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The word “comfortable” is doing a whole lot of work in public debate about schools these days. And it’s true, education is •full• of discomfort:

Students get uncomfortable when learning a an unfamiliar concept.

Students get uncomfortable when they become aware of problems in the world.

Students get uncomfortable when their assumptions are challenged.

Students get uncomfortable when they feel unsafe.

I don’t think the word “uncomfortable” means the same thing in all those sentences.

2/

As an educator, I’m told — by the same people! — that:

(1) Because of politics, students are “coddled” now and get to speak their opinions in safe spaces without being challenged instead of having to face criticism, and this is a crisis

and

(2) Because of politics, students are uncomfortable to speak their opinions because of fear of being challenged instead of having safe spaces, and this is a crisis

3/

(The apparent contradiction between those two statements vanishes when you realize that, in the complainer’s mind, one applies to marginalized people and the other doesn’t.)

4/

Still, there’s a real tension here: it is my job as an educator both to make students •comfortable• and to make students •uncomfortable•. And by meaning too many different things at once, that word — “comfortable” — complicates the job.

Instead, try breaking comfort/discomfort along different axes:

- seen / unseen
- valued / unvaled
- safe / unsafe
- unchallenged / challenged
- unfrustrated / frustrated
etc.

Doesn’t that make the problem clearer?

5/

As an educator, it’s my job to do my best to make sure that every student is seen, valued, and safe in school •so that it is possible• for them to be challenged, both intellectually, socially, and emotionally.

Flatten that out into that one word, and it’s my job to “make students comfortable so it it possible to be uncomfortable.” And that’s catchy — but it’s nonsense, because we’re not talking about a single dimension here!

6/

That is, to me, a foundational premise of school: every student deserves to be seen, valued, and safe in school •so that it is possible• for them to be challenged, both intellectually, socially, and emotionally.

That’s our starting point. The only students who aren’t welcome in my classroom are the ones who don’t accept that premise (ht Karl Popper).

7/

Back to the OP about the flags being torn down:

There is no “neutral” here. Obviously. This is a fight about who deserves to be seen, valued, and safe in school. Do Puerto Rican students in Worthington, MN deserve to be seen, valued, and safe? Do LGBTQIA students there deserve to be seen, valued, and safe?

Should the schools honor people who will go to any lengths to make sure PR and LGBTQIA students are •not• seen? •not• valued? •not• safe?

There is no neutral position here.

8/

“Just focus on the lesson!“ they cry. “Classrooms are for pedagogy, not politics!”

Oh honey. Oh my poor, dear little bigot muffin. Let me tell you about teaching students to code.

Coding is frustration. Learning to code is •very• frustrating. Nothing on this earth will make you feel as stupid as attempting to program a computer. It’s not you; it’s just the nature of the beast. It’s true for me, an expert of 4 decades; it’s true many times over for a beginner.

9/

Dealing with frustration is one of the most important things I teach as a computer science professor. This is a discipline where “ARRRGH why does it not WORK” is your daily life. Figuring out how to work through that, how to be psychologically healthy with it, how to find •joy• in it, that’s important learning. Hard learning!

Hard enough for anyone.

But for a student who’s legitimately afraid that they’ll be hurt by one of their classmates at any moment?

9/

I won’t attempt to describe what it is to be a queer or a Latine student in Worthington, because I’m not. I recommend that we all try to find and •listen to• some people who are, who can describe their own experience.

All I’ll say is that it’s impossible for me to imagine the kinds of things those students face on a daily basis wouldn’t harm their ability to face the frustration of coding, to “just focus on the lesson.”

Come on. Get real. Have you ever met a human being?

10/

To “just focus on the lesson,” you •have• to focus first and always on the human beings in front of you.

That’s most of teaching, honestly: ••seeing students and meeting them where they’re at••.

That’s it. That’s the work.

11/

The school board of Worthington, MN says “no, you can’t do that work. Whatever harms your students bring into the classroom, you can’t counteract them in any way that visibly diverges from local norms, that makes anything visible that the people in power here aren’t already used to seeing.”

They haven’t taken a neutral position. They’ve taken a •default• position.

The default settings are never neutral.

12/

In this thread, I’m speaking instead to people who are maybe a degree or two removed from the schools, or maybe in the thick of them, truly wishing to find the good choices here, and honestly tangled up in knots by these tarpit words: “neutral,” “comfortable.”

Neither of those words means exactly what you think it means. Neither means just one thing. Neither is unidimensional. Neither is free of hidden baggage.

If you can sift through all that, it’s not as intractable as it seems.

/end

Related thread about people making a nonsensical effort (or so they claim) to opt out of politics, to be neutral in a situation where neutrality does not exist:
https://hachyderm.io/@inthehands/111707573907442638

@courtcan Well said. Hat tip to a fellow Cantrell.

(Which way does your branch of the family say it: stress on the first syllable or the second? i.e. CAN-trəll or can-TRELL?)

@inthehands Well, it's both, really! It's my husband's family. The relatives in eastern Oklahoma pronounce it CAN-trull. But Ed grew up in Denver saying it can-TRELL, even though his dad was from eastern Oklahoma. His siblings all say/said can-TRELL, but his brother has spent the last 30 years living in eastern Oklahoma and has acquired the CAN-trull pronunciation.

And every so often, if Ed is talking about the eastern Okies collectively, he'll say "CAN-trulls."

How about yours?

@courtcan Solidly CAN-trull, via Pennsylvania. Growing up in Colorado, most people assumed can-TRELL — and that’s how we recognized telemarketers on the phone!

I haven’t figured out what the geographic pattern is, if any.

@inthehands I'm going to look up the ancestry records we have and see if this family branch has any Pennsylvania connections. If they do, it might explain why eastern Oklahoma is so similar!

@courtcan I’d be curious to hear! My Cantrells came from Ireland, IIRC.

@inthehands okay, near as I can tell, our Cantrells are descended from a Richard Cantril born in Blakewell, England, in 1630. But I'm not 100% sure somebody didn't fudge their research.

This Richard's grandson, Joseph, was born in Philadelphia!!! in 1695.
Joseph's son, Isaac, a reverend, was born in New Castle, PA, in 1729.
Isaac had two sons, Reuben & Charles, both born in NC.
My husband's line descends from Reuben.
Reuben's great-grandson, Noah, was born in AR in 1883.
Noah moved to OK.

@inthehands At 26, Noah married Ethel, who was only 14.

Ethel gave birth to Clyde, my husband's grandfather, when she was 15. She died at age 20.

Noah remarried in 1914, his bride a woman who was 8 years older than his first wife.

@inthehands #genealogy

@inthehands I need to do some sleuthing as well. Some of the alleged birth dates in our line are a leeeeeetle difficult to imagine. A man fathering a child at 70+ isn't that unusual, I guess. But the mother being age 46 anytime before the 1900s raises a red flag or two.

Again, not impossible, just not very likely.

I'd love to hear if you come up with any new ancestors!