The Emperor’s New Clothes

by Fitz | Feb 8, 2019 | Essays, Journal, Teaching

“But he hasn’t got anything on!” the whole town cried out at last.

The Emperor shivered, for he suspected they were right. But he thought, “This procession has got to go on.” So he walked more proudly than ever, as his noblemen held high the train that wasn’t there at all.

~The Emperor’s New Clothes, Hans Christian Anderson

     It’s kind of weird—and more than a bit arrogant—but I have this separate part of my journal where I keep all my entries that reflect some primitive sort of thoughtfulness and balance–scrabblings that might even represent and resemble honest and real wisdom. I came here to this “journal” because I just finished reading a school email noting that I am “required” to attend the diversity sessions during our winter professional day. I am thinking and hoping that if I put a response in my “Wisdom Journal,” some kind of nuanced and balanced thoughts will come out of it-—but, I doubt it. My stubborn nature will emerge; I will refuse to see the other side; [but then again, the other side will, no doubt, refuse to see mine] so I am left to dig my muddy yankee soles into the slippery ground of this new, emerging spring and battle the elements in another senseless battle of wits.

This is my intellectual dilemma: I simply am not interested in someone—someone not of my choosing—to introduce me to the world (especially his or her world) of affinity groups, gender identity and toxic masculinity. I am not disinterested in the subject, nor is it off the radar of my life; I just object to being forced to listen to a certain person or persons with whom I have no relationship or affinity at all, or, even worse, I know them and have no interest in their point of view, their personal perspectives, or their politicized point of views. I am a curmudgeon at heart; I distrust any self-proclaimed captain barking orders to go hard a’lee and sail unopposed and against my will and wisdom onto a rocky shoal of a sultry, emerging paradigm.

I am in essence being forced against my will to spend a day of my life immersed in a senseless sea of drivel and doggerel, and if I show my reluctance, I will be vilified and labeled a bigoted perpetuator of myopic thought and white privilege. My relatively simple job of teaching 8th and 9th grade English seems dependent on my agreeing to (or at least appearing to agree to) whatever is on the daily agenda of a middle school professional day presented by mid-level intellects empowered by some bandwagon thinking of superior virtue and noble action.

Where is Socrates when you really need him? Where are the colleagues who might agree with me? Who framed the scaffolding of this now urgent pedagogical priority? What, really, is the point? Has my life been so unexamined as to discard my past speculations of right and wrong? Is there some flaw in my life that needs mending? What have I done to deserve this magnanimous flogging? What seer sees so clearly into my soul, my motives, my ruminating and my urgency to curve the bent of my elusive genius and disrupt the path of my hard-wrought, existential narrative?

I hear the refrain that it is only a day—and a day I am paid well to endure. It is a chance to hear new voices, new ideas and new ways of understanding. If that is the case, how different is it from any other day? I am no dolt to conformity; I do not live to reassure my comfortable self. I box my own ears in a continual search for what is ineffably me!  The very notion that I need more hands to bandy me about is insult to affront. I am the proverbial horse being dragged to water, yet I am not so thirsty as to drink the potion prepared for me. Find other mares and stallions to follow your mirage.

But, dammit, not me. Give me back the day. My soil is ill-suited to your seed. See clearly and put clothes on your vain emperor. Send me off to ponder and leave me alone. 

At the end of the day, let us compare our respective fruits and see whose basket is full.