Lifelong Learning and Women's History

Yesterday, I mentioned to one of my classes that I'm taking a writing class today--yes, on a Saturday. Yes, it's a class. One student was shocked: "You still have to take classes?" I reassured him that yes, I was doing so willingly, more than willingly, as it's a poetry writing class, and it is with a poet I know and admire. What I hope he --and the others listening-- got out of this short interchange is that when you really like to do something, and you can learn to do it better, it's fun to take classes. Lifelong learning, eh? 

Too often, students who are not that academically inclined (and why they are that way has myriad reasons, I think) are just itching to get out of school. Daily. Weekly. Forever. And that makes me sad, because they have had that light switched off for them, by someone, some event, some difficulty not remedied. By the time I get them in their junior and senior y- factions that are yelling at women about "knowing their place" all over again. Education? Civic engagement? Bodily autonomy? All under fire. Young women have to grow teflon or kevlar skin, it seems, so those negative assumptions don't stick or slice through.

March is Women's History Month, but it seems kind of strange to me to celebrate women's history in this moment in time, since we are still living through difficult times, and there are not enough role models to go around. I guess I'll just have to be one.

Take care,

C