Kelly’s text message from her writing class

I texted Kelly and Christian a message about reports they had due in their writing class this morning.  The name of the class is Argument-Based Research and it is taught by a professor in the community college English department who seems to personify everything that went bad with the 1960’s.  Kelly thinks he is a little older than I.  I am always interested to hear what happens in this class because it is usually interesting, almost always a train-wreck, and almost never has anything to do with writing.  Here is the text message exchange between the three of us from a little earlier this morning:

Dad (9:08 am):  How did your papers come out?  Any comments from Professor Commie Marxist?
Dad (9:23 am):  How did it go in class today?

Kelly (9:24 am):  Hey dad they were fine!  He just picked them up is all.  We are discussing gender theory now.

Dad (9:26 am):  Oh great.  Good thing he is now talking about how to write.

Christian (9:26 am):  Not yet.  He talked about sexism in the Bible which was a drag.

Dad (9:28 am):  What a loser.  The Bible has been the single biggest contributor to the emancipation of women in all of history.

Kelly (9:29 am):  Right… he was going on about what Paul said about women and Old Testament verses so I asked him why didn’t we look at how Jesus Himself treated women?

Dad (9:30 am):  What did he say?

Kelly (9:31):  That that topic is for the NEXT segment on religion.  Please.

It dawned on me that this professor, having taught at this community college in the Bible Belt for such a long time must have had to engage with a thoughtful Christians on this topic at some time during his career. It boggles my mind that, as the professor in an argumentation class, he argues for what, at best, is a position with two sides.  This is the easy, vacuous, left-wing, ivory tower approved, intellectually lazy position to take.  He propounds this position without historical or culture context to an audience of generally inexperienced community college students.  Some might suggest this is a cowardly position.  I won’t because he can flunk my children at his whim.  I guess that is kind of cowardly, too.