Some Teachers Just Shouldn’t

A philosophy instructor at Berkeley tweeted something recently that simply caused me to shake my head in amazement.  Here it is:

I unironically embrace the bashing of rural Americans.  they, as a group, are bad people who have made bad life decisions.  Some, I assume, are good people.  But this nostalgia for some pastoral way of life is stupid and we should shame people who aren’t pro-city.

He has since deleted the tweet (one would hope because he has become more enlightened?) but he has been rather outspoken in his derision of non-city-dwellers.

Rural Healthcare Should be expensive! And that expense should be borne by those who choose rural America!  Same goes for rural broadband. And gas taxes. It should be uncomfortable to live in rural America. It should be uncomfortable to not move.

It is unbelievable to me that a person can supposedly have a good education, yet still be this ignorant.  Did none of his many years of schooling ever inform him where food and clothing and lumber comes from?  Has he been so deprived of travel and adventure that he simply has never made contact with any aspect of rural life?  How can an adult person possibly be this completely uninformed about the basics of life?  Obviously, he has never spent any time on a farm or he would quickly lose his ideas about it being nostalgic.  It kind of makes me want to see the guy bale hay…  Or pick asparagus.

And how, on another note, could a person live such an arrogant life that he is ready, at the drop of a tweet, to lump all of a huge demographic together as “bad” and “stupid?”  He seems to have no awareness at all that these “bad people” he so disapproves of make life possible for him.

The bit about being “pro-city” is also interesting.  I have never thought in those terms before.  I see cities as necessary and fun to visit, so I certainly wouldn’t have thought of myself as anti-city, yet he assumes automatically that anyone who lives in the country is exactly that?

And then there is the fact that he is encouraging “bashing” and “shaming” people.  Somehow I had the idea that those things were not acceptable.  But not this guy, apparently.

It’s just bizarre, and really rather terrifying, to think that this person is teaching young people.  The man is not only incredibly naive, but apparently delighted to pass judgment on something about which he obviously knows nothing.

Someone who promotes uninformed and outrageous bashing and shaming.
Just the kind of teacher we definitely do not need.