So I have not been blogging, though there has been plenty of meat, just not much internet access. Monday's class, for instance, was a veritable parade of cranky female insanity in various forms: I never thought that I would be engaged in a protracted discussion with a Hungarian nationala about the various Indo-European bloodlines and how the Age of White Hegemony is about to see its twillight. I mean, I felt a sort of obligation to correct her on her repeatedly fascist and racist beliefs. But I guess no Puerto Ricans have ever cut me. Still, it's odd to talk to be "blueblood" Hungarian in a diversity class, and of course her right-wing moralizing about buggery a few weeks ago wasn't very helpful--homophobes ought not to lead discussions about inclusion of gays into the school system.

I have also wearied of the half-Chinese pedant who has declared her background every time she has ever shown up to class, with some anecdote about her Sony-hating Chinese father. I mean, she's half-Chinese, doesn't speak the language, and is losing her fucking hair. But I suppose putative Asianness is something to hold onto when you've not got much else. It's just sad that it's such narrow imperialism and cultural chauvinism, always with the implication that the fried-chicken-greasy over-manicured, nails-done chubby fat black hands have a hard time keeping their hands on the plow and their eyes on their plow, unlike, presumably, those virtuous Sinofolks, who of course would have been pulling the plow (iron moldboard!) in the first place. It's just offensive, narrow, and saddening, all amid a discussion of Korean Americans as model minorities. I stayed silent rather than subject the class my vitriol, but it's sad again that ethnicity--hell, nationality, even--is jumbled up with class. It's just sad, as these are teachers and folks soon with masters degrees, and yet...

It didn't help that the crazed woman, who reminds me in some ways of an older Isobelle, sat down next to me, very politely, at that, and started yelling into her cellphone on 2/5 in Brooklyn for people to get away from her and leave her alone. At least New Yorkers aren't beyond the strangers' solidarity of mocking the less-fortunate. Still, I suspect that Joephet is right, and that New York is rather too ghetto for its own good.

I've been harassed, meanwhile, by my administration, which has told me that while I have many great characteristics--male, different culture, talk to students, know math, my lack of classroom management is unacceptable at this point in my career. Of course, this is from a veteran declaredly years from retirement, a petty landowner and capitalist with absolutely not subject-area competence despite repeated declarations of an affinity with mathematics and my style, which is of course completely out of the mainstream. I would just like to go on the record again and ask, "What is it we're supposed to be teaching our kids that we as teachers do not know across subject areas?"