Christopher Schroeder

Category: national

  • From Bad to Worse

    Current educational challenges are bad enough without the Chicago Tribune making these worse, which it did with its recent editorial.

    In it, its editorial board admonishes “emboldened” teachers who are pressuring students to accept teachers’ politics or be excluded from classroom communities, which it argues deprives these students of their rights. It argues that such teachers are doing a “disservice” to their students’ learning, that schools must consider how their employees “present” present themselves, and that classrooms cannot become “perfect captive audience[s]” for teachers or anyone considers “politics as the highest social calling.”

    The editorial board is right to remind educators to remember the power that they hold but wrong to ignore pre-existing pressure beyond classrooms, which existed long before Charlie Kirk was assassinated. For example, I stopped challenging college students and started self-censoring classroom comments upon learning that he had been encouraging them to record and report professors.

    I wondered if I were overreacting but was later relieved to have done so. Campus colleagues were cited in a 2023 Fox News report, and others across Chicago have been threatened after appearing on Kirk’s watch list.

    I discovered that this pressure could be institutional when for example my hapa, or mixed, kid was excluded from a high school assembling that was restricted to African-American students. I similarly had an August Wilson new course proposal returned because it insufficiently explained I was informed how this course would serve diversity, equity, and inclusion goals as if any explanation could be necessary.

    The bigger problem however is that the Tribune constructs a caricature of teachers. Some teachers I’m sure suggest to students that their political opponents are “bad, evil and wrong,” but not all do, and none would consider such statements as smart pedagogical strategies.

    Such a caricature in other words misunderstands the essence of education, at least in the humanities where I spent my academic career. In contrast, I considered my obligation to be challenging students to develop their thinking abilities in addition to imparting whatever knowledge central to each course.

    As a result, I would deliberately describe the best challenge to students’ arguments regardless of whether it was liberal, conservative, or something else, and regardless of whether I personally believed it. In fact, I often reminded students that they shouldn’t assume every argument I offered reflected my professional or personal beliefs, and that I had done my job if they were unsure of these at the end of the semester.

    I’m not suggesting that such an approach is apolitical. I unlike the Tribune editorial board believe that politics are inescapable and that choices reflect these. At the same time, it and I seem to agree on the purpose of education, which is perhaps more central than ever.

    Nonetheless, I concede that such an approach has to be used within the context of intellectual freedom. Moreover, I would define that not as the ability to articulate any thought but rather as I learned from another Chicago colleague a balance of freedom of thought and expression and a right of inclusion, or a space where students can both offer their observations and are welcome to do so.

    I wasn’t trying to reinforce some students’ preconceived perspectives and changing others’ minds but rather trying to push every student’s ability to think, and to do so for all students, or at least as many as I could convince to respond. I hoped even those whose perspectives hadn’t shifted at least learned to develop rebuttals, and an ability to consider the limitations of any position they might advocate.

    At least I did until I learned about Kirk’s professor-watch list, and would have continued doing if I had greater confidence in campus administrators and professional and social support, including from the Tribune editorial board.

    I agree that classrooms offer “captive” audiences, that students needn’t know their teachers’ politics, and that schools should be “the freest places” for curiosity and critical thinking. I just think that these insights aren’t news to good teachers, who are already aware of these.

    I experienced educational challenges from liberals. I just was, and am, much more concerned about conservative challenges, which seemed emboldened in the current president’s first term and even more so in his second one.

  • Roses and Thorns

    I’m not the only one who questions the success of the new Roses adaptation by Tony McNamara, but I might be more intrigued by its intention.

    This movie, which is a remake of the 1989 one by Michael J. Leeson and 1981 novel by Warren Adler, focuses on the relationship between Theo, an architect whose major project has failed, and Ivy, a chef whose return to work after this failure was more successful than either imagined.

    Theo (Benedict Cumberbatch) is struggling in his new role as primary parent, so Ivy (Olivia Coleman) returns a favor by offering to finance their dream home, which he designs and builds as a way of restoring his professional and personal reputation. Its development is inversely related to the deterioration of their marriage, which culminates in a fateful dinner party that finally reminds them after everyone has left of their shared desire to restore their relationship just before the house and presumably they are destroyed by a gas-leak explosion.

    Many are critical of this movie. The Chicago Reader for example suggests that the pacing is off and that the performances should be funnier, which seem reasonable. Nonetheless, I was intrigued by its intention, which could be a funny foray into the challenges of marriages, especially those that last many years.

    Research suggests that married couples, even unhappily married ones, are generally happier after many years (e.g., Carstensen 2011, 119-120). Anyone in one of these can attest that such longevity often requires unforeseen compromises and challenges.

    Such a reality is central to this movie, which wants to acknowledge it in a witty way. This worthwhile challenge however is ultimately more than it can manage.

    Both central characters are mutually witty, which is part of their attraction and they suggest in a counseling session could be considered repartee, or less caustic criticism and more emotional release. Also, the ending, which is different from the previous movie, more attests to the absurdity of married life.

    These and other conditions never quite coalesce in anything coherent, which is a problem. Such moments are played for laughs before any black comedy discomfort can arise. For example, the new-age-adjacent Amy (Kate McKinnon) offers her husband’s friend and client Theo a romantic road trip but when challenged merely acknowledges her desire for novelty without any intention of leaving her husband Barry (Adam Samberg).

    This mixed messaging means that the move is at most an amusing couple of hours with solid main performances and more than adequate technical elements. These unfortunately are constrained by choices from its author and its director (Jay Roach), and make it a mostly forgettable project.

    As such, it never quite does justice to its central story about a long-married couple confronting challenges. Some obviously fail while others succeed, and this difference could be compellingly considered in a movie but just would need something clearer.

  • Violence and Violations

    Political violence, which is wrong and isn’t new, seems more widespread after the recent shootings of conservative activist Charlie Kirk on a college campus and liberal legislators Melissa Hortman and her husband and John Hoffman and his wife in their Minnesotan homes as well as the current president while he was campaigning last year.

    The current media response however is bewildering, and borderline alarming. Too many seem to not just ignore but even deny the larger contexts. Ezra Klein for example argues that Kirk was “practicing politics in exactly the right way” as if Klein is incapable of acknowledging two truths in tension, or admiring a willingness to debate while condemning a disregard for basic facts and an escalation of political conflicts.

    Others have criticized these reactions in the context of Kirk’s efforts and life. Still others have criticized that this tragedy has been politicized by the president and also acknowledged that the most “lethal and persistent threat” in this country comes from white supremacists although some wonder if that is changing, or could change.

    I too admire Kirk’s willingness to engage college students on their campuses. I also know that he made mine less effective, and that he was part of a larger problem.

    I defined academic appropriateness more narrowly than some colleagues, and limited classroom comments to ones I could connect to my disciplinary domains. I expected, or at least hoped, that the university would defend me from attacks on anything I said about rhetoric, linguistics, or US American literature.

    I nevertheless imposed more restrictive limits, and began self-censoring much more, after learning about Kirk’s professor watchlist. This list, which his Turning Point USA organization launched in 2016, promised to “‘expose and document’” faculty who according to this organization “‘discriminate against conservative students, promote anti-American values and advance leftist propaganda in the classroom.’”

    I was generally confident that I encouraged students to share whatever perspectives they brought to classrooms, and was reassured by my own criticisms of professional and personal excesses within my union for example or among campus colleagues. At the same time, I was less inclined after students were encouraged to surveil and report their professors to challenge mine to think harder and better, and less convinced that my university would defend me, which I later learned were realistic.

    I’ve wanted to believe since before grad school in a model of democratic debate in which interlocutors argued about facts, definitions, values or norms, and relevance, or spaces where such deliberations should be resolved. I’ve assumed that emotions would appear but would with reasoned responses be properly placed within the larger debate.

    I never realized how much I had assumed such shared norms among participants, and good faith on their parts, until this era for example of alternative facts and other bad faith efforts. I’m not suggesting that reasonable people cannot debate facts, including their relevance in different debates, but I’m arguing that democratic debate at least as it has been understood in the West for thousands of years doesn’t work without some consensus that such facts exist.

    I see no reason why people cannot express sympathy to Kirk’s wife and young children and to others who experience his death as a loss, and even why everyone cannot condemn political violence, and yet do so without ignoring, or worse denying, the damage done by Kirk’s dishonest (and racist and sexist) demagoguery. This damage, which includes his contributions to the return of this destructive administration, was perhaps more widespread than some recognize, and even in the very spaces where some might otherwise admire his efforts.