Miller and required self-reflexivity

image source: http://www.glasbergen.com/education-cartoons/?album=4&gallery=86

I appreciated Miller’s endorsement in his article of a pedagogy which, as he says, “closely attend[s] to what our students say and write in an ongoing effort to learn how to read, understand, and respond to the strange, sometimes threatening, multivocal texts they produce while writing in the contact zone.” (21)  This is a progressive notion for an environment where a large number of presumably progressive individuals are placed in positions of authority as educators yet fail to recognize on occasion, when faced with an adversarial viewpoint, the incredibly complex ways in which individuals form their world view. This is obviously not a problem relegated to the relationship between educators and their students, either. It’s an issue which may get to the heart of any conflict: those who are “in the know” and take for granted that others will have been provided with the same tools they were to reach the “correct” conclusions; and those who aren’t, those who presumably had the tools but failed to use them properly or, worse, simply choose not to. Ignorance or hatred can be willful, of course but there’s usually an origin story, so to speak, and I think it’s useful for any human in relationships with other humans to remember this, particularly educators. 
          I was actually surprised, after Miller revealed several key biographical facts about the author of “Queers, Bums, and Magic” that there was still a call from some to have the author removed from the classroom, rather than wait and see, by engaging with the student, if there was anything else to be done. I don’t discredit the need for a space in which both students and their teachers feel safe and it’s intimated by Miller that the professor, Lankford, was indeed personally affected by the violent rhetoric of the essay. Whether he handled the situation ideally or not, I find it interesting that someone who did have a personal stake in the matter would not choose, as others say they would have, to bar the student from his class.  The result of that choice was also interesting in that the student appears to have received an education of sorts after all. To what degree this “education” changed the student’s thinking is unknown but certainly what was achieved through Lankford’s methods are preferable to what would have been achieved had the student exited the classroom altogether, knowing only that his work was "wrong" somehow but completely un-rehabilitated, so to speak, otherwise.

            As Miller points out after discussing at length various strategies for asking students to become engaged with and critical of their own views and interpretations, he admits that “required self-reflexivity does not, of course, guarantee that repugnant positions will be abandoned.” (20) Regardless, it seems more logical to develop methods for working in the "contact zone" which move students toward more inclusive beliefs and thought processes, rather than seeking to simply sweep the bad stuff out of the picture because it is offensive to a professor who may be, in many ways, privileged by his or her own education and worldview.