A Liberal Dose
May 18, 2023
Troy D.
Smith
“The
difference between a column and a classroom”
A couple of months ago, an old classmate of mine made
a comment on the online version of my column at Spartalive that I wanted to
talk about this week. Here’s what they had to say:
“Every week you sit
down to brow beat the right. It doesn’t matter what is happening in this
country, you find a way to blame the right, the right leaning left, anyone that
doesn’t absolutely believe the exact same way you do. You say you’re a
historian. You’re a professor at Tech. Why not just teach down the center and
stop telling the young adults your opinions about how the right screwed this
country up. As long as some are determined to keep the hate going, there will
never be any peace.”
There are several points there that I feel it is
important for me to address. First, I was asked to write this column as a way
to provide a counter-balance to the conservative columnists who were contributing
to the paper at that time. The whole point, as evidenced by the subtitle “A
Liberal Dose”, is to give a perspective from the left. Therefore, it should not
come as a surprise, or be viewed as a negative, when that is what I do.
Second, while I often have strong opinions, I think it
is unfair to characterize my column as a constant, vicious attack on the right.
I have often endeavored to be even-handed, to try to understand the other
side’s feelings, and to present verifiable facts rather than a torrent of
emotional bromides. Far from trying to “keep the hate going,” I’d say the most
common theme I’ve written about the past two years has been to call for an end
to hate and violence and to communicate with one another.
Third, and most important, I am disturbed by these
remarks: “You say you’re a
historian. You’re a professor at Tech. Why not just teach down the center and
stop telling the young adults your opinions about how the right screwed this
country up.” Never having been in my classes, how do you have any idea how I
teach them?
This column is me stating my opinions as a private
citizen, exercising my freedom of speech. I do so with a historical slant,
offering context, but it is not the same thing as teaching a class, nor would I
use the same techniques to do so. In these columns I have 650 words -in my
classes I have an hour, for forty-five total hours in a semester. That gives me
plenty of time to present all sides, which I do. In twelve years of receiving
student evaluations at the end of every course, there have only been one or two
students -out of probably a couple of thousand in that time -who’ve said they
thought I was biased. I’d estimate at least a hundred have said the opposite.
Just this week I received this anonymous evaluation from a student: “He teaches this class in a way his
students can grasp the content of the class but develop their own opinions.”
Here’s why that distinction is so important to me.
There are legislators in this state, and other red states, who are passing laws
about how history teachers can teach -when they have not been in their
classrooms and have no idea what happens there, or how. I have been telling
legislators for years that they need to get out of teachers’ way and let them
do their jobs, and inviting them to come to my classroom to see for themselves
how I do mine. No one has taken me up on it.
It reminds me of a phenomenon I mentioned last week.
My conservative friends often get mad, not at what I say, but at what they have
prejudged I was going to say or what it was going to mean.
--Troy D.
Smith, a White County native, is a novelist and a history professor at
Tennessee Tech. His words do not necessarily represent TTU.
You can find all previous entries in this weekly column HERE
A list of other historical essays that have appeared on this blog can be found HERE
Author's website: www.troyduanesmith.com
No comments:
Post a Comment