Steven Hale
1 min readJun 17, 2023

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I think you're right to maintain the integrity of your reading list. Every teacher (regardless of philosophy or teaching style) imposes a perspective on the texts / reading material / approach--you can't not do that. There is no neutral ground. (Cf. Hayden White, Tropics of Discourse)

However, I don't believe that the teacher is obligated to force a particular ideology onto the students (some will, some won't) simply because there is no neutral ground. My own preference would be to throw out a viewpoint or text and let the students react to it (ideally without fear of reprisal if they disagreed with what they assumed was my perspective).

Still, while I'm a perspectivist, I'm not a relativist. I believe there is such a thing as misreading (lots of slaveowners misread the Bible in order to justify their abuses of human dignity). I once had a student who wrote a lucid (but incorrect) reading of Gwendolyn Brooks' "The Bean Eaters" as a criticism of the materialism of the poor couple depicted in the poem. Now great literature is typically open to multiple and often contradictory interpretations, but it is not, in my perspective, open to any or every interpretation.

LGBTQ commentaries / literature hold up a valuable mirror to our assumptions and prejudices. Including them in any course should be seen by students as an opportunity for growth.

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Steven Hale
Steven Hale

Written by Steven Hale

Music: Discovering the lost and forgotten. Politics: Exposing injustice. Screenwriting: Emotional storytelling.

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