy to dismiss or patronize as one is, and I think you might see more impact by teaming up.
As for how you address it, I’m going to suggest two options, one more tempered and one no-holds-barred. One of the most stalwart themes of this column is “when you have a problem, go to the teacher first,” but not this time. I don’t think it will work, and I don’t want you to subject yourself to the discomfort and anxiety that will come from sitting down with this guy and attempting to explain his misogyny to him. So, the more tempered option: Start by requesting to meet with the principal to explain your concerns. This option is less confrontational and may feel more comfortable to you. The drawback is that any resolution will probably happen behind closed doors, and you won’t get to hear the way your concerns are framed and addressed with the teacher. It may all feel vague and unsatisfying in the end. The more escalated, direct approach would be to request a meeting with the teacher and the principal simultaneously. In this scenario, you’d be able to provide your own firsthand account of the teacher’s comments, and you can bear witness to how it’s addressed (and then continue to push back if you sense a brushoff).
Whichever option you choose, I’d start with a brief, factual email requesting an in-person meeting to discuss your concerns about the curriculum. As for your tone during the meeting, I’d try for what you might call “uncompromising.” Repeat the question that was posed, repeat his response as close to verbatim as you can, and then lay out the problems: He seemed to be treating the idea of diversifying his curriculum as a lark he hopes to get around to someday rather than an imperative; he, by his own admission, cannot find educational merit in any book he’s ever read written by a woman (or a person of color), and there are all sorts of issues that admission belies; you’re gravely worried about the implications of his mindset on the young people in his classroom.
I think you can reasonably hope that the teacher’s curriculum will change as a result of this meeting. The school district is not going to want to defend his indefensible position, so I suspect that he’ll suddenly discover the existence of a suitable book after all. But I don’t think you can reasonably hope that his perspective will change. Maybe a guy who confidently acknowledged the catastrophic smallness of his mind will be reflective enough to hear you and to grow. Maybe he’ll develop an interest in women’s voices and the capacity to teach Toni Morrison or Jesmyn Ward with the empathy and nuance they deserve. But … probably not.
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
malemulti-layered take on the desperation of the spinster. Feh, I say.(I actually like "A Rose For Emily," but it's everywhere, precisely because it is twisted and titillating and hints at something that catches students' interest because SEX. And he's saying he can't teach Beloved? Screw that.)
no subject
no subject
The things I do to avoid grading
And then her religion teacher, the one she has last year, has this year, and will have next year (the school has a sort of middle school within the grade school) went bananas. Some of it was stuff I sort of expected (a sudden preoccupation with "modesty," a very extreme position on divorce). But some of it, I really didn't expect. She told the students, for example, that it was a sin to believe in evolution, and that Adam and Eve were real. The Catholic Church supports evolution, for crying out loud. The textbook they use says Genesis isn't meant literally! It even teaches the generally accepted dates of the writing of the canonical gospels, which makes it impossible for any of them to be eyewitness accounts. It's boggling.
But my daughter is very clear that she doesn't want me to say anything. And I have a feeling LW's daughter isn't going to be happy about it, either.
Does that mean LW shouldn't do something? No. This would be something I would speak up about, but I'm coming from a position of profound privilege where English studies are concerned. LW would definitely be wise to seek support from the other parent. They might also see if she can get the curricula of a few literature courses from the colleges nearby. Some may be online, and I'm reasonably confident that at least some profs would be happy to send LW their reading lists for a request. She might want to be a liiiittle careful about how she words the request, because college professors in general are not known for mild reactions to shit like this.
After that, I'd follow the columnists' advice, probably the first part. The hard part is going to be explaining to the daughter what's about to happen and why. I doubt she'll be happy about it, but she's not the only one affected by this teacher.
(I note, btw, that the curriculum isn't just "all men," but "all white men." If the racial bias is even close to as skewed as the gender bias, that's a necessary thing to address, and it can to some extent make this a pedagogical issue as much as a social justice issue. The teacher is unquestionably misogynist, but he may in addition be resistant to developing new lesson plans and assignments, especially when a lot of anthologies aren't a whole lot of help in diversifying the curriculum. Because, you know, Texas.)
Re: The things I do to avoid grading
Yeah, I noticed this, too, and in frustrated me that the LW just framed it as misogyny. If high schools managed to assign Richard Wright and James Baldwin and Toni Morrison and Zora Neale Hurston and Maxine Hong Kingston in the 1980s and 1990s, they can sure as hell manage it thirty years later.
Re: The things I do to avoid grading
Addendum because I'm wordy
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
Complicating matters would be the kid's admiration of the teacher. I don't know if it'd work on my kid, as she's not in high school advanced English yet, but I'd be tempted to try the tack of having the kid - who admires the teacher obviously, so there's a nice buttering up to be done there - to then start questioning his insistence on dead white dudes. This would only work if you'd already laid the groundwork that there was a lot of good literature out there by a wide variety of authors, starting from an early reading age. The kid would have to be pretty skillful, but have her insist on doing an analysis of Erdrich for one unit, or something like that - make sure it's something that she has to do a class presentation about, because getting her classmates in on this is key. I have no illusions that the teacher would come around, but he might be forced to acknowledge that this time, or perhaps in some cases there was some merit to some of these things ("these things" being, of course, works by women and non-white authors) - which of course the rest of the class would see right through (they're teenagers, and teenagers can always see right through this kind of bullshit, especially when it's illuminated by a peer), and, as a result, might actually learn something worthwhile. You'd probably diminish the kid's admiration for the teacher, but that's a small and very worthy price to pay.
no subject
THAT SAID, this guy also sounds like a total misogynist who should not be teaching high school English.
But I would say: The first thing you need to do is speak to your daughter about this. Also the second, third, and fourth thing. She will have bad teachers and misogynist bosses later in her life, too. This is where you teach her to recognize it, and to get what she can out of the experience without letting their viewpoint damage her. Tell her what he said, and then ask her if that sounds right to her, and then listen to her, and let her response shape your response. If she really, really doesn't want you making a fuss, then don't, but also spend the rest of the semester helping her interrogate what she learns in that class. If she does think you should do something, let her guide your strategy. Making a formal complaint that your daughter will side against you on is not going to help anything.
(Best possible outcome of this: he ends up with a passel of teenage girls who won't stop asking him in every class why he thinks women can't write real literature, the girls have amazing experience of practicing strategies for dealing with misogynist asshats, he learns what he should *actually* be afraid of, i.e., angry teenage girls, quits teaching.)
Also, talk to other parents. Definitely find the one who asked the question if you can, and if she wants to act, back her up, but also - every single time he comes up in conversation, no matter the context, you say "it still bugs me that he said he couldn't find a single book written by a woman or POC that was appropriate for a high school English class. That doesn't seem right." Make it so the entire PTA's involuntary impression of him is "he's the one who thinks women can't write." And keep asking him that question every time it comes up, too, so it's clear to him he doesn't get to coast on it.
Okay that maybe sounds vindictive, but it will let you test the waters to see what your chances are of a complaint actually doing anything, and it means that if you do end up making it formal, you won't be going up against the star teacher everyone loves, you'll be going up against that dude who thinks women can't write.
Unless your daughter asks you, I would probably keep the formal complaint on hold until/unless a) you see another semester or more with no women on the curriculum or b) there's evidence it's affecting his grading. You're not going to get him fired over it at this point, and a complaint can't force him to change his attitude for the better (but might change it for the worse.)
*Also, the reason this book was on the curriculum in the first place is the teacher had a policy of no books by dead white men in upper level lit, not for anti-diversity reasons, but because kids tend to score higher on standardized tests/scholarship essays/etc. if they can write about books that are definitely classics but aren't in the "canon". At least that was his excuse. The people reading the essays are less likely to have seen them twenty times already today, and will perk up and be kinder. So you can bring that up too if you want!
no subject
I want to say "but that's why teachers need to push harder to include books by Black women and other non-dead-white-guy groups!" but I also know I couldn't bald-facedly tell someone to risk their job and career unless I could financially assist them.
no subject
A good English teacher would not let "this book might lead to complaints" stop them from putting it out there for the kids, and they would fight if they had to, but there *is* an actual risk there that isn't purely down to the teacher's personal bias.
There's no excuse at all for saying he couldn't find one that was "complex enough" though. Not in 2019.
no subject
(I was actually relaying this story, and just as I was giving his reasoning, a student said, "Hello? Mary Shelley, Frankenstein!" about three seconds before I could. I love my students.)
no subject