But you’ll still take the money

It’s always both funny and sad when a Lefty’s certainties are blasted aside by reality. Sad because you can usually feel sorry for them having believed such things in the first place. Funny because of their iron-clad certainty that all right-thinking people must think like them, and very funny when it turns out that the people providing the shock are the great “Other” on whose behalf said Lefty has laboured so hard to think on behalf of.

So it is with a American, Heather M. Edwards, who wrote an article back in 2019 about teaching in Mexico:

Like a lot of American idiots abroad I took a job teaching English.

Got to get that self-deprecation in first, just in case people might think she’s one of “those” Americans (wink).

I’m working for a private company in a big city that prepares students for university admission exams. Much of the material is designed to generate conversation so that students are thinking and then speaking in their second language. New vocabulary words and precise pronunciation are the framework for discussion.

Sounds helpful. She finds that her students are not at all shy in talking about almost anything. So she decides to push the boundaries:

As comfortable as they were sharing their dreams of perfect love, I wondered how comfortable they would be telling their American teacher what they really think about the current American president. The curriculum this week called for me to ask them, “What do you think about Donald Trump?”

The tension rises. But she’s ready for this:

The lesson plan was a discordant combination of current US deportation policy and the economic impacts of deporting immigrants
…
I had braced myself for the questions they might ask me. I pre-scripted responses that would keep my impassioned politics diplomatic while unequivocally standing against his racism, sexism, xenophobia, Islamophobia, sexual assault charges, fraud and collusion.

Got to get those little minds primed just right for The Big Question. But things don’t go as planned:

The kids mumbled along dutifully though visibly bored.

My first chuckle.

…my prep work and all my paroxysms of outraged political heartbreak turned out to be completely unnecessary.
They didn’t ask a single question. Not, “Teacher, did you vote for him?” Not, “Teacher, why is he so racist?”

Awwwww. And she was so prepped for that. Anyway, she recovers from this setback and sets up a new angle where she asks them questions.

I wrote their answers on the board hoping each student’s perspective would prompt the next student to discuss the topic in more detail. To create a conversation exploring fear-based xenophobia and corrupt power structures that systematically insulate the wealthy at the expense of the greater good.

See, by now I’m laughing openly. What could be next?

What I got instead were succinct and shockingly positive answers.

  1. He’s a good person.
  2. He’s trying to protect his country just like how we protect our homes.
  3. He’s trying to protect his people the way we protect our families.
  4. He’s a good politician.
  5. Sometimes he’s racist.
  6. He can be mean
  7. He is really strict with rules but that’s only because he has to be.

Oh dear. On number 5 she had more problems than just that word “sometimes“:

They mentioned his racism parenthetically and with a shrugging matter-of-factness I’m still trying to wrap my mind around.

Never mind. They’ll be other students she can browbeat when she gets back to the USA, where they’ll already be primed with guilt and shame to provide the answers she’s looking for.

Hell, perhaps she should come teach in New Zealand. She’d be overjoyed at the likely response. As she says in her final burst of un-self awareness:

Saturday mornings aren’t for preaching. Teaching is about the students, not the teacher.

Providing laughter to the last line.