insanityThe possibility, however slight, that Wyatt might act out his delusions set in motion in me a familiar inner conflict. I am a traditional liberal. On the one hand, I resisted the stereotype of the mentally ill, the gross caricature attached to the many vulgar epithets that still filled my head—fruitcake, wild man, nut, lunatic, crazy man, screw loose, maniac. These were not words I ever used seriously to denote a person actually suffering from a mental illness, but they now floated up from the bottom of my mind and bobbed close to the surface of my thoughts, offering themselves as instruments by which I might exorcise my frustration and impatience with my situation. As the circumstances of the incident revolved in my head over and over again for examination and analysis, these epithets seemed to offer some comfort as I rehearsed indignant remarks I would never actually make.
Why had my life been turned upside down in this way? Why had this man been admitted to my class? Why had I not been told of his mental disorder? Why had the college special needs counselor so clumsily betrayed me when I had reported to her Wyatt's strange remarks? Now other members of the organization, friends informed me, were speculating that I myself was somehow at fault. They had heard colleagues say that it was my own methods that were to blame. If I had not encouraged my students to write about their private, personal lives this might never have happened. I was too often probing into the values and beliefs of my students. Too intimate, I dug too deep. My interest in comparative religion and philosophy had always been out of bounds. An English class was not the proper forum for a discussion of social issues like racism, sexism, pregnancy, violence, alcoholism, drug addiction, molestation, rape, crime and punishment.
In fact, I had been asking for trouble, some said. Now I had gotten what I had for so long really deserved. Why hadn't I just stuck to English—grammar, sentence structure, topic sentences? In fact, what I'd been teaching wasn't really English at all! It was a kind of values clarification, a relic of the subversive sixties long discredited.
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INSANITY to be continued
Why had my life been turned upside down in this way? Why had this man been admitted to my class? Why had I not been told of his mental disorder? Why had the college special needs counselor so clumsily betrayed me when I had reported to her Wyatt's strange remarks? Now other members of the organization, friends informed me, were speculating that I myself was somehow at fault. They had heard colleagues say that it was my own methods that were to blame. If I had not encouraged my students to write about their private, personal lives this might never have happened. I was too often probing into the values and beliefs of my students. Too intimate, I dug too deep. My interest in comparative religion and philosophy had always been out of bounds. An English class was not the proper forum for a discussion of social issues like racism, sexism, pregnancy, violence, alcoholism, drug addiction, molestation, rape, crime and punishment.
In fact, I had been asking for trouble, some said. Now I had gotten what I had for so long really deserved. Why hadn't I just stuck to English—grammar, sentence structure, topic sentences? In fact, what I'd been teaching wasn't really English at all! It was a kind of values clarification, a relic of the subversive sixties long discredited.
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INSANITY to be continued
