NOTE: Current information is different from what was initially made available yesterday. As it turns out, the perpetrator was not a member of the class, and is currently under investigation related to the possibility of the commission of a hate crime. Also, the class is listed at having 40 students, not 20 as previously reported.
As a former teacher, I can recall how difficult it sometimes was to generate a class-wide discussion on a topic that students would be, by default, disinterested in. Sure, you’d always have a few gamers who’d be up for just about any topic, but there was a consistent reluctance or wariness on the part of many others that would result in a class discussion that was really a conversation with one or two students in front of crowd that was either disinclined to participate or even reluctant to participate as they didn’t want to speak in public.
They don’t have that problem at the University of Waterloo.
This past week, in a course called Philosophy 202, a classroom discussion took on a level of animation that would be far beyond anything I could have ever hoped for: two students and a professor stabbed and in non-life threatening condition in hospital.
Of course this isn’t funny. In fact, it’s a representation of the level of vitriol that’s been allowed to creep into everyday discourse, fed by activists on both sides of an issue, stoked to the point where people are ready and willing to resort to lethal violence to back up their positions. Remember, “when push comes to shove” is just a saying, not a recommendation. Yet this level of societal discord has become almost mainstream, the new norm, as anger replaces civility in the public conversation.
Philosophy 202 is described in the university calendar as a “gender-based issues” course, so one can easily imagine the topics that get tossed around under that umbrella description. And gender-based issues just happen to be the fissures that seem to be the most likely to invoke strong opinions among the population, at least recently.
I have no idea, specifically, what was up for discussion that day. All I know is that, in a class of twenty students when all are present, three of them, or at least 15%, left class with stab wounds.
Fortunately, I had a much better record than that, and can’t recall ever taking casualties as a result of a classroom discussion. Mind you, my topics were like “The Two Houses: Catholicism in the Middle Ages.” Kinda tough to get bent out of shape around something like that. Maybe I should have come up with “Gender Issues in The Two Houses of Catholicism in the Middle Ages.” I’m not sure if that would be gasoline on a fire, or even a fire in the first place, but nevertheless, still not something that would lead to a messy knife fight. Perhaps good old-fashioned fisticuffs on a good day, but nothing I’d want to be directly and physically involved in. I’m the moderator, and as such, above all the drama.
We should be thankful. In America, this discussion may well have been settled with Glocks and AR-15’s, and that could even be in an elementary school. But people don’t like it when I gratuitously slap the Yanks upside the head for their more than liberal approach to firearms availability, so I’ll stop right there.
All I know is that when somebody packs a knife to philosophy class, which once was likely among the most boring course on offer, we’re kind of all in trouble. Especially when there are folks out there who are willing to flash some cold steel to add emphasis to a point they’re making.
Anyways, it’s not funny. Just another snapshot of society, I’m afraid.
Want to keep your kids safe? Tell them to take math. It’s plenty hard to get worked up about the Pythagorean Theorem.
NEWSMAGRENFREW 