I have turned in my grades. Summer Session I starts June I.
I am teaching Comp I in Summer I, which is essentially prep free at this point -- I do have to do some reading for my fall classes, but I've got most of the summer for that.
Summer II, I may well not be teaching at all. Bad news so far as our finances go, but I am trying to look at it as a silver lining: more time to write.
Why will I not be teaching at all? Why, because the voters of the Grate State of Arkansas elected charming Far-Right legislators to office, of course. We don't need no education, and we ain't gettin none neither.
So less funding for higher ed this year, which means very few summer classes are possible.
My students were all shocked to find that this was true. "Why are you not offering any summer classes?" they kept coming to me and saying. "How are we going to graduate on time without any summer classes?"
And when I would begin to explain how the 2012 elections, see, had put these Tea Party state Republicans into office, and --
"Oh, I don't pay any attention to politics," they would interrupt me smugly. Like this was a virtue.
"Yes, precisely," I said finally, to one of them. "That's exactly what happens. None of you pays any attention to politics, none of you votes, and so who does vote?
"Only the rabid conservative voters vote. And so who gets elected? The rabid far-right politicians. And then we end up with those politicians in office, and they refuse to fund the universities. And the libraries. And the roads. And everything except the prisons, and here we are."
This student stared at me, sort of helplessly, and I felt bad, since, after all, I had unloaded all my temper on her, and it was hardly all her fault.
I growled some sort of apology.
It's not like I voted when I was twenty either, after all.
Oh, well. Back to my science fiction, where I can make the bad guys suffer, at least sometimes.
2 comments:
I think students DO need to be a bit more aware politically. (Yes, I voted and read a newspaper regularly during college, and read the newspaper a bit even during HS.)
And certainly, they need to help their parents be aware and think about what they're voting for.
Here, if every college student and parent voted with an eye to the interests of public education, our election results would likely look different.
I agree, absolutely.
I used to give extra credit to voters. Maybe I should start again.
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