Perhaps they are a prudish nightmare of a human that thinks remaining deliberately ignorant of the world’s negative aspects forces those aspects into non-existence?
Ignorance is bliss, after all.
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In Germany they teach Ringelnatz in school, but they spare this one:
Pipi
Es drängt mich, dein Pipi zu trinken,
Und sieh, nun trinke ich bereits.
O welch Genuß bei deinem Beinespreiz,
O wie die Wasser hurtig blinken.
Ich möchte ganz darin versinken.
- Es ist nicht wahr, daß deine Wasser stinken. -
Nun hörst du auf? O pfui, welch Geiz!
JOACHIM RINGELNATZ
Okay class, today we’ll be discussing gratuitous language and as such we won’t be using or referring to any as that would be unnecessary and inappropriate.
Buuut… seeing as what would normally be considered gratuitous is, in fact, necessary and appropriate to the topic of this class, is such language germane to the class?
The best I can do is that it is not gratuitous if used in the class but that disqualifies it from being considered such only after being used as an example. Which means that as it’s being used it occupies a state of both being gratuitous and not being gratuitous simultaneously.
They should retitle the class to something like:
###“The quantum nature of teaching a class concerning language normally considered to be gratuitous outside the confines of this class.”
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I’ve had a bit to drink today, was skimming through my RSS feeds before I read this and despaired. I mention this only to give context to my reaction…
This fellow is teaching English, and evidently focusing on Literature. I’m from the UK, not the US, but as English-speaking cultures I suspect that the topics the course covers are similar - as are the pieces of literature used to teach.
We read Shakespeare, Steinbeck, Chaucer, Beowulf, Dickens, Melville, Joyce and others.
The older the material, the worse it was morally. That’s not an observation - it’s a provable fact.
And it seems likely that these students probably read some of the same material.
So it seems likely to me that the following statements could be true:
- Nobody objected to murder
- Nobody objected to torture
- Nobody objected to slavery
- Nobody objected to rape
- Nobody objected to blatant racism or xenophobia
- Nobody objected to incest
- Nobody objected to witchcraft
- Nobody objected to sexism
- Nobody objected to hereditary wealth or power
We can only be fairly sure of the previous items.
Yet we can be very sure that one or both of the following statements is true:
- Someone objected to BDSM
- Someone objected to homosexuality
And let’s be honest. Few people reading this suspect it’s BDSM.
So there we have it. It’s acceptable to mention murder, torture, incest, rape, slavery, racism/xenophobia, witchcraft and hereditary privilege. That’s OK. But homosexuality? That’s way beyond the pale. Fire that teacher!
Yep, I’m drunk. But it seems to me that everyone knows what I’m saying, yet is dancing around it. Literature is full of unacceptable things done by unacceptable and supposedly acceptable people. That’s why we study it.
This is nothing to do with the morality or suitability of the topic, and everything to do with the prudishness of those being taught.
Let’s not excuse the prudes. They’re small-minded idiots who - if they’re lucky - will grow to regret their actions.
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Well, fuck, better keep 'em away from pretty much all of the Western Canon then!
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Ok, what takes you here? As a teacher, what leads you to think that reading this to an entire class is a good idea. I’ve not taught in the states in about 10 years and I’ve lost track of what people in the US seem to be thinking. All I know is what I read in the papers and it seems appropriate now in the US to declare your sexual preference in your graduation speech. So, if the assignment in my AP lit class was to write a sonnet and I choose to write an erotic one about my girlfriend, and then stood up and read it in class, what would happen? Just reading the news, maybe this is ok, maybe I’m impinging upon a student’s first amendment rights if I don’t let them read it. If I ask the teacher to analyze my poem in relation to Ginsberg’s poem and he does so by standing up and reading a few lines from my work and a few from Ginsberg’s, what then? I see things all the time in the news now that just seem not to make sense that are frequently written into school board policy. What does the policy looked like that lead to this teacher being dismissed?
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Because it’s a bad idea to use Vaseline as a sexual lubricant?
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Because it’s really not very good poetry. It’s a blason without art. Try Robert William Service’s The Song Of The Pacifist or William Shakespeare’s Sonnet 130
When our children’s children shall talk of War as a madness that may not be;
When we thank our God for our grief to-day, and blazon from sea to sea
In the name of the Dead the banner of Peace .
.
.
that will be Victory.
My AP English teacher had a serious reading comprehension problem. She should have been fired. The only time we learned anything valuable was when she admitted she didn’t understand a work–Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead, for example–and brought in a critical study and read it to us. Then she’d admit she didn’t understand the critical study either, but at least those of us who cared did. She did, however, studiously avoid anything controversial. She only gave us a Stoppard play halfway through the second semester. She’d just looked at previous AP tests for the first time and realized we might have to deal with material more recent than Keats.
So what I see here is not a teacher who used poor judgment, who should have known better, who presented a class with material that may or may not have been good poetry or that was arguably inappropriate. I see another case of a school board penalizing risk-taking, which just helps foster the mediocrity I had to put up with.
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