The Kids Are All Right
Started TAing this week. It's been interesting so far. My first section (9:00 AM) was pretty lame since most of the people in the class room, myself included, were about ready to fall asleep. 10:00 went better just because people were actually willing to talk. 3:00 was about the same.
We were supposed to be discussing the nature of political authority (what defines it? where does it come from? etc.) and it took a bit of work to get the students to talk. What surprised me was when one of the students stated simply that he thought people wanted to be told what to do and he personally would choose to live under a stable dictatorship rather than a democracy that had a chance of falling into chaos. I'm not sure what childhood events would lead this student to think this way, but I thought for sure that someone would crack his head open on the table, yell at him or at least give him a stern talking to. Yet, nobody did. None of the students said "Hey, I like being in charge of my own life." Maybe I'm expecting too much from a group of university students early in the morning. At the same time, they are university students. What happened to the required dirty hippie/ crazy leftist phase that kids are supposed to go through? Especially at UCSB, a school that has a fairly intense history of political activism that at one point resulted in a bank being burned to the ground . I'm not saying I want these kids to burn down banks or even protest the war, I just wonder what's going on when one kid can get away with saying this in a room full of his peers and not even get a raised eyebrow in response. Oh well, we'll see what happens this coming week.
We were supposed to be discussing the nature of political authority (what defines it? where does it come from? etc.) and it took a bit of work to get the students to talk. What surprised me was when one of the students stated simply that he thought people wanted to be told what to do and he personally would choose to live under a stable dictatorship rather than a democracy that had a chance of falling into chaos. I'm not sure what childhood events would lead this student to think this way, but I thought for sure that someone would crack his head open on the table, yell at him or at least give him a stern talking to. Yet, nobody did. None of the students said "Hey, I like being in charge of my own life." Maybe I'm expecting too much from a group of university students early in the morning. At the same time, they are university students. What happened to the required dirty hippie/ crazy leftist phase that kids are supposed to go through? Especially at UCSB, a school that has a fairly intense history of political activism that at one point resulted in a bank being burned to the ground . I'm not saying I want these kids to burn down banks or even protest the war, I just wonder what's going on when one kid can get away with saying this in a room full of his peers and not even get a raised eyebrow in response. Oh well, we'll see what happens this coming week.
posted by B. C. Lovato at 2:37 PM
1 Comments:
Freakin' A! What I'm wonderin' is why YOU didn't pop a cap in that fewl! Craker pleeease! I could see that shit flyin' at my alma matter...CSUS, but in Santa Barbara?!?!? Brian, do me a favor, throw that kid in a van with no windows on it, put a bag on his head, hit him 17 time in various location, wait for him to fall asleep - put his hand in warm water, and throw him off a bridge into a river wrapped in heavy chains. Or at least something similar...peace man.
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