Self-Awareness Month and the classroom

parental fear vs. self-expression

“You’re trying to ruin a woman’s career, and why? Because you’re bored? You’re afraid of someone who’s different than you?” This is the conclusion a former student of Judy Buranich comes to in the video above. Buranich is a high school English teacher in Middleburg, PA who has been teaching for 33 years and has been a published novelist for nine years. But — horror! — she writes erotic romance novels under a pseudonym. And — ewwww! — she teaches teenagers; as in, people with all the physiology, biology, chemistry and psychology to engage in erotic acts, but who lack a culture with a grounded perspective on how their sexuality is part of their holistic health and simple being-ness. And depending on which side of the magic number 18 the two partners in a teenage couple fall, they may even lack legal sanction.

Recently a few parents in the school district where Buranich teaches discovered her double life, taking the issue to the school board and the local news. Happily, there has been a groundswell of support and it does not look like her job is actually threatened. But I’d like to extend the train of thought from the opening quote a bit further. Not only do we have a group of people who are bored, but I would suggest they may lack passion for their lives in general, as well as a feeling of power. After all, who usually cuts down those who express their creativity and passion? People who themselves have had their passion and creativity shut down early in life. And boy, do we have a society full of adults in this boat.

The cultural lack of passion and power is an idea Eric and his friend Christine Farber touched on in Friday’s subscriber issue, when considering the spectacle of young people reveling with astonishing fervor in response to the news that Osama bin Laden had been killed. Christine wrote, “It’s as though folks were waiting, perhaps desperately, for something to inspire them to rise up to meet the world with passion. Waiting for that something that could allow them to feel powerful. … What I find most striking is that people are craving power (which could be fulfilled through empowerment rather than power-over)…” I think the actions of these offended parents in Pennsylvania belie a sense of powerlessness: over their nearly adult children, over the course of their own lives, in their wider world and in their creative lives.

It’s a bit like their sense of powerlessness was just sort of floating in the background, waiting for just the right fear to connect the plug into the socket and give it enough energy to come to life. And along came one of our favorite cultural taboos — masturbation — the fear of which itself is part of the fear of sex / fear of ourselves / shame matrix holding so many so tightly.

Because let’s face it: these parents aren’t actually shocked that an adult woman might have sexual fantasies and write them down. They are not upset that she is a published author. The problem is that they now have to admit the fact to themselves that the teachers of their kids are not chaste, celibate, virgin monks and nuns. Teachers are fully operational beings in all facets; making that association means parents have to admit teachers also teach kids who are fully operational beings.

These parents know full well what many women do when they read ‘romance’ novels — they masturbate. And if women who read these books masturbate, then — gasp! — the woman who writes them must surely masturbate. And heaven forbid a group of horny, precocious teenagers sit in a room with a woman who masturbates when she’s in private; even if, like in all the rest of society, we’re sitting and talking with people who masturbate in their private (or in a few cases, not-so-private) lives all the time. And this includes the kids.

The issue is not that a teacher may be behaving inappropriately. The issue is that we have a lot of parents out there who are afraid of their kids’ sexuality. And I’m guessing if that’s the case, chances are they’re actually pretty afraid of their own — though the fear and its companion shame may live pretty deep in, down past the level that’s easily recognizable and below the awareness level that resulted in the birth of these teens a number of years ago. Because even these parents cannot pretend their kids were simply written into existence. Though had they been, the whole sequence of events leading to the ‘now’ of their lives might be a little more conscious.