“So I had this dream last night where I went into a building, pulled out two P90s and started shooting everyone?, then had sex with the dead bodies. Well, not really, but it would be funny if I did.” Umm, yeah, what to wright about?? I’m leaving to join the Marines and I really don’t give a F… about my academics….
My current English teacher is a control freak intent on setting a gap between herself and her students like a 63 year old white male fortune 500 company CEO, and a illegal immigrant. If CG was a private catholic school, I could understand, but wtf is her problem. And baking brownies and rice crispies does not make up for it, way to try and justify yourself as a good teacher while underhandedly looking for complements on your cooking. No quarrel on you qualifications as a writer, but as a teacher, don’t be surprised on inspiring the first cg shooting. —Allen Lee —Allen Lee’s essay (Sun-Times)
This is an excerpt from the essay that got a high schooler arrested for disorderly conduct.
And the consequences:
Because of pending criminal charges stemming from his essay, Lee’s recruiter told him Friday evening that the Marine Corps has discharged him from his contract, said Sgt. Luis R. Agostini, spokesman for the Marine Corps Recruiting Station Chicago. — Chicago Sun-Times
Here’s a fascinating glimpse into the way this particular high-school student represents his understanding of English class:
“In creative writing, you’re told to exaggerate,” said Lee. “It was supposed to be just junk. . . .”
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A single teacher can't create that level of alienation and disdain in any student.
Or at least guilty of having a bad teacher...
Seems to me Allen Lee is perhaps guilty of many things--a dim view of (formal) academics in general (though that's in great part a function of the kinds of instruction he's received, not necessarily his "failure to grasp" what value courses/assignments might have), displaying a violent persona (but then, so does Stephen King, and he was not arrested in his youth), perhaps even being insensitive to the consequences of what his own writing might tip off. He's guilty--maybe--of being stupid and mean.
That's it, though. That's really it.
Have we forgotten that writing is for some a cathartic process? That fantasy, and writing as a tool in the service of fantasy, are ways of decompressing or channeling aggressions in a relatively healthy outlet? Or are we just supposed to write for ourselves when no one else will look at it?
If anything, this incident highlights for me two things:
(1) We really don't know what we're asking for when we ask for utterly "free" freewriting; we are inviting ourselves into the psychologies of our students that we aren't necessarily prepared for
(2) The collective sense of the committee, which met to decide what to do about Lee's writing, that its members are "very well-versed with [the] types of creativity put into writing," is depressingly impoverished on this very point of knowing the boundaries of creativity, the purposes of writing, or how patchwriting works.