I saw a woman yesterday who reminded me of my high school English Lit. teacher, Ms. Schulz. She was amazing and I gave her the worst time for it. Looking back now I can see that about 90% of what I know about literature I learned from her. For some reason my college lit profs were complete idiots. One guy used the entire class just to rant and rave about how the Republican party was of the devil and George Bush Sr. was (insert expletive string here). I'll never forget the day one poor woman worked up the courage to tell him that her husband was serving as soldier in Iraq and she didn't appreciate all the anti-military, anti-government talk and couldn't understand how it related at all to classical American literature. She was polite and respectful about it, just wanting to get back to the subject for which she was paying to be educated. He (his name was Jerome) came unglued. Total rant. Called her names. Called her husband names. I thought he was going to have a heart attack. And, honestly, I almost came out of my chair and hit him. Guy was a total failure as an educator. But he had tenure! Yay!
But that experience was at a community college. When I transferred to the University of Oregon, I thought things might get better. WRONG! My next prof was just as bad. Although she didn't hammer away at politics and government all semester, she used the entire course to teach relativism. At one point she wrote Frankenstein, Hitler and Jesus' names on the board, then made everyone in the class go up front and put a check mark under who we thought was "the real monster." She also served Screwdrivers during the final. Nice. Freshman class. At least she made us read a few books and short stories along the way, some of which were even relevant to relativism. At the end of the semester we had a three page paper due. I wrote one short paragraph about how I thought the whole thing was "irrelevant." Got an 'A.'
So, thanks Marna Schulz, for teaching me about settings and themes and how to identify the parts of the story that actually matter. You were awesome, even when I wasn't, which was pretty much the entire time you had me in your class.
As I pondered all this earlier today I thought it would be a great idea to put a few English profs' heads on a pike in front of the dept. as a way of reminding them that they have responsibilities, and to remind students that they have rights.
