ENGLISH ONLY EDITION.
Light is sown like seed for the righteous, and gladness for the upright in heart. Psalm 97:11
What the Bible says about Jesus
The True Light"In him, (the Lord Jesus) was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it. The true light that gives light to every man was coming into the world,…the world didn’t recognize him."John 1:4,9. The Good Seed and the Weeds“The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seeds in his field. But while everyone was sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat and went away.”Matthew 13:24,25.
I'm a professor at a midsize state school. I have been teaching
college classes for nine years now. I have won (minor) teaching awards,
studied pedagogy extensively, and almost always score highly on my
student evaluations. I am not a world-class teacher by any means, but I
am conscientious; I attempt to put teaching ahead of research, and I
take a healthy emotional stake in the well-being and growth of my
students.
Things have changed since I started teaching. The vibe is different. I
wish there were a less blunt way to put this, but my students sometimes
scare me — particularly the liberal ones. Not, like, in a person-by-person sense, but students in general. The
student-teacher dynamic has been reenvisioned along a line that's
simultaneously consumerist and hyper-protective, giving each and every
student the ability to claim Grievous Harm in nearly any circumstance,
after any affront, and a teacher's formal ability to respond to these
claims is limited at best.
What it was like before
In early 2009, I was an adjunct, teaching a freshman-level writing
course at a community college. Discussing infographics and data
visualization, we watched a flash animation describing how Wall Street's
recklessness had destroyed the economy.
The video stopped, and I asked whether the students thought it was effective. An older student raised his hand. "What about Fannie and Freddie?" he asked. "Government kept giving
homes to black people, to help out black people, white people didn't get
anything, and then they couldn't pay for them. What about that?" I gave a quick response about how most experts would disagree with
that assumption, that it was actually an oversimplification, and pretty
dishonest, and isn't it good that someone made the video we just watched
to try to clear things up? And, hey, let's talk about whether that was
effective, okay? If you don't think it was, how could it have been? The rest of the discussion went on as usual.
The next week, I got called into my director's office. I was shown an
email, sender name redacted, alleging that I "possessed communistical
[sic] sympathies and refused to tell more than one side of the story."
The story in question wasn't described, but I suspect it had do to with
whether or not the economic collapse was caused by poor black people.
