Why So Defensive?

Many years ago, I attended a teacher in-service day. It was in another city, I had to go, and I had to go through incredible hassle to get child care for my kids. I got to the in-service day, and this was the schedule: 1)Welcome 2)Mass 3)Sharing on some reflection questions or other 4) lunch 5) go home.

So yes, we got evaluation forms, and yes, I wrote a negative evaluation, in which I voiced what I thought was probably a common opinion, which culminated in the point: ”You want to give me an inservice day? Let me stay at school and grade papers. “

A few days later, I was called into the principal’s office. Yes! Called into the principal’s office!

He had a fax of my evaluation on his desk and said that the Superintendent had been very displeased with what I had said.

“How,” he asked, “Would you feel if someone criticized something you worked hard to plan?”

I thought…I’m a teacher. Welcome to my life!

I also thought about my years as a DRE, getting criticized from all sides on every score: Too much content, not enough. Too much parental involvement required, not enough. Etc., etc.

I thought, in conclusion…isn’t that just …life?

Amy Welborn at Charlotte was Both has a very good post about all out defensiveness which doesn't allow for any dissension. Do go read it all. She is speaking specifically about Catholic things but I think we see this everywhere. It is interesting to me that as "political correctness" has grown, so too has this intolerance for any disagreement from one's own viewpoint.

Of course, we can disagree, but we have forgotten how to allow others the "right to be wrong," as it were. (Incidentally, here is a review of a good book about that very subject.) Wouldn't it be nice if we all had a mature, adult model more like that of G.K. Chesterton's? He could have a vigorous debate with George Bernard Shaw, laugh heartily at Shaw's sallies against him, and then refute Shaw's point. Later both would go to dinner together.

Looking around I found this little tidbit which I thought that y'all might enjoy as well.

Chesterton used to do a stand-up routine, called for purposes of advertisement a "debate," with his good friend George Bernard Shaw. They disagreed about practically everything. Shaw was a socialist, Chesterton a distributist, which Shaw thought amounted to being a socialist, but Chesterton didn't. From a 1928 debate:

Shaw: Now I have a very limited legal right to the use of [my] umbrella. I cannot do as I like with it. For instance, certain passages in Mr. Chesterton's speech tempted me to get up and smite him over the head with my umbrella.... But should I abuse my right to do what I like with my property--with my umbrella--in this way I should soon be made aware...that I cannot treat my umbrella as my own property in the way in which a landlord can treat his land. I want to destroy ownership in order that possession and enjoyment may be raised to the highest point in every section of the community. That, I think, is perfectly simple....

Chesterton: Among the bewildering welter of fallacies which Mr. Shaw has just given us, I prefer to deal first with the simplest. When Mr. Shaw refrains from hitting me over the head with his umbrella, the real reason--apart from his real kindness of heart, which makes him tolerant of the humblest of the creatures of God--is not because he does not own his umbrella, but because he does not own my head.