I Shouldn’t Be Proud Of This
But I am.
Yesterday a physics teacher in our building decided that it was appropriate to tell a room full of students that my philosophy classes were useless, for, among other reasons, it doesn’t deal with objective truth, facts, or things that can be proven.
The room was half filled with my philosophy students. They gave him hell. That’s why I love them. But he ignored them, and ran over their thoughts and emotions.
Then they came and told me. I’m not so easily bullied. So . . .
Today I swung by that same class, towards the end of the period, and told him that I was stopping by so I could learn pure, objective facts, and gain real truth from him. Then proceeded to ask him to teach me ANYTHING about physics WITHOUT quoting from a philosopher. Or about biology. Or any science really. Of course I then listed the great names of physics and biology, some of the modern and ancient founders, who were ALL philosophers as well as scientists and mathematicians.
I should probably feel bad that when he tried to save face, I caught him in multiple contradictions about the nature of mathematics, objective truth, language, empiricism, epistemology and .. . . well, everything. Applying the simplicity of Socrates: use the words the person just said against them. Show that they are full of it by what they themselves JUST said.
Eventually I left. I was only there for five minutes. Maybe less. The smiles on my students’ faces were reward enough.
The fact that one of them was so “proud of me” that she bought me lunch, also helped.
I’ll probably hear about this in some way on Monday. Called to the office. Told that it was ‘unprofessional.’ I probably won’t even mention the fact that he attacked my course and my effectiveness in the school first, which was also ‘unprofessional.’ Or that he was bullying my kids. Or the fact that he often talks out of his butt and doesn’t completely do his job. But I won’t. I’ll turn the other cheek at this point, since I’ve already bludgeoned his.
Un-Christ-like? Yeah. Probably. Though I could make the argument that confronting lies in the same manner that they were presented is a viable option, meekness aside. But I won’t.
However, even in light of possible consequences, it was SOOOOOOOO worth it to make a pompous person eat their words in front of my kids.
. . .Hell, party of one?
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