Photography © Jennifer Matthews

 

Elegy to Reason

          ““He who destroys a good book kills reason itself”
              -Milton

As read on August 29th, 2024

Fellow writers:

As you all obviously know, I teach creative writing. But generally I teach those pesky gen-ed composition classes you have to take. I have recently been instructed by the legislature of Indiana that if I “subject” students to ideologies outside of the boundaries of my discipline such behavior can, and to their mind probably should, be grounds to deny me promotion and tenure. It is part of the law that the complaint procedures must be explained to you. You are encouraged to file a complaint if I, to your mind, trespass on ideologies. But then I should say from the outset that I am part of the growing army of contingent faculty, so I could stop here and say this subject is irrelevant to me, moot. The situation though could be even worse. The university could perhaps fire me even more easily. Before making my way to Indiana, I worked at a small community college in an enlightened blue state as an adjunct. The dean would occasionally call me into his office to remind me of the myriad and often arbitrary justifications he could cite to fire me. But he was at least subtle enough to invent a pretext to call me in. They could just claim they had no classes to offer me, the substitute teacher they just decide to stop calling. In simpler times, like 1973 Chile or 1939 Spain, we could be spared any of this and I could just be put against a barracks wall. Both regimes would like to be rid of me for no less than four reasons I can think of. But this is how it is done in a supposed democracy with ostensible free speech.

These types of laws are deliberately vague so as to chill speech, as we’ve come to understand. Hypothetically, as a high school teacher, were I to say that “racism is bad and something should be done at the structural level to redress it,” I don’t consider it implausible that a school board could use certain legislation in Florida to have me fired. It wasn’t enough for them to just ban AP African American Studies, citing the fact that it has “no educational value.” Christopher Rufo, the man most responsible for making Critical Race Theory into the ultimate boogey man of the bien pensants of the right wing and whose rhetoric led brownshirts to attack members of a school board outside of a meeting where such matters were discussed, claims that my concerns are hysterical and hyperbolic. That I should even have reason to conduct the thought experiment is enough to make me despair for our democracy and its ideals. Furthermore, for the sake of argument, let’s say I was hypothetically married to a man rather than just wanting to be. If I had a picture of my husband on my desk in a third-grade classroom and a student asked who he was and my reply was “that is my husband,” it is even less ambiguous that such a discussion of gender and sexuality could be used as grounds for dismissal. The law is so vague in referencing age-appropriate discussions of such matters that if a parent complained when I had this subversive discussion with a high school senior I could be fired.

Let’s return to the specifics of my situation. What is within the boundaries of my discipline as a teacher of composition for me, who has an undergraduate degree in philosophy, MA in English, and an MFA in Writing? I suppose it could plausibly be argued that everything that has ever been composed is within my discipline. Again, the fact that I am conducting this thought experiment because of a real law is horrifying.

Let’s play this game some more. Suppose a student asked if they can use the bathroom. Now suppose I answer “you do not need to ask for my permission. You are an adult and should be able to come and go as you please.” Have I not “subjected” the student to an ideological position not within my discipline? And if I try to explain to students why this law exists or even that it exists at all, I have clearly “subjected” them to a discussion of ideology not in my discipline. If I insert any discussion of some of the interesting subjects in our current “One book, One University” text into my class, as I am strongly encouraged to do, I risk “subjecting” students to ideologies that fall outside the boundaries of my discipline. It’s about AI. What if I ask them about what it means to be truly human? What a world without work could or should look like? If AI should be used in war? Have I not trespassed on ideology?

Clearly the folks who wrote this law have but the most elementary understanding of what is even meant by ideology. Certainly they have “radical woke gender ideology” or “Cultural Marxism” on their fevered brains as they foam at the mouth and decry the virulent spread of the “woke mind virus.” It’s a law to solve no problem, like someone in a statehouse proposing a resolution to ban Sharia law or forbid first graders from using litter boxes.

You may have seen in your history books pictures of Nazi book burnings. Perhaps you were not instructed that one of the more famous pictures is that of the nascent Nazis burning the library of The Institute of Sexology, whose founder consistently argued for gay rights, for instance when he advocated for the repeal of Paragraph 175 of the penal code which criminalized sexual acts between men. The Jewish writer Heinrich Heine said in 1821 “where they burn books, they will ultimately burn people too.” Certainly he has been vindicated. We now see pictures which have gone viral of books from New College being thrown into a dumpster having been removed from the library, many of which cover issues of gender, sexuality, and race. Now I am not such an alarmist as to think that I will be deposited in the dumpster. Not yet anyway. I think they’ll be content if I lose my job or am denied promotion and tenure. I think they will be content if I can’t marry whom I choose. Perhaps they won’t go further than that.

Furthermore, I am also now ordered by legislation to include “intellectual diversity” in the classroom, the language more often cited in these discussions. That would plausibly mean defending book burning if my intellectual and ideological position is that book burning is wrong. What might I say? It effectively kept them warm? At least until they had the ovens to accomplish that. And of New College, what might I say? I might say at least the state and the right-wingers who took over the school are conceivably sincere in their stated aim to protect twenty-year-olds from the woke mob and this mob’s authoritarian efforts to control the scope of what we as a culture deem appropriate thought and ideology. Then I don’t teach psychology and it may be dangerous for me if I were to step out of my lane and explain projection to any of my students, even in my efforts to insert “intellectual diversity.”

I don’t think it will ever come to pass that geologists or anthropologists will be forced to explore, let alone defend, the belief that the earth is flat and six thousand years old and thus that humans have been on the planet for that long. That a biologist will have to teach creationism if they teach evolution. I am certain that those who wrote this law never considered the fact that any economics teacher could plausibly be enjoined to insert Marxist political economy into their classes if in that same class they have a discussion of free markets. But, I will say it again and continue to say it, the mere fact that I have to opine on any of this is frightening enough.

So, let’s play some more in this dystopian playpen masquerading as a developed democracy in the twenty-first century. I could teach the debate over whether it is still necessary to avoid ending a sentence in a preposition perhaps. But then I am not a linguist and could not have a discussion of the divide between descriptive and prescriptive linguistics as an ideological discussion in that discipline. Do I need to teach them the importance of writing poorly for the sake of intellectual diversity? To explore the arguments for why plagiarism is just fine? That we should abandon the project of writing altogether and leave it to AI? Have a lively debate about whether APA or MLA is the superior documentation style? That paragraphs and thesis statements are unnecessary hindrances? That their goal should be obscurity and verbosity rather than clarity and concision? I suppose these are the ideological debates I may “subject” students to if I am to stay within the boundaries of my discipline.

In our creative classroom perhaps it is not yet too risky to read Brecht’s “The Burning of the Books.” I woke up at 2 in the morning to write this. Why? I was nervous for this reason: Given the lack of communication from the university about navigating this law, I wrote to someone who is active in the university senate about plans to address these ambiguities. He passed my thoughts on to the executive committee of the senate. Perhaps when I referred to being cautious about putting anything in writing and implied I preferred to speak in person he thought I sounded so conspiratorial that I was attempting parody. I don’t know what motivated him. In all likelihood he is naïve and stupid. Perhaps I am being used because I located my spine and was willing to put these absurdities into writing. That I am left wondering whether this was done to expose me as a dangerous agitator to such an extent that I’m losing sleep is alarming.
I am a coward, really. I would not have been willing to go to Spain and take a bullet through the throat like Orwell or contribute to the resistance like Camus. I can’t confidently claim that I would even have the bravery to hide someone in my attic. But the fact that it could be an act of bravery to share this elegy to reason with this class, or potentially dangerous to show it to a colleague, is enough to leave me unable to sleep.

 

Matthew Sam Praxmarer, graduate of Vermont College of Fine Arts, is a Continuing Lecturer of English Composition at Purdue University Northwest where he maintains a steady output of critical thinkers who learn to question the status quo and avoid the “naked this” and other promiscuous pronoun usage. He lives in Chicago with his dog and his cat.

Poet/Photographer Jennifer Matthews’ poetry has been published in Nepal by Pen Himalaya and locally by the Wilderness Retreat Writers Organization, Midway Journal, The Somerville Times, Ibbetson Street Press and Boston Girl Guide. Jennifer was nominated for a poetry award by the Cambridge Arts Council for her book of poetry Fairy Tales and Misdemeanors. Her songs have been released nationally and internationally and her photography has been used as covers for a number of Ibbetson Street Press poetry books and has been exhibited at The Middle East Restaurant, 1369 Coffeehouses, Sound Bites Restaurant in Somerville and McLean Hospital.