Classroom Taboos

Discussing class and race in the classroom is the equivalent to talking about the race and politics at the dinner table. Never do it, and if you do prepare for a firestorm of controversy.

And yet isn't that why we do what we do, to force ourselves and our students to walk through the fire so that they might get to the other-side and gain perspective about where they first were. I loved the example from Hooks about the student returning home and being bothered by the things they overheard from family members. I remember when I first had those feelings getting back from college, and I think it is important to pass that discomfort alone. But how do we do that?

This is my issue with Hooks. Preach on my man, but what can I do about it when my goal is teaching composition?

When I taught at SIUC, class and race rested on top of everything in my classroom. There I was, one of usually three white people in my class, teaching a multi-racial, lower-income student body about Standard American English. I was a walking cliche and it made me pretty uncomfortable at times: the white gatekeeper manning the gates at the entrance to the ivory tower of academia.

I would like to say I adapted my pedagogy to directly confront this controversial image, but I don't really think I did. All I really did was try to demystify my role as teacher and open myself up to my students. If they were comfortable with me and knew that my purpose was to help them succeed then I hoped I at least did not perpetuate the racial and class segregation that still happens at the university. 

When I first heard about teaching at MU I often heard about the homogenous student body, and to my relief it seems that my classrooms, while certainly no where near as diverse as SIUC, still maintains a high level of diversity. And it is funny to me that many of the students that are most engaged in my classroom are the non-white non-suburban students. Perhaps I am just more comfortable with the "unconventional" student.

I will admit though, I don't think I did enough with race or class at SIUC and I still do not do enough with it today. I appreciate that Hooks discusses the importance of the subject, and I echo his declaration that these issues need to be addressed on both the personal and the institutional level. I utilize many of the techniques he recommends in order to get my students talking regardless of race or class. Doing freewrites and creating open discussion are central my classes, but I still feel like I could do more. I rarely openly broach the subject of race and class, and mostly when I do I comment on my own white, bourgeois experience usually for satirical purposes (white boy problems, first world problems are cliches but they can also make us recognize both our racial and class position). The uncomfortable feeling that settles on a class that touches upon race or class rarely permeates my classroom, and I am not sure that is a good thing.

Nonetheless, these classroom taboos are crucial to think about and I appreciate that Hooks is there to remind us of that fact.