Thursday, June 20, 2013

More Domestic Territory-ism


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One of my many perks as a college professor was the wealth of interesting anecdotes that students shared with me about themselves, their families, and their friends, especially those in my human development and marriage and family classes. Some of those were shared with the class, some with me privately. A large number of the anecdotes shared by my women students concerned an attack of their developing self-esteem, one of the most important of human territories.

An example of this attack that I heard all too often: A student seeking my attention would open with, "This is probably a stupid question." These prefaces rankled me because I told each class at the onset that I did not regard any question based on a need or desire to know, stupid, and probably reaffirmed that dictum several times during our nine weeks together. I have no doubt that the questioner had heard me because she would most likely be one of my sharper students and the question that followed would be very well put. (Unfortunately the more timid students with the onus of this epithet weighing heavily upon their minds would not ask. This possibility angered me even more.)

When was she taught, and by whom, that her questions were stupid? She had probably heard that early on and by the time she began her education she believed it so thoroughly that she apparently expected that rejoinder from her teachers—and unfortunately may have even heard it from some.

Ignorance is the state of not knowing; stupidity is the state of knowing yet acting contrary to the knowledge. To tell a child who questions in an effort to know or understand something that she has asked a stupid question is to imply that she is stupid and therefore demeans her. This crushing of the bud of developing self-esteem is a trespass most egregious and rightly deserves censure.


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