1st period – I finish explaining what pacifism is. To gauge their actual attentiveness, I ask several students what the word means.
I don’t care Mr. J., pacifists are of the devil.
Traitors.
Pussies.
Scared people.
They can’t be Christians. They don’t go to church.
Then Bradley hits Will in the back of the head. No provocation, no cause, no logic to the act. While passing out papers Bradley nonchalantly slaps Will in the back of the head. Before I can even release an admonishment, plea, warning or whatever it is that I was planning to do, Will has spins wildly out of his seat – his chest is puffed up and so are his cheeks. He spits as he speaks, a teary belligerence stinging in his eyes.
“Mother fucker, try it again!”
Bradley shakes his head and laughs.
Will shoves Bradley and Bradley’s eyes turn sharply from apathy-laced docility to wild violence, his teeth grip his lower lip. His short, half-assed dreadlocks twirl around his fuming head.
He returns the push.
Will retaliates. Will yells.
“Try it again you - !”
Will words are squelched and he squeaks as Bradley’s meaty hands land square in the middle of his chest. I can hear his lungs compressing.
I intervene. My arms shoot out from my sides and my left palm is open and pressed hard against Bradley’s chest, my right against Will’s. My students, who up until now I had not noticed, have pulled out their cell phones and are fumbling with the buttons, trying to access the video function.
I keep my eyes straight ahead and begin to speak slowly and sharply.
“Move back, get to your seats, back off, break it up.”
They continue yelling at one another. Their primate-like rage is at its peak, I see in their eyes a silent plea, Stop us, we’re not actually pissed off enough to go through with this.
Still facing forward, I see the awe, wonder, pleasure and fear bubbling in the irises of my other students. My thin, 5’8” frame pushes them farther apart.
“Gentlemen, you can try me, but I wouldn’t recommend it.”
The bell rings. The hurl a few more obscenities, a few more racial slurs that are only self-deprecating. They back away and go to 2nd period.
3rd Period – One of my students asks me if the Jews killed Jesus. This is an English class, but I touch on every aspect of the humanities, including religion, which is a personal fascination of mine. So I wind through the politics of Jesus’ crucifixion, the provincial Roman government, the theocratic hierarchy of Judaism at the time. The answer in the end, of course, is:
“More or less, according to the religious text at least, they wanted it done. He was a threat and unorthodox as far as some were concerned.”
He looks at the floor for a moment and then looks back at me, “Then the Holocaust was justified.”
“Really? All 6 million Jewish victims?”
“Somebody has to pay.”
4th period – it’s November 4th, the opening assignment for my class, which I always try to make as thought-provoking as possible, reads as follows:
“One year ago today Barack Obama was elected president. How do you think he has done since he’s been in office? If you had been able to vote last year, would you have voted for him? What do you think is the biggest problem he has to work on?”
The responses are varied.
He’s not really black, so he doesn’t count.
He’s a communist.
I wouldn’t have voted at all, he isn’t really black.
I don’t care if he is black, he’s a sell-out.
He wants to tax us until we all poor.
I like his smile.
He needs to fix school, we need new teachers.
It doesn’t matter, somebody is going to kill him probably.
5th period – in my classroom, here in the rural south, I work hard to be the most neutral, unbiased teacher in my high school.
In Biology classes teachers will lecture on Darwin while constantly winking and saying, “But we know how it really happened.”
In Social Studies teachers will preach to their students about the “coincidence” (their sarcastic quotations, not mine) that every major cable news outlet is accessible through our server except for Fox News. (It is a coincidence, we found out).
In English classes students are constantly perplexed by Greek Mythology. They want to know why people would have believed that Athena was born out of Zeus’ head. Teachers tackle the problem head on, “Well, it’s obviously not the true religion, these stories are all made up.”
My students have been bugging me since the first day of the year with a single, burning question.
“Mr. J., what church do you go to?”
I tell them that I don’t discuss my personal politics or views on religion.
“You’re a Buddha aren’t you Mr. J.? Buddhas go to hell.”
6th period – the day after President Obama was elected, a number of our white students decided they would not be attending school, as a form of protest and a show of disgust. They now puff up like blowfish when someone mentions the president’s name. They growl about his inherent “Muslimness” and his “communist plans”. They know he’s going usurp congress anytime now, they just don’t know when.
A Junior was asked how he felt about the separation of church and state.
“I think the religion that the most people belong to should be the religion we follow in school and government.”
“Majority rules?”
“We’re all Christians anyhow, so it shouldn’t offend anybody.”
American public high school: A microcosm of American sentiment and dispostion, domestic and foreign policy
