Persona non grata

Nearly 6 months have passed since my last post, a couple of days past my 60th birthday, then I seemed to be in a pretty sweet mood, not so recently. In fact, my mood has been pretty foul of late. A couple days ago, my mood expressed itself and today I've been designated "persona non grata" at a class which I have been volunteering at. I am having a wide variety of emotional and intellectual responses to the news.

1. There is depression which is quite in keeping with my history of poor self image, self-denigration, and repeated failure to fit in social norms.
2. There is anger which stems from the social injustice and abuse of power that it represents.
3. There is indignation that someone would judge me based on less than an hour of my life.
4. There is resignation in that I am just too damn tired of defending myself.
5. Etc ...

Here is a list of "offenses" which I believe I committed.

1. I stated that I did not find the facilities we were teaching in suitable to the task.
2. I stated that I was not enamored with our country's educational system, especially higher education and it's administrators.
3. I stated that I found the content of the citizenship examination (as presented in the study guide I was handed) to be outrageous.
4. I spoke my mind and did not comport myself as a nice little cog in the educational machine.
5. I did not hold the educational party line and sweep all my doubts, reservations, opinions, and individuality under the carpet.
6. I did all this during a conversation with an educational apparatchik (Note: I am using this term because I am slightly ticked off. The person involved may well not deserve the appellation, yet it seems to fit in some respects which I will address later.). and I may have said or done other things to give offense.

Once again, I let my emotions get the best of me and I exercised my right of free speech in a way which had unanticipated consequences for me. So why were my emotions so raw that they ran rampant over good common sense (Don't bite the hand the feeds you).

First off, I've been trying to create a database application for one of the non-profits that I work with. It has not been going well. Years and years of education, experience and lots of natural intelligence and I've been stymied for days, by software that I believe should work but seems intent on proving me wrong. My natural tendencies are to be harsh and judgmental towards myself. So I've been running around frustrated and angry for days.

Second, the facility that we moved to teach in is a boys and girls club. It is new and a nice facility for a boys and girls club, but it is not really set up for adult education classes. When I brought this up to the apparatchik , the response was basically that the institution putting on the class has a partnership with the boys & girls club, which trumps the need for a suitable learning space. This essentially felt like a dismissal of my concerns and led to my comments regarding higher education and especially it's administrators.

Third, the teacher I've been working with handed me a copy of a US Citizenship study guide. I started looking at it and my hackles rose. While I am pretty sure that I could pass a citizenship examination without a lot of preparation, it was clearly evident that a very large percentage of the Americans that I know would likely have difficulty based on the content of my very quick perusal of that study guide. Add that to the fact that at that time I had absolutely no idea how I could meaningfully assist the student I was being asked to help and my mood devolved even further.

Toss in a long time stewing distaste for the direction my beloved nation is heading in, the destruction of the middle class, increasing inequities between the haves and have nots and I spoke without giving thought to just who I was speaking to or for that matter the people who were in earshot of my conversation.

The upshot is that the apparatchik called another partnership upon which the apparatchik laid the task to tell me my volunteer services were no longer desired. Did I mention that the apparatchik, never spoke to the teacher that I've worked with for nearly the past year, nor did the apparatchik, deign to call and speak to me directly regarding my behavior.

I said I would explain my use of the term apparatchik and it boils down to this. The person who declared me "persona non grata" did so based on a few minutes of conversation that quite likely entailed some personal affronts to her role in the world. There was no apparent effort on her part to explore a larger context that this took place in. She neither spoke to the teacher, nor made any effort to speak with me before she arrived at her decision. This including passing off the notification is exactly the behavior I would expect of an apparatchik.

Now I know that the person I've been talking about is not simply a stereo-type. I recognize that she has responsibilities, passions, goals and much more that I am not privy too. Part of that is to protect her job, the programs, the institution, the values systems, she is invested in, hence, the decision to cast me out.

Perhaps, I deserve what has come to pass, yet I am hard pressed to believe it. Without some due process, in which I am given the opportunity to defend or explain my actions, this smacks of an abuse of power.

This not the first nor will it be the last time that my mouth, my emotions, and my weltanschauung will offend someone. Frankly, it happens more often than I like. There are a set of principles that I seem to adhere to pretty consistently throughout my life. I doubt that I can enumerate them all but here are a few:

1. People are more important than institutions.
2. Sweeping crap under the carpet, doesn't get rid of the crap and it still stinks.
3. We are better off being our authentic selves than hiding behind social masks.
4. Education is a poor substitute for learning.
5. Learning comes naturally until education screws it up.
6. Having an education doesn't make one any better than anyone else.
7. Conflict is rarely resolved by ignoring it.
8. Everyone is entitled to respect until they demonstrate that they are unworthy of it.
9. Everyone is entitled to earn respect even after they've squandered what they had.
10. I am frequently in conflict with and contradict myself.
11. Wisdom takes a lifetime.
12. In spite of my desire, I don't have any answers.
13. Too much credit is given for knowing so little when there is so much more to know.
14. Education helped me to become the person I am. It wasn't all bad.
15. Teaching is the art of inspiring a learner to do their best and minimizing as many impediments to that as is possible.
16. Illusions are not significantly different from delusions.

I promised myself that I would stop apologizing for who I am. I apologize when and if I give offense of a personal nature, but I have no desire to remake myself to meet institutional, programmatic, or societal expectations. I've done enough of that throughout my life.

As far as I am concerned, the loss to the class of what I brought to it greatly outweighs what some one gains from declaring me "Persona non grata".

"I really do have to rethink this volunteer thing. It is getting to be a real pain. Oops, did I say that out loud?" Note sarcasm!