Despite some reawakening of student activism via Howard Dean's Internet-based campaign, in my experience, attempts to introduce contemporary politics into classroom discussions meet with blank stares. Even this past year, as our country began a war, I encountered mostly silence when I broached the topic of Iraq, a mix of paralysis and anxiety, plus some disgruntlement over my deviating from the syllabus. But each year, frankly, I feel increasingly compelled to look beyond my syllabuses and to devote myself more to teaching "wakeful" political literacy: the skills needed to interrogate all cultural messages. Students need to be able to mine the implications, for example, of a "Family Time Flexibility Act" which, while claiming to help women balance home and family, might have actually decreased overtime pay. They need to look critically at a presidential address that divides the world into opposing halves labeled "with us" and "with the terrorists." |
