Reflection
Dec. 22nd, 2011 12:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chaniI usually try not to hurt people around me, but I know that my word can be very sharp sometimes.
Being a teacher facing about 35 students ready to pounce on you, day after day, makes you quick to act and good at saying repartees that put insolents in their places. My word is the whip that reinforces my position but it is also my role as an educator to chastise them verbally; it hardens the pupils and helps them to learn...and it's a cautionary tale for the others. It serves as an exemplum (as mediaeval preachers would say). But I usually do it in a way that is not mean but rather looks like a verbal joust that I won because I have to. The students get it, it's part of the game, it even amuses them.
But it's different when the other can't see your face and the smile in your eyes, and the teacher in me shouldn't bleed out on this virtual world. I can argue, make my point in an online discussion but I am not here to correct others or shows them the wrongness of their ways like La Statue du Commandeur.
Online there are only words that bite and the cold loneliness that surrounds them.
Being a teacher facing about 35 students ready to pounce on you, day after day, makes you quick to act and good at saying repartees that put insolents in their places. My word is the whip that reinforces my position but it is also my role as an educator to chastise them verbally; it hardens the pupils and helps them to learn...and it's a cautionary tale for the others. It serves as an exemplum (as mediaeval preachers would say). But I usually do it in a way that is not mean but rather looks like a verbal joust that I won because I have to. The students get it, it's part of the game, it even amuses them.
But it's different when the other can't see your face and the smile in your eyes, and the teacher in me shouldn't bleed out on this virtual world. I can argue, make my point in an online discussion but I am not here to correct others or shows them the wrongness of their ways like La Statue du Commandeur.
Online there are only words that bite and the cold loneliness that surrounds them.