Ask a Teacher: My daughter's teacher is a misogynist

[cereta]

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.

Comments

[conuly]

http://mentalfloss.com/article/54442/10-shakespeares-best-dirty-jokes

[cereta]

Ayup. Seriously, you want to tell me this dude doesn't teach "A Rose For Emily"? But, you know, that's Faulkner, and it's a male multi-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.)