Lady Macbeth and Me

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Last week a student took me to task for not warning the class that we would be talking about suicide, Lady Macbeth's self-harm. The same student had objected to my drawing a parallel between the civil war at the start of Shakespeare's play to the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol the day after the event. It was too soon, too emotional for too many people, the student wrote. On both occasions, I bristled in self-defense, ego bruised, competence questioned. I had so many good pedagogical reasons for doing what I did.

But not having done something for the past 15 years is not a good reason for not doing it now. One could be making the same mistake year after year, unintentionally, until one is told. That the causes of harm are various, multiple, and nebulous is no reason for not warning of the ones that we know of: suicide and rape, for two clear instances. And if trigger warnings soften our children, why would we want them to be hard? Isn't caring for others, and themselves, the harder deal?

My colleagues and I have been working with an African American studies professor on implementing an anti-racist curriculum at our school. She has given us much wise advice and many useful tips. Most profoundly she has modeled for us what an anti-racist classroom could look like. At the start of our training she said that she had to learn to be humble in order to hear and accept student feedback, however given, and revise her teaching accordingly. I nodded my easy assent then, but how hard it is to be humble and open when the time calls for it. It gets harder as one gets older. At least, it does for me.

Jee Leong Koh
March 18, 2021

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