Ave, Charles!

My buddy Charles has written a thoughtful post on teaching that covers a variety of topics: how to handle teacherly disagreements with students (possibly relevant to that crucial scene from "Tár" that I mentioned in my review of the film: Lydia may have given an anti-PC answer that conservatives love,* but she did so in a way that was hurtful to the student), what to do when a student is objectively wrong about something, and dealing with a situation in which another professor (in a different class) may have "humiliated" a student.** As with all of Charles's posts, this one is quite interesting.

At one point, Charles writes this:

Of course, it helps to start with the knowledge that I am never going to be one hundred percent right about everything—no one is. And just as no one can be sure of being one hundred percent right, so also is no one ever one hundred percent wrong.

By lifting this quote out of context, I may be doing Charles a disservice by oversimplifying—and possibly misinterpreting—what he's really saying, but I would submit that if I say 2 + 2 = 4 and a student says 2 + 2 = 5, then one of us is obviously, objectively, and certainly in the right while the other is most definitely in the wrong—no ifs, ands, or buts. So there are times when one can be sure of being one hundred percent right.

Again, though, I realize that my objection is based on a statement that I've uprooted from its original context. In the original context, Charles was less focused on the pure logic of an absolute claim like "no one can be sure of being one hundred percent right." Instead, as you'll see if you read his essay, Charles was focused on the human, pedagogical dimension of the situation; he doesn't mention it directly in his piece, but he was talking about the need for humility in human interactions, and humility is often one of the first things to go out the window in cases of disagreement or outright conflict.

I guess I'm noting my objection above not because I think Charles's piece is wrong in any way—quite the opposite: I found myself often nodding in agreement—but because the absoluteness of that particular claim struck me in a strange way. 

In one collection of essays I own, Explorations in Global Ethics, one chapter contains an exchange between the chapter's author and a postmodernist who contends that, because everything is radically contextualized, it is impossible to make sweeping generalizations about humanity... which sounds like a (typically PoMo) rejection of common humanity. The author countered this by saying something like, "All living humans breathe air and need water, right? So let's start from there." 

That's more or less where I'm coming from with my objection. From a purely logical standpoint, I'm pushing back against perceived absoluteness, but from a pedagogical standpoint, I completely agree with the practical wisdom of what Charles is saying. Charles makes his claim in the service of humility, a necessary component of civil dialogue. My counterpoint, though, is that humility sometimes runs up against brute fact, inviolable tenets, or unshakable principles, and at that point, when we reach the line that can't be crossed, we either take a stand, or we go squishy and abandon principles for the sake of civility. 

In one of my readings, an author wryly noted that "Buddhists won't budge on metaphysics." The same could be said for many Christians, who won't budge on the idea that the Easter event represents the essence of Christianity. One of my favorite profs put it this way: "We're all fundamentalist about something." Humility is a necessary component of dialogue, for sure, but never to the point where you find yourself abandoning your core principles. Again, none of this is to question Charles's belief that a humble approach to an exchange is the better method. I totally agree. My only qualification is that humility has limits.

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*At a guess, actress Cate Blanchett would likely be mortified to be thought of as un-PC or anti-woke, so it's important to acknowledge that we're talking about how her character acts in the film, not what Cate Blanchett herself believes. I haven't watched enough interviews to know what Blanchett herself really believes about teaching, PC thinking, etc.

**That scene in "Tár" has sparked a rightie discussion about its accuracy. Whatever Blanchett's beliefs, a lot of rightie commentators are expressing relief that the scene (1) was even included in the film and (2) is a true reflection of what normally happens when two viewpoints clash these days: the leftie will run out of arguments, have a tantrum, and storm out (which is how the argument ends in the film, with the nonbinary, BIPOC student calling Tár a "fucking bitch" as he stalks out of the lecture hall). As the movie rolls on, though, we discover that several other students in the room had surreptitiously recorded the exchange on their phones, and another angry student had spliced some of the moments in the exchange together to make Tár sound as if she were saying something she never meant to say.