When I decided to teach high school English, I couldn’t have imagined a scenario in which extremist political ideologies would impact how or what I taught my future students. But times have changed.
It isn’t 2006 anymore, and I’m not sitting in 11th grade American Literature. And if Mr. Goyette, the well-read, Birkenstock-wearing 29-year-old at the front of the room, had told me that my profession would someday be implicated in an unnecessarily violent political brawl, I would have tried harder in math.
But he didn’t. In fact, it seemed as though he simply wanted me to read what he assigned for class. And I usually didn’t.
I have, however, finally realized the only goal he took seriously as a professional: to ensure I valued literacy. For reasons too complicated to detail within the confines of an op-ed, I will not describe how his goal was ultimately attained. How literacy became central to my mission as an English teacher is not important. My story is far too boring.
Right now, you need to know this: Administrators at King’s College London have not taken formal disciplinary action against students responsible for “inviting Antifa to campus.”
According to Tamara Berens, a current “War Studies” major, King’s will not punish current students “for tangible physical harassment and assault” on its campus earlier this month, and instead impede the education of young men and women who want to hear a political opinion that occasionally leans right. At this point, you might be asking, “Why would a high school English teacher concern himself with a university that isn’t even in this country?”
Well, if Berens is right in claiming that the U.S. “sets the tone for political debates across the world,” then I am at least indirectly linked to the students who called for this conflict while enrolled at an institution that allegedly prizes education as its purpose. The kids I teach will influence the direction of the university system, both in the United States and abroad. I can confidently make this statement because my classes are comprised of domestic and international students alike.
Primarily, what disturbs me is Berens’ claim that members of Antifa have followed in Stalin’s linguistic footsteps, using the term “fascist,” as well as the more contemporary term “alt-right,” to silence their political opponents and instigate violence. Before you recoil in the usual fashion and exclaim that I’m drawing a ridiculous comparison, consider this: George Orwell, an author whose work I’ve been required to teach, specifically warned against this type of language abuse in a 1946 essay titled, “Politics and the English Language.”
And at the risk of getting too in-depth amid the “post-fact era” in which we live, allow me to highlight a particularly clairvoyant passage: “The word Fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies ‘something not desirable.’” He continues, asserting that, “words of this kind are often used in a consciously dishonest way.”
Now, if my students, whether present or past, consciously use the English language in a dishonest way, I have, in some way, failed them as an educator. But, if their dishonest use of language is unconscious, I will have failed in an entirely more comprehensive fashion. For if a student passes high school English while unconsciously using the language (i.e., reading it, writing it, listening to it, and speaking it) the teacher must have been negligent, lazy, or a combination of the two. I’ve never had a desire to be either. Instead, I push students to value precision in their use of language.
To be clear, it is not my belief that every current Antifa member is conscious of the ways in which they misrepresent their adversaries based on the words they use. I simply don’t believe they’ve taken the time to investigate whether or not their accusations are true.
And now a campus security officer has been injured, and more university property has been damaged. All that this latest campus insanity tells us is that the power of a 72-year-old essay should never be overlooked.
Michael O’Keefe is a boarding school English teacher and football coach. A native New Englander, he has worked in both northeast Ohio and the Mid-Atlantic region for the last five years.
