Excerpt: Teaching Philosophy - An Abstract View

“In my class, I do not believe in the use of names.”
“What?” The last girl to come in looked at him in confusion. “What do you mean, no names?”
“I mean that I will not address any of you by their given names, or allow the use of them in my class. I believe that names falsely identify people. Think about the people you’ve known. Anyone sharing a name with them is immediately identified with them.”
“Then what’re we supposed to call each other?”
The teacher looked thoughtful for a moment, then nodded. “You will be assigned names based on your characteristics. That way, there can be no unfair identifications.”
The second girl frowned. “But isn’t that stereotyping us?”
“My dear child, everything is stereotyping you. The way you look, the things you wear, the things you say... There are almost infinite ways in which everybody is judging you, even right now. Everyone will continue to judge you throughout your life, and I have no doubt that you are stereotyping me right now as both a teacher, and a stereotyper, which is fairly redundant, I’m sure you’ll agree. Since people will be stereotyping you by your actions, appearance, and ideas for the rest of your life, you might as well work out which ones will give others a favourable stereotype, rather than otherwise.” He looked around, then pointed to the first girl in the back row. Her dyed black hair covered one heavily lined eye, and fell to her shoulders in straight, layered lengths. She was wearing a black lacy spaghetti-strap top, black skirt, and knee-high black boots that had six buckles each. “You. You look like a goth.”
She looked at him sceptically. “Yeah, so?”
“So your name is now goth-girl. Or just Goth, either way. What’s your name?”
“Tama-“
“WRONG!” He banged his hand down on the desk in front of him, making the girl sitting at it jump, and the boy to her right move his laptop hurriedly. “Your name is Goth. It will remain so for the rest of this class, or until you show yourself as a different person.” He pointed to the girl next to her. “You.”
“Yes?” The girl gave a tremulous smile, crinkling the tanned skin around her eyes. Her rainbow striped t-shirt lifted and fell slowly with each breath. Her jeans had colourful embroidery on them, and her bag, tucked under the desk, was rainbow. Her hair, tied up in pigtails, was a vibrant green colour. Her makeup added a slight green tinge to her eyelids, and made her lips almost the same colour as her hair.
“Your name is Tie-dye. What’s your name?”
“Tie-dye.” Her smile widened slightly.
“Good.” He went back to the end, pointing at the first boy to come in, who was sitting in front of Goth. His chestnut hair slid down his shoulders, reaching to the seat of the chair, now that he was sitting up properly. He had a black shirt and pants that emphasized his pale skin. Clunky black boots adorned his feet, and his large, deep blue eyes gleamed from behind a thin curtain of hair. “You. You’re Long-hair.”
The boy shot him an annoyed look. “Seriously? What the fuck is wrong with my hair?”
“Besides the fact that it goes down to your waist?” Goth asked with a snort.
“And who the fuck asked you?”
“Children!” The room fell silent. He frowned at Long-hair. “Swearing and quoting are the last refuges of the unimaginative. If you are going to use profane language, at least have the decency to be the original source of it.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“It means,” the teacher responded sharply, “that I would prefer you to call someone a purple-spotted mangy three-toed ogress than an idiot. That is one of the most used words, and the least interesting.”
“And what the fuck are you going to do if I don’t?” Long-hair stuck his chin out defiantly.
The teacher leaned back on his desk. “And here, we have come to an interesting point. What am I going to do about it? I have little to no influence over your life. I cannot punish you, save by detentions, which you can avoid or attend at your leisure, and giving you bad grades, which, frankly, I despise.” He paused for a moment. “Think of this as an experiment. Mine and yours, purely for the sake of interest. You.” He pointed at the boy with the laptop. “What would you do if I told you to write me a two-page essay on the origin of computers by tomorrow?”
He looked confused about being suddenly included in the conversation. “Probably do it?”
“Why?”
“Because you told me to.”
“Exactly. A lot of stuff in life happens only because somebody told you to. But that shouldn’t be a reason for doing something, should it?” He paused again. “So how about this. I will give you a few easy rules. Shout out. Say what you think. Come to class, I’ll appreciate that, and I’m going to try and make it fun – unless you’re sick, of course, or any other things you would normally miss school for. And humour my quirks. Like this no-names thing. I want to see how it turns out. Can we go an entire semester without knowing each other’s names? Well, unfortunately I have to, but I don’t know which one of you is which. If you break the rules, I’ll have to find out, and that’ll remove all the fun. And please, please try to find a more interesting method of foul language. I’m sure we’ll all be interested in what you come up with.”
“And what if we do all this?” one of the other girls asked.
“Then you will get a perfect mark. There will be no grades, no assigned work, and no exam. Just this simple experiment.”