A Student Writes
a Good Paper
Fearing the Consequences, She Hides
Professor Josephine K knew what she was
hired to teach. She was hired to teach Jonathan Kozol. Kozol is a recipient of
a Rhodes Scholarship, and multiple fellowships from the Guggenheim, Rockefeller,
Field, and Ford Foundations. Kozol's website identifies him as "one of the
nation's most eloquent and outspoken advocates for equality and racial justice
in our nation's schools." According to Manhattan Institute fellow Abigail
Thernstrom, Kozol is a "guru" in university education departments. A
survey of departmental reading lists shows Kozol's name on every one. Chances
are that anyone studying to be a teacher in the United States will be required
to read Kozol. Indeed, Amazon reviewers of Kozol's books sometimes mention that
his books were required reading for a university class.
Education students reading Kozol's works
learn that America is an "apartheid" country. They learn that "there
are expensive children and there are cheap children." They learn that children
are cheap because of "governmentally administered diminishment in the
value of children." Poor children are "locked out of opportunity …
for no reason but … the budgetary choices of the government." Kozol's
readers learn that there are two flavors of human in the US: rich, greedy,
racist white victimizers, and poor, disenfranchised, powerless black victims.
Rich whites send their kids to early education programs beginning at age two or
three. "Low income children" "are denied opportunities" and
thus "come into their kindergarten year without the minimal social skills
that children need in order to participate in class activities." Poor
children "spend years at home in front of a TV" or in "a slum
apartment gazing down into the street." These deprived childhoods are
caused by "high officials of our government" who "rob"
black children "of what they gave their own kids."
Black students, on average consistently
perform less well than whites, East-Asian Americans, and Hispanics, on average.
Teachers, administrators, and politicians want to solve this achievement gap. A
new proposed solution appeared: performance-based learning. Performance-based
learning is defined as "emphasizing students being
able to do, or perform, specific skills as a result of instruction." That is, students learn
something, and then demonstrate their mastery through action. Kozol describes
this method as having been devised by racist whites to "humiliate"
black children who cannot possibly learn anything in America's schools as they
are currently constituted. "There is no misery index for the children of
apartheid education."
Prof. Josephine K's students learned from
Kozol's National-Book-Award-winning publications that the achievement gap
between blacks and other ethnic groups exists because of malicious whites
working to hurt blacks.
Kozol offers readers a solution to the
crisis he describes. Americans must "storm their state legislatures, then
do it to Congress, and absolutely demand in passionate, angry language the end
of the present system of school finance in this nation." American citizens
should exercise "direct civil disobedience" and stop
"unspeakably selfish racial steering."
Americans must use their taxpayer
dollars to "create a utopian children's village in every inner-city
neighborhood." These villages would follow Montessori and Eriksonian educational
guidelines. Americans must defeat "the right-wing voucher movement"
advanced by "insidiously clever propaganda." America must be like "more
enlightened nations such as France." There should be no more than sixteen
students per class. Taxpayers should fund "three years of full-day
preschool." Taxpayers should also fund psychiatrists, ophthalmologists,
lawyers, and HVAC consultants for every child. The HVAC consultants will ensure
that every child's home is kept at a comfortable temperature. Parents of school
children should be guaranteed never to be evicted from their apartments.
Prof. K's students accepted Kozol's
pronouncements passively. They understood their job as memorization of what
Kozol said, not disagreeing with or interrogating Kozol's assumed-to-be holy
writ. Many of Prof. K's students would go on to become teachers themselves.
They might someday pass on unquestioning acceptance. America is racist. Blacks
are doomed. Massive taxpayer spending on social engineering is the only
solution. Resistance to such spending is evil. Forever and ever amen.
By the time students reached Prof. K's university
classroom, they had been trained like Pavlov's dogs. They didn't salivate when
a bell rang. They cried "racism" whenever they encountered anything
that the teacher or the assigned reading might suggest was unjust. One day
Prof. K mentioned Jack Phillips. Phillips had declined to accept a commission
to create a custom-made cake for a same-sex wedding. The students accused
Phillips of "racism." Both Phillips and the gay couple were white,
but "racism," in their previous education, and also in the wider
culture, had become a synonym for "injustice," and the only injustice
that mattered at all was white supremacy.
Prof. K. assigned the reading she was
supposed to assign. The students took the notes and made the facial expressions
they were supposed to make. Then Prof. K did something that the students did
not expect.
"There are facts and there are
opinions. Let's separate the two." Students gave no sign of discomfort.
They put down their pens and leaned back in their chairs. This would be easy. Of
course they all knew the difference between facts and opinions.
Prof. K worked to retain her poker face.
She didn't want to force any belief on anyone. She didn't want a smile or a nod
to tell the students what they should be thinking. But, damnit, she wanted her
students to be able to differentiate between a fact and an opinion. She said,
"Tell me what Jonathan Kozol thinks is true."
The students looked confused. Prof. K
had learned, in previous semesters, that this exercise would be very difficult
for students, and the next few hours of instruction would grind by slowly, with
much frustration.
Students raised their hands and began to
speak. Prof. K cut them off. "No. I don't want to hear your opinion of
this assignment. I want you to tell me what Jonathan Kozol thinks is true. I
want you to point out exactly where in the text you learned that Jonathan Kozol
thinks something is true."
Facial expressions telegraphed anger and
distrust. Geez, this teacher is stupid. Or maybe just mean. Many students,
though told to do so, did not bring hard copies of the assigned readings with
them. They had accessed the materials on the internet, and skimmed them off of
a phone screen. They picked up the themes of racism and injustice, and figured
that they were safe. They assumed it would be their job to arrive in class and
express outrage at racism. But Prof. K was not accepting that. She wanted
something else and they weren't sure what it was, how to deliver it, or why she
wanted it, whatever it was.
"American schools are racist! It's
so unfair! We've really got to change it!" a student cried out, in his
most aggrieved voice. Prof. K ignored him. Well, he thought, she's a rude
bitch. He was doing what he was supposed to be doing and she wasn't giving him
any positive feedback at all. Not even smiling!
"I want to see your hard copies of
the reading assignment on your desks. I want to you tell me what Kozol thinks
is true, and I want you to support your assertion with a direct quote from what
you read."
Getting the students to understand that
request, and actually to do it, took the relentless forward push of a military
campaign. To retain a hard copy of something that they had accessed via the
internet and skimmed from their phone screens, and to peruse it carefully, not
just once but several times, to check facts, to weigh opinions against facts,
accurately and thoroughly to recognize the product an author was selling, from
Romeo and Juliet's love to Marx's communism to Kozol's accusations of racism,
was utterly alien to anything they'd experienced before.
Fatima, an ambitious, older, married student,
raised her hand. The reading assignment was in her other hand. "Kozol
thinks that America is an apartheid country. It says that right here, this
page, this paragraph."
"Excellent, thank you." The
professor finally offered some positive feedback! Low-key, but still positive.
Students looked at each other. So that was what she wanted? Just to recognize
and report words on a page? Huh.
Fatima had a follow-up question. "What
does apartheid mean?"
Prof. K asked the class. No one raised a
hand. "So. You read the assignment. A key point in the assignment is
Kozol's accusation that America is an apartheid country. And you never looked
up the word 'apartheid.'"
Prof. K met every student's eyes.
"One of these days, someone is going to ask you to sign something, and
that something is going to contain a word you don't understand, like 'collateral,'
or 'escrow,' or 'compound interest,' or 'do not resuscitate,' and you are not
going to understand that word. Will you still sign? Did you sign a student loan
agreement that contained words you don't understand?" she stared at every
student. "Look up words, people. Writing is power. To read is to submit to
someone else's power. How submissive are you going to be? How much of your
power are you giving away by your refusal to do the work of understanding what
you read?"
Prof. K gave the students a brief
explanation of apartheid. Then she wrote on the blackboard, "Kozol
thinks:" and she began a numbered list.
After Kozol's positions were enumerated,
Prof. K asked another question that was absolutely new to the students.
"How is Kozol talking to you?"
The students were completely confused.
"How?" Jamal asked. "By
his writing."
"Yes. And what kind of language is
he using?"
The students who had the reading
material with them began to look at them again. Their looking, at least for the
second time, at something they'd already read once, assuming that reading, or
even just skimming something once was enough, thrilled and delighted her.
Fatima raised her hand. "He says
here, 'storm the legislature.' Then he says we should make demands. We should
be passionate and angry. This is very emotional language."
"Correct," said Prof. K, practically
elevating out of her shoes. "Can anyone show me anywhere else in this text
where Kozol uses emotional language?" Students found "insidiously
clever" and "enlightened nations."
"What did you feel," Prof. K
asked, "when you read about the little black children who don't have
social skills, who spend all their time looking out of slum windows? And right
after he talks about that, Kozol talks about super rich white people in
Manhattan spending tens of thousands of dollars a year sending their kids to
private schools. Kozol is juxtaposing two pictures in your head. Juxtapose
means to put next to each other. An author or an artist puts those two things
next to each other in order to get a reaction out of you. What reaction did Kozol
get out of you?"
Students talked about imagining a a poor
black kid staring out a slum window unable to play, juxtaposed with an image of
a rich white kid going to an exclusive private school.
"How did you feel when you read
those passages?"
"Angry!"
"Sad!"
"We need to do something!"
"When you were feeling so
strongly," Prof. K asked, "were you doing any thinking? Were you
questioning Kozol's logic? Were you asking yourself if it is plausible to
provide every two year old in America with a psychiatrist and an HVAC consultant?
"Lahoma, I've seen you working the
cash register in the book store. Working a cash register is hard. Customers are
rude, it's hard to stand in one spot all day, and mistakes come out of your
earnings. Have you looked at your paycheck, at how much is taken out in taxes?
Multiply that amount by however much it would cost to supply every American kid
with an HVAC consultant. Does that feel good to you?"
"I'm not paying it," announced
Steve, a golf course caddy.
"I think New Jersey has the highest
property taxes," said Amir.
When the blackboard was covered with a
complete list of Kozol's assertions, and the emotional language he used to
support his assertions, Prof. K asked the students, "In your opinion, is
any of this true? Let's start at the top. Is America comparable to South Africa
during apartheid? What facts can you adduce to support your opinion?"
And that was the question that changed
the class. Facial expressions changed. Postures changed. Note-taking changed.
Energy levels changed. Later in the semester, when it would be drawing to a
close, and some students would approach her with final thoughts, they would
mention just this moment. Students would say things like, "You know how we
talked in class that day? I did that with my mom. While we were making dinner.
We talked about things that way. We started doing it all the time."
"Everybody," Prof. K said.
"Amir's father came here from Bangladesh. He took difficult jobs, saved
up, bought a rental property. How would you convince Amir's dad that he should
pay higher taxes than he already pays, either the highest or among the highest
in the country, to foot the bill for a utopian children's village, for
psychiatrists, for HVAC experts visiting homes? And, if he said no, he didn't
want to pay higher taxes, how successful would you be if you called him a
racist?"
Ted, a big guy, an EMT, who might or
might not change career course and go into teaching, he wasn't sure, raised his
hand. "I don't know if this is what you're looking for," he began,
tentatively.
"I'm looking for your opinion of
Kozol's points, your opinion backed up by facts you adduce to support your
opinion," Prof. K said.
Ted looked unsure. He was brave, though;
he had just come from an over night visit to a fatal collision on Route 80.
"When we started this, I thought, okay, I've heard all this before. I
mean, we've been hearing it since grade school. We hear it on TV. America is
racist, blah blah blah. And that's the cause of all the problems.
"I mean," he continued,
"when we are assigned stuff in other classes, we are supposed to take it
as is, and just agree that it's right. But you're asking us if we think it's
right. And looking at it that way, I'm not sure."
That was all he said. That he wasn't
sure. Just announcing in class that he wasn't sure took all the courage he had.
Hands shot up. Too late. Time for class
to end.
"Students," Prof. K began the
next class. "When you are looking at a piece of writing, please be mindful
of what the author is not saying, as well as what he is saying. There are a
couple of sentences in Kozol that he glides over quickly. Here's one, 'a
quarter of the children are likely to go off to prison every weekend so they
can see their fathers.' Here's another one. The children he's writing about
'come into their kindergarten year without the minimal social skills that
children need in order to participate in class activities.' Why doesn't Kozol
expand on those two sentences, and what's hiding behind his silence?"
"Some of the kids' dads are in
jail! He's talking about the real world. Lotsa fathers in jail! My cousin has
to take two buses every weekend! Just to see her man!" Lahoma declared
emphatically, with a combination of mourning and indignation. Lahoma looked
around the room with the confident air of a student who is convinced that she
has said the important thing, and had the final word. She was waiting for
approval.
"Yes, that's what Kozol is
saying," Prof. K said. "And he doesn't elaborate on that. He doesn't
say more. Why not? Is there more to be said?"
Ever since they began reading Kozol,
Maria had been watching Prof. K with the eyes of a character in a heist movie.
Maria looked as silently thoughtful as someone planning to break into the
world's most carefully guarded museum and purloin the world's most famous
jewel.
Maria Sanchez, a petite Latina, was in
her late twenties, so she was a bit older than the average student. She came to
class in business attire. She worked as an administrative assistant and was
paying for college herself. Maria was never the first to raise her hand, even
when she was the first to know or understand, and that was often. Her behavior
suggested that she was the kind of person who proceeded with caution.
Maria appeared to have decided that it
would be to her benefit to speak, and that today's class was a safe environment
in which to speak. She raised her hand with neither fear nor coltish energy.
Maria had all the time, and all the confidence, in the world.
"Maria," the professor
acknowledged her.
Maria nodded. "So, here, Kozol
points out that twenty-five percent of the students have a father in jail. And
over here," Maria held up her hard copy of the assigned reading and
indicated to the class the passage she was referencing. "Over here he says
that the students have no social skills. He also says that they are trapped in
a slum apartment, gazing down into the street or in front of a TV." Maria
made eye contact with the professor.
The professor nodded. "Yes,"
she said.
"Okay," Maria continued.
"What I think you're asking us to see is a couple of things. Well, a few
things, actually. Kozol brings up these facts, the fathers in jail, the kids
without social skills, how they spend all their time watching TV or staring at
the street in a slum, to support his overall agenda. As we said in the last
class, his writing is very emotional. He's trying to get us to feel sad and
angry. And we do feel sad and angry for little kids whose fathers are in jail.
And we are supposed to go along with his main idea, that all the bad things
happen because white people are racist. And the solution to all these bad
things is that white people need to pay more taxes to fix all this. But."
Maria stopped.
Prof. K was staring at Lahoma, chatting
with the student behind her. "Lahoma, can Maria please have your
attention? Maria did pay attention to you when you were speaking."
Lahoma twisted around in her chair,
never making eye contact with the professor or Maria. She lifted her four-colored
pen and began to scribble loudly and quickly in her notebook, her pen almost slashing
the thin paper.
"Maria, please go on."
"There's a possible relationship
there that he never comments on. He wants to keep it hidden from the reader.
Maybe the kids lack social skills because, and maybe their lives suck so much
because, because their parents aren't there for them. Like, the fathers are in
jail. So the mothers have to work and nobody is taking the kids to the park or
teaching them how to behave."
"Maria, does anything you just said
relate to a possible solution?" Prof. K asked.
"Yeah. The kids need parents."
"Jamal," Prof. K asked,
"Can you tell me what Maria just said?"
Prof. K spent several minutes making
sure everyone in the class understood Maria's point. She ended with, "And
how are tax dollars going to solve the problem?"
But it was time for class to end.
The next class, Prof. K asked, "Kozol
uses the word 'insidious' to describe the 'right wing.' What does it mean to be
right wing? And are right-wing people 'insidious?'"
After writing student definitions of
"right wing," a term some students were familiar with, on the
blackboard and defining "insidious," a word no students looked up, Prof.
K pointed out that there are scholars who see things differently than does
Jonathan Kozol. She reminded the students that there are supplementary readings
available to them by right-wing authors, or authors presenting a right-wing
point of view: Abigail Thernstrom, Thomas Sowell, Jason Riley, Shelby Steele,
John McWhorter, Nick Kristof, and Amy Chua.
"If you choose to read these
authors, I want you to keep a running tally. Kozol mentions many facts. Are his
facts correct, according to the right-wing authors? Kozol says that the
solution is more taxpayer dollars. What does Abigail Thernstrom say about that,
specifically in reference to the funding of DC schools? Thernstrom claimed that
'the best estimates are that [black and Hispanic students] have about as much
money spent on them per pupil as the national average … Washington, D.C., is an
almost entirely black system and spends' a lot per student and yet 'has the
worst public schools in the country.' In Cambridge, 'despite colossal
expenditures, despite a pupil-teacher ratio of something like nine students per
teacher, the schools' black performance there is worse than the state average.'
"Kozol says that the solution is
smaller class sizes. Do facts support that? How big were class sizes in the
1950s? One
source says between 35 and 40 students per class. Class sizes have gone down since then. You'll find that
in the 50s, class sizes were larger, and students were handling more difficult
material.
"What does the Vanderbilt Study say about the efficacy of
universal Pre-K? Have you heard about the Vanderbilt Study? No? Well, if you
are going to be teachers someday, or even just taxpayers, you should know about
it. Researchers spent years studying the impact. Over the course of time,
students who attended pre-K actually did worse than students who did not.
"What, then, is missing?"
Prof. K asked. "If Kozol is wrong about what explains the achievement gap,
then what does explain it?"
The students were stumped. It appeared
that it had never occurred to them to ask that question. If black students are
not doing as well as white, East-Asian-descent, and Hispanic students, and if
the explanation was not racism, what was the explanation?
"Read some of the right-wing
authors to find out what they think," Prof. K said. "And read them as
critically as I encouraged you to read Kozol. Separate fact from opinion. Check
facts. Notice what is not being said. Notice if you are being manipulated.
Notice when they use language meant to play on your emotions. Look up words you
don't know," Prof. K said, knowing full well that she lacked the magic wand
that would get students to look up words that they did not know.
After the class had emptied out, and the
hubbub of students flirting or joking, rough-housing or arguing had died down,
and Prof. K's only companion was the sunlight leaning into the room from the
row of miserably awkward awning windows, she heard a little knock on the door
frame. She looked up.
"Maria. What's up?"
Maria approached. She didn't wait till
everyone was gone, she didn't knock quietly, because she was timid. She was
calculating. She wanted the same A in this class that she received in every
other class. She wanted no risk. But her inquisitive brain demanded that she
take on risky acts.
"Professor, I read those right-wing
authors you have in the supplementary reading file."
"Oh? Which ones?"
"All of them," Maria said.
"Okay," Prof. K said, trying
to hide her delight.
"I grew up in the Bronx,"
Maria said.
Prof. K nodded.
"I went to one of those schools.
The kind Kozol talked about."
"Mmm," Prof. K said.
"There were African students. Not
African American but from Africa. They did really well."
"Interesting."
"There are black people in my
family. Some Hispanics are more dark skinned. Some are really successful. Some
are on welfare. All in my own family."
"Mmm hmm."
"I wonder why."
"Yeah."
"So I was thinking, can I write my
final paper on this?"
"Be more specific."
"I don't know. How some people do
better and some do worse. Is it Kozol? Is it white supremacy? Or are the
right-wingers right?"
"Our final papers aren't due for
some months yet. But now is a good time to start. Check out the documents I've
posted online. You'll find a handout on how to write a research paper. You'll
find examples of previous good papers. Have a look at that material, and keep
in touch with me as your thoughts develop."
Maria almost looked happy, but too big
of a smile, too much investment of enthusiasm, would be too big of a risk. Maria
didn't leave. She was thinking, but not speaking. Prof. K intuited what Maria
might be thinking.
"Maria. Your task for this class is
to write a research paper, not an opinion paper."
"Yes, but what if…"
The ellipsis were not a sign of
timidity, but strategy.
Prof. K wanted to get home so she cut to
the chase. "What if your results support Kozol? What if your results prove
Kozol wrong? What if you say something with which I disagree? Maria, you know
Fatima, sits two seats across from you? The woman who wears hijab. She was in
my class last semester. She disagrees with me about almost everything. She got
an A. I wrote her a great letter of rec when she applied for a scholarship. I
graded her on the quality of her work. Not her opinions."
Maria looked at Prof. K the way an
appraiser looks at a diamond. Real, or fake? And what price would she pay if
the professor were lying, and the professor graded on opinions? And what were
her opinions, anyway?
"Maria, sit down." Prof. K sat
across from Maria.
"Look. I assign a research paper
because when I first arrived at this school I realized that students aren't
aware of some of the basic tools of scholarship. Students knew how to get emotional,
how to voice an opinion as emphatically as possible, usually the opinion that
they assumed was the professor's, usually a left-wing opinion.
"But students didn't know what a
thesis statement was, or a research design, or a scholarly article. They
weren't familiar with basic concepts like peer review, double blind, quantitative
versus qualitative, or the scientific method. Some students, after this class,
will become teachers. Some won't. But I want every student to benefit from this
class, and one of those benefits will be writing a research paper, will be
mastering the very basic methods that our civilization has developed for
differentiating fact from fiction.
"That's all I want you to do. To
dip your toe in. To test drive academic inquiry. I don't care whether you
support or undermine Kozol. I care about the quality of your performance in the
driver's seat of the engine of scholarly research."
***
Prof. K always teared up at the end of
the semester. The students were gone; their final papers were in a colorful
tower of Pisa on her desk. Of course Maria would wait till everyone had left
before she knocked, quietly, on the doorframe.
"Maria. What's up?"
"I wanted to give you my
paper."
"Of course."
"The thing is."
"Maria, I don't care what your
opinion is."
"Can you read it right now? I can
change it."
"Have a seat."
Prof. K sat down, and she read. "Redistribution
of material resources has a very poor track record when it comes to actually
helping those who are lagging whether in education, in the economy or
elsewhere. What they need are the
attitudes, priorities and behavior which produce the outcomes desired."
Prof. K had offered students a variety
of catchy ways to begin a paper. One way was to open with a quote. Maria had
opened with a quote from Race and Culture: A World View by Hoover
Institution fellow Thomas Sowell. This book was not assigned. Maria found it on
her own. With her first sentence, Maria had wowed Prof. K.
The rest of the paper lived up to the
promise of the first line. Maria didn't hem and haw. She came right out and
stated her thesis. She summarized the point of view she aimed to shoot down:
the achievement gap can be explained solely as an artifact of white supremacy.
She cited those scholars with whom she disagreed, and she cited scholars, like
Sowell, who pointed to group values as exercising considerable influence on
group performance. Maria conducted original research, surveying dozens of
students on their natal home and natal culture's values, and compared those
results with their GPAs.
Her results supported her thesis.
Student performance matched student and the student's family's investment in
time, and their attitudes toward education as a valuable enterprise. The
Asian-American students in her survey invested the most time and had the
highest GPAs. African American students invested the least time, and their
parents talked to them about their schooling the least. They had the lowest
GPAs.
Maria rhetorically stomped her
opposition. Prof. K wondered if Maria's ringing tone was inspired by her
ethnicity. Maybe Maria was tired of leftists offering people like her a hopeless
option: "You are helpless. You can only be saved when racist white people
experience a change of heart and sprinkle their dollars upon you." Perhaps
Maria was thrilled by scholars like Sowell who saw an immediate route to
success for her. And, perhaps Maria was relieved to encounter scholars who
didn't shame her for her own exceptional success, for being different from her own
impoverished family members and her neighbors in the Bronx. Right-wingers were
not shaming Maria for being a success. They were praising her for being a
success, and telling her brothers and sisters, cousins and uncles that they
could be a success, too, with the right attitude. Finally, right-wingers
allowed Maria to understand her own success as something she created herself,
out of her own hard work, dedication, and focus. Maria was Maria because of
Maria. Maria was not Maria because some "enlightened," rich, white
liberal generously sprinkled taxpayer dollars upon her.
Prof. K thought of something. She
invited Maria to the classroom computer. She turned to Jonathan Kozol's
website. In several photos, Kozol looks the heroic crusader. He is the
center of attention, even though he may be surrounded by black students. In
one, he is in the foreground. Behind him are people holding signs. The sign
behind Kozol, held by an invisible protester, reads "PROTECT CHILDREN FROM
SEGREGATION." A black woman, behind and appearing a foot shorter than
Kozol, is partially obscured by her sign. Her facial features are blurred,
while Kozol's are clear.
There was no place for Maria on that
page. Beautiful Maria, working to pay for school, carefully assessing
everything she heard in class for its value, applying herself to her research,
reading major scholars in her field, both those she agreed with and those she
rejected. Maria's presence would have made Kozol look small, even comical.
Maria simply doesn't need a rich, white liberal to crusade for her.
Prof. K used her usual red pen to write
an A atop Maria's paper. She handed it back to Maria.
"Please send me an electronic copy.
I'd like to keep this."
Maria exhaled.
"Maria, I want to help you
publish."
"Publish?"
"Yes. This is one of the best
student papers I've received in my entire career. You have a fine mind and a
feisty and yet disciplined prose style."
"I can't."
"What?"
"I can't. The rest of the world
isn't like your class."
"The world is a pretty big place,
and there is room for –"
"No. I still have plenty of classes
to go before I get my degree. After that I have to get a job. You yourself
showed us that education is dominated by left-wing faculty and staff."
Prof. K shrank in her chair. She
suddenly felt cold.
"It's not my job to tell students
what opinion to have, or what to do with their lives. I'll just say that, if
you ever change your mind and I can help you find a publisher, let me
know."
Maria left. Prof. K gathered up the
precariously leaning tower of final papers, some in colorful binders, some
simply naked white paper, and packed them into her backpack as carefully as she
could, and she told herself, as she had so many times before, not to let the
disappointments get her down.
Danusha Goska is the author of God through Binoculars: A Hitchhiker at a Monastery
