Bad things. Honest things, but bad, just the same.
Plato's cave allegory? I make notes in the margins about being one of the wall-dwellers laughing at the enlightened shadows, and my notes are full of colorful language. As if Plato isn't bad enough, I also insult everyone from Faulkner to Shakespeare, Freud to Piaget, Cotton Mather to Bill Gates. Very few are safe from the foul-penned rants of a bored adult college student sitting through a monotonous lecture aimed at younger students. Many of my text-rants are directed at the instructor and the dry, slow-death delivery of some of those three-plus hour weekly lectures. I hold on to those memories and, true to a promise to myself, I rarely, if ever, lecture my classes for any length of time lest I totally kill my students' interest in learning.
I am under the mistaken belief that defacing my own textbooks is over, a sport long-gone. But, I am taking a course through work, and we're reading a book on mindfulness theory and how if affects our teaching. Not only am I supposed to read and absorb the material, I am supposed to do it calmly and with mindful intent. Unfortunately, I am mere pages into the book when something the author writes raises my hackles.
I write in the margin: F.U. I read a little further and write F.U. again. The next chapter is better, though, with suggestions and strategies to be a better teacher. I'm excited! This is the information for which I've been waiting. And then ... an then ...
And then I read the fateful line: To help individual teachers - and especially young teachers...
Excuse me?! Only young teachers are capable of being mindful? What -- we elderly buggahs are too stupid? Experienced teachers don't need to relax?
I have flashbacks to college; I have flashbacks to Plato's cave. I am academically, intellectually, and professionally insulted all over again, but it's all cool. I mindfully write Thanks, asshole in the margin, calmly put down the book mid-chapter, breathe deeply, and call it an evening.
Alas, another textbook that will end up in the trash. Namaste.
