Concerning the masses.
I always believed that "the masses" was a myth propagated by the greedy few at the top of the food chain. Convince the world of these masses, who were dumb-founded, fleshy automatons, incapable of original thought or undesirous of it, so that there was no threat from the bottom of the barrell. No plankton or amoebas trying to grow arms and legs and wiggle their way up to dinner at the Ritz. I honestly believed that everyone secretly burned for knowledge, ached for individual thought, wondered over freely-formed opinions. I was positive that there were minds in those googling heads, minds yearning to breathe free, minds dying from the asphyxiation of inadequate public school teachers. How unfair I was to those poor teachers.
I know several now, and they are still hopeful after thirty years of...God...what has completely disheartened me in a matter of days. I hate it. I hate that I was wrong. I hate that the masses exist and that they don't like to think. I find it more frightening than Dawn of the Dead. I tell myself, "This is not new. The masses have always existed. If they didn't who would flip hamburgers?"
But I've flipped hamburgers, and I know lots of other intelligent people who have. I've waited tables and tended bars and cleaned toilets, and so I can't look at anyone who performs these tasks and believe that nothing is happening in their consciousness. Sometimes I've even sworn that I'd rather clean toilets for a living any day and have a little more free time than work a white collar job for double the money and have in return half the time for myself - to read, to write, to live.
Nevertheless, the job does not the masses make. I'm sure you could make heaps of cash and still stare vacantly at the wall during your lunch break, sucking in the opinions of whatever bobbling head happens to be proclaiming the miraculous nature of the travel-size rotisserie sewing machine on the nearest radio wave. It just makes me feel dirty.
A lot of my students will fill in the flanks of the masses. I can see it in their eyes. I wonder what might have saved them along the way, if anything. I teach to the others, the ones who have even just a flicker of a thought-forming mechanism. But there aren't many. And to the rest of them I'm a droning prison matron.
I hate teaching.
I know several now, and they are still hopeful after thirty years of...God...what has completely disheartened me in a matter of days. I hate it. I hate that I was wrong. I hate that the masses exist and that they don't like to think. I find it more frightening than Dawn of the Dead. I tell myself, "This is not new. The masses have always existed. If they didn't who would flip hamburgers?"
But I've flipped hamburgers, and I know lots of other intelligent people who have. I've waited tables and tended bars and cleaned toilets, and so I can't look at anyone who performs these tasks and believe that nothing is happening in their consciousness. Sometimes I've even sworn that I'd rather clean toilets for a living any day and have a little more free time than work a white collar job for double the money and have in return half the time for myself - to read, to write, to live.
Nevertheless, the job does not the masses make. I'm sure you could make heaps of cash and still stare vacantly at the wall during your lunch break, sucking in the opinions of whatever bobbling head happens to be proclaiming the miraculous nature of the travel-size rotisserie sewing machine on the nearest radio wave. It just makes me feel dirty.
A lot of my students will fill in the flanks of the masses. I can see it in their eyes. I wonder what might have saved them along the way, if anything. I teach to the others, the ones who have even just a flicker of a thought-forming mechanism. But there aren't many. And to the rest of them I'm a droning prison matron.
I hate teaching.
posted by Autumn at 9:08 PM
2 Comments:
NOOOOOOOOOOO!!!
no, no!!!
this is too sad for me to read,
no.
you have to find the wandering eyed kids with the secret hunger, harder in the south i am sure, but you can find them, they know the secret codes, they wear the funny shoelaces, they HAVE to be there,
you cannot hate teaching,
try one of those hip teacher lessons wher eyou scour pop culture for references to the things you are teaching, spark the minds of the indifferent,
i cannot bear to hear you say that it is hopeless,
even if it is true,
it is too sad.
i am afraid that America's sun is setting, this doldrum lack of curiosity will put the last nails in the coffin,
hold us under until we stop wigglin'
Unfortunately the masses have always been and will always be, though to what extent I cannot say. I do know this though, that there are those who prefer to be in the masses, those who reject the masses wholly, and those put into the category for one reason or another, be it self doubt, a lifetime of criticism, or just an endless string of people who didn't care enough to show them a better way. That third group is the one that people like you, who see the wonder and beauty in ordinary things, have to reach a hand out to, lest they all into the cracks, or masses as it were. Don't say that you hate teaching, rather say that you hate that so many young souls have been pushed into their pre-determined categories, and take comfort in the fact that there are those like you who still care enough to show them that they are more than a box on a census form or an ad from some magazine. If you give up, then the masses will claim their victims, and since you don't strike me as the quittin' type, I still have hope for the future.
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