Passions

My students are writing out-of-class argumentation papers. I let them choose their own topics, and I have been meeting and emailing with them all week helping them shape their arguments. One of my students asked if she had to write an argumentation paper at all because she "hates arguing." I explained it's not necessarily fighting--it's about seeing a change that should be made in the world and trying to get others to see your point of view. She grimaced and stalked away. A couple days later I get an email full of exclamation points because she picked! Her! Topic! Abortion should be illegal! And here! Is! Why!

It was so very hard for me to accept her supporting points. We met after class Tuesday and we went over her outline and research piece by piece. "Here's how you can explain a woman's right to choice is secondary to keeping a fetus alive," I had to say. I DID NOT LIKE IT. But this student was completely lit up. She kept saying over and over again how good it feels to really care about her homework. She wants to include a poem from an aborted baby's perspective. "It would add a few pages to the paper though," she said. "Maybe you could include one line," I reasoned.

Venice. 2014.

Push Back

On Tuesday, Pookie and I went to a Cards game. I was excited to see The Giants because I have fond memories of many of them winning the World Series last fall. One of Pookie's friends was with us--a longtime Cards fan. I said, "Oh, yeah, well we're Giants fans."

I don't know why I felt like I needed to do that.

For some reason, we sometimes believe that pushing back harder than we need to is cool? Is helpful? Gets the ball rolling? Not like when we do it we MEAN to be accomplishing some side goal. It's just this mistake we make, and I'm not sure why we make it.

Like, I'm not even that big of a Giants fan anyway! Let's be real--it took Pookie and I a few minutes to make sure we were even reading the scoreboard correctly.


The baseball princess.

I know it's not the end of the world that we get defensive about random stuff that doesn't matter. (For some reason I am imagining the boy who lived across the street from me in middle school always arguing with me that cheesecake was GROSS and HOW could I LIKE it. I mean, he wasn't going to change my mind.) But, maybe it does matter. Because maybe if we stop pushing back in those little inane ways some good stuff will start to happen:

1. We'll talk about something more important.
2. We will exercise our ability to have a positive and educational mindset instead of an arbitrarily abrasive one. Even if we're joking.
3. The things we really do push back about will be accentuated. It's kind of screwed up that I can argue about how horrible pantyhose is with the same conviction I debate gay rights.

But, then again, I really do hate pantyhose.