The Silencing of the Minds
By JOHN ROBERTS
“Can you help me with my paper?” she said, wearing an anxious look like slapped-on makeup. I smiled warmly and nodded. As a writing tutor, I love hearing those words. Those words always give me an optimistic attitude that a student will leave a tutoring session with a new, confident voice to use in their writing.
“What’s the assignment?” I replied, as she set down her stack of heavy textbooks, filled-in notebooks, and folders. When I heard her speak, she sounded less like a student and more like a spokesperson for overachievement; she was a high school senior who made straight A’s, played three sports, and was enrolled in dual credit classes at the small junior college I tutor at. The assignment was a 6-page opinion paper about a topic of her choice. She had chosen to argue that English should be the national language of the United States.
“I don’t typically have problem with papers,” the student said, “but this one has been hard. I’m not sure if my thesis is correct or if I have the right arguments to support it.” I could tell her paper was still a draft: misplaced punctuation, incorrect citations, and fragmented sentences were scattered throughout. In most papers (even with these maladies) I could find the persuasive thought pattern that weaves through the draft. Yet in her paper, that persuasive voice was low and hoarse. Her arguments were good, but they failed to convince me that she took any pride or strong conviction in her opinion.
“Why did you choose this topic?” I asked. I studied her face as she formulated a reply; I could see her cringing mentally, like a weight had been placed on her slumping shoulders.
“I figured it was a topic my teacher would give me an A on.” She spoke in low tones. She went on to describe how her professor had opinions that differed from her own; yet her conviction was that a professor’s role in the classroom was to hold an opinion and that a student’s role was to express that opinion back.
After we finished our tutoring session and she began to gather up her things, I offered her this advice, “Don’t ever feel like you have to support anything you don’t want to. If you have another issue you would rather write about, change your paper! A professor’s opinions should never force you to write about something you disagree with.” She smiled weakly (the smile of someone used to hearing that mantra) and replied, “I know that, but I just want the grade.
In 1999, a study of 1,607 college students was conducted by April Kelly-Woessner, Dr. Matthew Woessner, and Dr. Stanley Rothman for their 2009 article, “Perception of Political Disagreement and Self-Censorship in Downward Communication.” They discovered that 30% of students expressed that they frequently or sometimes self-censor due to student reactions, and 23% self-censor due to faculty reactions. As a writing tutor, I have heard many students’ similar apprehension to speak their opinions. A student once told me that she didn’t express her opinions because she didn’t want her opinions to create schisms between herself and fellow students or professors.
Yet dissent, particularly in politics (the result of most social dissent), is the greatest asset any free society has. It makes us more prepared to engage each other; in any free society, our goal is to invest in our neighbor the best of our thoughts and dreams. If it does anything, it shows that we maintain an unprecedented value and respect, not only for our own opinions, but also for the opinions of our neighbor with whom we vehemently disagree. We disagree with him, and by doing so we value his voice, his individual perspective, although we value his opinions even less, or not at all. In my life, I have found dissent to be a companion, whom I have slowly come to appreciate. Maybe this is why I find it difficult to understand students who wish to remain opinionated from a distance. Yet if a person can discover the value of their voice, of speaking out, the world will never regret having heard it.
When I was a freshman in high school, my mom took my brother and I out of classes on a February morning and drove us from our home in Rhode Island to Boston to watch the debate on gay marriage at the Massachusetts Courthouse. Several thousand people were gathered on the frozen grounds in front, and had been shouting rhythmic slogans for hours, an activity they continued into the frigid evening. Their voices, commanding and strong, stuck in my head for weeks and a seed to speak with their passion planted in my mind.
When I began my college career, I was determined to not remain politely neutral on hot button issues if they ever came up in discussion. If that was a problem to be remedied, my Dad was not going to help me find it. I lived at home while going to a local junior college and often at the dinner table, I would mention the nuggets I gleaned from the classroom, any contentions with an opinion, and how I had addressed them—if I had built up the courage to speak in opposition. “You need to articulate a better argument,” my dad would say.
“You can attack that position best if you attack it pragmatically,” a comparison I often had to refresh my mind to. He had worked as a college mathematics professor and while growing up I became accustomed to him formulating theoretical proofs in order to show me that my pre-algebra homework could be solved (and apparently, only by him). If I learned anything from him, it was “patience.’ His idea of patience was constant research, an ascetic focus on finding as many solutions (both pragmatic and aesthetic) to solve a problem as possible, and searching to find holes in those solutions, with a hope that you will find ways to plug up the arguments or abandon your position—what he considered striving for ultimate truth.
“Did you think about saying this?” he would say, confident that I had the speed of his annealed brain. I felt armed after our mealtime discussions, and would spend my nights attempting to fortify my philosophical castles for future debates. He would say that it’s not about maintaining a catalog of beliefs, bullet points meant to be fired at a moment’s notice, but well reasoned thoughts, formed by finding detractors and the weaknesses they expose.
In 2008, I had the opportunity to vote in the primaries for my political party. That night, and later that month, I participated in the county-level debates within our party concerning what would be chosen for the party platform. We sat in a court room at the county seat; the chairman sat in the judge’s chair, and the members scattered among the seats in the defense, prosecution, and the audience. We all came together to try the tenants of what we thought we stood for. Everyone disagreed. The room grew warmer with the friction of voices, and I listened, holding my breath. Several of the amendments offered were close votes. After three hours, all left the chamber colleagues.
Later that year, I was elected to the Texas state convention for that political party. I expected to find a similar level of civility that was found on the county level, but the state level legislature convention was more intensified in debate, and the powerful men held sway. Dissenting voices were shouted down at the microphones and vehemently discouraged from speaking. Yet they spoke, and my mind was watered with the desire to be like them. I agreed with many of the issues they raised. I felt that my learning was over and I was ready to open my mouth at the college level.
“You find most of them in the South, and many of them are white. You know are mostly racist...” He said to her, emphatically. My ears pricked up and I winced. I had been in my first upper-division classes for a week at Texas Christian University and I felt like a kid in a new toy shop, exploring exciting and exotic contraptions. I was taking a literary course on William Faulkner, and in exploring his characters in “Light in August,” the professor had directed the discussion into how the situations of racism and profiling related to modern day politics. The racists whom he spoke of were a political group who had been outspoken against Barack Obama’s election. He had opened up a dialogue with a female student sitting in the front row.
“It seems that they (the group) are way,” she replied. I’d had enough. Although I had not been involved with this organization, I knew enough to know that that was a gross conjecture. Their position put them in opposition to most of Barack Obama’s policy.
“So you are making the claim that they are racists and that is why they don't support Obama?” I blurted out. My conversation was directed at the student. She looked back at me over her shoulder.
“I’m not saying that,” she said, withdrawing from the conversation. I looked at the professor. He stood there, his arms folded. “John, she didn’t say that, I did.” I sat frozen, wondering if he was strategizing the best way to slash my grade.
“So you are the one saying that they are racist? Do you know there are African Americans apart of that organization?” He turned his head to the side and paused.
“John, I’m not saying they are all racist, but many of them are.”
“Sure, probably some of them hold that sentiment, but to make such a statement means you are discrediting the other members in the group, they aren’t all a part of one political party.”
“Yet probably many of them are racist. You can see that...” I grew silent as he continued on with the lecture. I left the class that day with a lead weight plummeting in my gut. My thoughts were conflicted, I wanted to make my point, but had I sacrificed my grade? I went to his office, thinking that I could extend an olive branch and yet share my position openly with him.
“I don’t mean to try and attack your opinion or education sir, but-”
“John,” He interrupted, a habit he is fond of, “I encourage dissension in the classroom. More power to you, and may the debate get more heated.” His crooked grin worried me, but I smiled back. I had followed through with my conscious and I felt as if I had lived that day as a human being. As I left his office, I wondered what would have happened if I had not said anything at all, if I would have lost my grade (which I didn’t), and if I had kept my mouth shut, if anything would have changed.
My mom often told me, “If you were in a burning building and I told you to jump, would you jump?” She of course, said it to a boy, who needed to learn the correct way to operate and interact with a family and a community. Now, I tell myself that same statement, “If you need to jump John, will you jump?”
Often, when I am driving back to my tutoring job, I think of the times I have been successful in sharing my opinion, and when I have failed. My brain will furiously write out a revised idea or concept. I think of my peers who I am tutoring and how I can help them find their own voices. I think as I am driving down the road, “How far will I jump? What time will I jump? How often will I jump? Will I trust myself to jump?” I smile and tell myself, “Yes, I will.”