I mean, not that I would make it all that far in regular, certified teaching, either, but the reasons for my dismissal from a Christian school would undoubtedly be funnier. Ya gurl went to a university that was historically a normal school: i.e., they taught the teachers how to teach. If I had wanted an English education degree, I would have gotten one, so it should mean something that I didn’t.
But long before the historic normal school, I was educated at a tiny-ass rural Christian elementary school where about the only advantage was a low, low student-to-teacher ratio. It was basically the passion project of some teachers who already racked up a bunch of time in public schools but wanted to do their own thing. I’m sympathetic to that, but my idea of improvement to schooling involves socialist shit like grade abolition or Montessori, not trying to smash some puritan idea of godliness into every topic. But my fundagelical-flavored alma mater is poor and desperate, even more than the Oklahoma education system in general, which is fucked in its own right.
If I would take the peanuts they offered in salary and go through the motions of their fundagelical accreditation diploma mill, they would take me. And having had some burnt-out football coaches as teachers, I would not even feel a twinge of guilt. The bar has fallen on the ground in the state of Oklahoma, and it might start digging any second now.
And this assumes I would be teaching high schoolers. I’m sorry, but fuck them grade schoolers, fuck them middle schoolers. All you’re teaching them poor lil bastards at those points are the arcane and nonsensical rules of spelling and grammar. There’s no good reason for any of it, kids, it’s just conventions based on smashing a Germanic language against French, with some snobby Latin rules thrown on top that only fucken loser nerds care about, like not ending your sentence with a preposition.
So I will lightly go over the most obvious reason I’d get fired at a Christian school: I’m an irreverent harridan who has gotten into the habit of using the profanity on a casual basis. And it would probably be the irreverence that got me done in, because I could wean myself off the harder fucks, shits, and hells and move into the dangs, shoots, and hecks. I would still be making fun of Baptists and literalists (that’s how I got banned from Speculative Faith). I would be calling Puritans holier-than-thou, fun-hating losers, and I would characterize Martin Luther as a shitposter scheissposter and a store-brand version of Jan Huss (shoutout to my parasocial bestie Dr Eleanor Janega). And as mentioned in a previous post, I would call John Bunyan a partisan hack.
But going into less-obvious avenues, here are ones that might get me fired possibly even before I set foot in a classroom, just from my syllabi or lesson plans.
Non-standard Shakespeare plays. I mean I guess I would be obligated to teach Romeo and Juliet as an inescapable reference point within the last 200 years of culture, but I kinda hate it for the oversaturation. There are better Shakespeare plays, and why in the goddamn fuck are we limited to tragedies?
My theory is that we are limited to tragedies because all the comedies have sex jokes in them, and God forbid the youngs (even in heathen public schools) find out that people in Ye Olde Timey days talked about sex irreverently. ShaKesPeaRE is sUpPoSed to be SerIoUs, you guys.
Fuck Julius Caesar, tho. Maybe I’ll leave in Yon Scottish Play for the baby goths and also the baby weebs, so I have an excuse to talk about Akira Kurosawa movies (Throne of Blood, for the curious). But fuck ol’ Caesar. If we need a “historic” play (we don’t, the value in Shakespeare is not in historical accuracy), Henry V is probably the more engaging because I can punt to Kenneth Branagh. Shakespeare is better when performed, if only because 80% of communication is nonverbal (and the jokes are easier to recognize). And since we don’t need a historic play, we can go with the much more fun Much Ado About Nothing, in which I can also punt to a Kenneth Branagh movie.
I may or may not have to cover the sonnets, and the more obvious Shakespearean gay shit is in the sonnets. Like, some of the famous ones, even.
But for those in the know, the other point of contention would be Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath. It’s not in the public consciousness because nobody reads that shit anymore, but Steinbeck basically wrote this as the communist Jesus story. Absolutely fucking appropriate in a myriad of ways for a literature class: an heir to the previous American Realism novels, all that mythic symbolism shit, and especially appropriate for Oklahoma. Apparently it was my great-grandparents’ favorite book (and then the Cold War and the Dixiecrat realignment happened, so my dad doesn’t appreciate it).
But imagine all the gaskets that would blow, should I introduce the idea of divinely inspired communism in an American Christian institution. Y’all, it wouldn’t just be the gaskets blown, the radiator would be shrapnel for a 3-mile radius (I’m not sure how realistic this metaphor is).
I suppose I could get away with it if I were to carefully hedge around it with caveats. That only dirty liberal hippies think about things like this, of course Real Jesus(TM) is in favor of property rights. Look at how many Old Testament laws are about property, of course Judeo-Christian Values are based on prioritizing property owners. Those dirty hippies would steal your toothbrush because they don’t care about property rights. There is no distinction between private and personal property, it’s all the same thing. And it’s perfectly okay that sometimes human beings are considered property, because nothing bad ever happens when the owners are Jesus-y enough. Don’t look behind that curtain.
Yeah, my ass would get chucked right out the door if they scratched below the surface. But I would be curious if the school was willing to let it slide as long as none of the parents noticed, just to keep one more adult around to watch the kids as needed. Them pink-collar jobs need a ready supply of warm bodies to keep the economy from collapsing, and Republicans seem to basically think of teachers as glorified babysitters. Never mind ongoing brain drain in Oklahoma.
But luckily for everyone, this is only a conjecture born of my irreverent sense of humor.
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