steinbeck, god, genocide and one ridiculously long post

You may not know this, but suburban Detroit has its own bible belt and I work in the buckle. Despite being one of the most diverse areas in the state we tend not to integrate here - ethnically or religiously - and I have noticed that over the last five years the community where I work, while becoming a smidge more ethnically diverse (we have a handful of African American students now!) is becoming more and more zealously Christian. As a girl who attended Catholic school for eight years I certainly have a first-hand knowledge of what it means to get a Christian education, but what has become increasingly troublesome to me in the number of students and parents who, despite electing a public education, seem unable to separate their faith from my classroom. I attribute this to two things: 1) the growing popularity of a school sponsored Christian club and 2) heavy student "recruitment" into a local non-denominational, evangelical and very charismatic church. (I smell cult, but perhaps that's unfair. I tend to distrust organized groups that wear matching t-shirts and sing with their eyes closed.) I certainly don't mean to begrudge my students' personal beliefs and, of course, prayer groups are preferable to underage sex and drugs, but what has become more and more concerning to me is the growing intolerance that I'm sensing in this group.

Case in point: loyal readers may remember my recent classroom controversy surrounding The Great Gatsby. Well, looks like it's now Steinbeck's turn. On Monday my American Literature class began reading Of Mice and Men. To "hook" the kids, I read chapter one aloud to the class like I do every year (I do a mean Lennie, by the way), but the experience was dramatically different this year. Thanks to my previous cloud of controversy I flinched at every "crazy bastard" and "Jesus Christ, Lennie" and that came out of my mouth, and was entirely unsurprised when I came in to work on Tuesday to discover my voice mail light blinking on my phone. A mother (the same who opposed The Great Gatsby) had called to complain about the language in Of Mice and Men. My defense for the book was easy - it's in the school's board approved curriculum - to which she countered that the school board must hate God. She then asked me how I handled the use of such language. When I asked her for clarification, she asked if I prefaced the novel by letting the kids know that Steinbeck was "breaking a commandment by using the Lord's name in vain." (Silly me. I was under the impression that I taught at a public school.) When we spoke, she admitted that she's never read this book (or "Gatsby", or "Huck Finn", or To Kill a Mockingbird, or Romeo and Juliet - did she go to school?!) and has no intention of reading such "filth." Which is really too bad. She's missing the underlying message of friendship, love and responsiblity - which, if I remember correctly, are still "Christain values." I guess what shocks me more than anything is not that a parent complained about the language used in this book but the fact that she assumed I was teaching the ten commandments in my classroom. Huh? I must admit that I didn't bother even trying to defend the book to her this time. What's the point? Anything that I could have said would have easily been dismissed as the rhetoric of a sinner who is bound for hell.

As if this weren't disconcerting enough, religious intolerance reared it's ugly head again three hours later. This class has just completed Night, a Holocaust memoir, and we were discussing the issue of responsibility. Hitler, the German citizens, international governments came up, of course, but I was a bit stunned when I called upon a usually quiet girl who offered the Jews as being a responsible party. When I pressed for an explanation, she said that her mom told her that the Jews brought the Holocaust upon themselves because they "turned their backs on Christ."

And that's when my heart broke.

Perhaps I could have gently explained to her that God wouldn't want genocides to happen and that Jesus wouldn't have approved of the Holocaust, but then I would basically be saying that everything her mother told her was ignorant and wrong and I can only deal with so many angry parents in one week.

My husband tries to console me by saying that my kids need me because I offer a different point of view - one that they won't get from their church or their parents - but I wonder how influential I am if my words are so easily dismissed by parents and ministers as those of a typical, liberal teacher. Ironically, from what I understand, Jesus was a pretty liberal dude too.

God damn it.