WVP: World View Prejudice

I was marking my first paper at 11pm last night. I was somewhat excited about it. I wonder what would they write in their first essay? The assignment stated:

Using the concept of a 'world view', identify some of the beliefs and attitudes, particularly to education and learning, that you bring to your learning now. Reflect critically on how your world view has been shaped by factors such as your gender, age or community.

It sounded like a fabulous topic, one in which a student was able to express the cultural and social context of their lives in relation to education and learning.

A 'world view' is at once ideological and subversive. This phrase demanded self-reflexivity and narrative verisimilitude. It taps onto a person's struggle with texts and ideas, theories and epistemologies to create a coherence to how one views one's everyday life. I knew that a world view exposed naturalised meanings of texts but I was not prepared for the shock I received from the first essay.

The text continued and she was struggling to connect both her life's context to education and learning. Each paragraph stood on its own without a single tether to the assignment criteria. But lo and behold, one paragraph stood stark and ominous above the rest.

The individual stated that according to her experience and knowledge, most 'people from middle eastern backgrounds' were violent and that her Christian upbringing taught her that such actions by such 'people' were wrong. She further justified that the Muslim religion believed that violence was not ethically or morally wrong; rather, Muslims believed that violence such as Jihad was a heroic act that would bathe the perpetrators in heavenly glory.

I gripped my couch and breathed in real slowly. My neck was sweating and my eyes were covered with a gossamer of exasperation.

How am I suppose to mark this?! There isn't a bloody criteria on the marking sheet or FAQ section in WebCT that deals with this! This is fucked! I'm fucked!

Disheartening doesn't come close to how I felt last night. How was I suppose to mark this paper? Where in the rule book did they say "here's how you deal with racial discrimination". I sat there for 20 minutes. I re-read the entire paper 3 times, looking for every single opportunity to discredit the essay. And I came to a conclusion.

I passed her.

Many years ago my supervisor said this to me: "Sweetheart, you're going to get one of those students sometime in your careeer. When you do, remember this: Mark the argument." I pondered her advice and I have always brushed it behind my naivity - until now. We mark the argument because we are not ideological gatekeepers of the community. But as teachers we are ideologically constructed even if our knowledge is antithetical to naturalised meanings of life. No one escapes from discourse. How do I mark the argument without being ethically challenged? How did I pass her in the face of inimicalism?

I marked the argument but with a pinch of my own discursive spite. I marked the argument but reminded myself that the words on paper were subject to misinterpretation. Her ignorance was in part her own ontological disavowal of cultural differences and that may only change through education. Finally I marked the argument knowing that people can change, people do change, even the most prejudicial of eidolons.

And so today another moment - so brief - has passed through my experience as a teacher. We are perhaps the gatekeepers of academia. But gatekeepers of what I am still uncertain.