English class pissed me off yesterday. Every once in awhile my professor will knock off some little remark that reveals his political/social opinions, but that I can deal with. It doesn't interfere with short story interpretation (well, sometimes it does), but he's a good guy, very smart, and like any English teacher has a lot of insights and knowledge about literature. I can respect that, the guy's got serious experience. But please, please, PLEASE don't start preaching your opinions as if they were the absolute last word in class. That's just not the place. Yesterday, we were discussing Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery." I actually had suggested it. I like the story because of the eerie quality to it, not because of the supposed social commentary - i.e., people blindly following destructive traditions for the sake of following traditions. The discussion centered on how ignorant, stupid, and brutal the villagers were (if you haven't read it, go read it), and at one point the professor said, and I don't remember the exact words, that people today are capable of "so much more" brutality than "we" were back in the day.


I'm sorry, human sacrifice anyone? Commonplace rape? Pillaging? Looting? Personally, I think Professor is very, very wrong, or at least sort of wrong. Maybe human nature never changes, "we're" always destructive, "we" just find different ways to do it (I'm thinking Holocaust). But hey, he could make his case. Fine, I shrugged it off. No need to make a big deal out of anything, or even to acknowledge my opinions on his statement in any capacity other than writing them in my blog. But then....

Professor: "Can we think of any other obsolete traditions that are blindly followed?"

Student (in a very important, matter-of-fact manner): "The electoral college."

Professor: "Yes." - elaborates on why the electoral college is an outmoded system, blahblahblah, not representative, blahblahblah, America sucks. (paraphrase).


Does this not piss anyone else off? Not just that I don't agree with it, that's not the important issue as I see it. The guy continually preaches his little platitudes as if they were fact, in an ENGLISH class. This is Short Stories!! Arrrrrrgh. Maybe interpretation = opinion, but that still means opinion! Not fact!! I asked myself yesterday whether I would still mind his little speeches if they aligned with everything I believed in, and here's what I came up with - it would make me uncomfortable. I'd be happy to know that there's another person out there who thinks the same way I do, but I'd be really uneasy about that person being my English professor, and finding this out about him through a class on unrelated subject matter. My poli sci professor last semester was like that, and every once in awhile I found myself proverbially shrinking in my chair thinking, "Yes that's true, but don't say it!!!"

There's a time and a place. Not in class.


What do you guys think about college professors who use their classes to preach their opinions as fact? I know you've had some.