Without Inducing Despair

Earlier this summer, I wrote about the transcript of a talk I read called “Coming of Age at the End of the World: Eco-Grief, Affective Resilience, and The Climate Generation.” The talk was given by Sarah J. Ray, a professor at Humboldt State University and the coordinator of its Environmental Studies Program. Ray’s narrative turned on this realization: a number of her students, highly idealistic, having moved through the ES curriculum and come to grips with the depth of the climate problem, were showing up in her office, feeling hopeless and paralyzed. Some were breaking down in tears. This was happening so often that she made the phenomenon the focus of her research. How to understand it? How to develop ways to deal with it in the classroom?

In my post, I explored the concept of climate trauma but only mentioned in passing the part of Ray’s talk that concerned practical application. Her investigation of these matters had included studies in the psychology of education from a number of perspectives. “What do these educational psychology worlds tell us?” she asked. “They tell us that emotions are central to student success, centering emotions is a matter of educational equity and inclusion, and the emotions of collected efficacy, pride, and desire for the future are necessary for cultivating resistance.”

The centrality of emotions, educational equity and inclusion, the cultivation of resistance—Ray’s remarks hit home.

I don’t currently teach environmental studies–I teach the US History survey, mostly. But US History is an emotion-evoking course, and maybe even, for some, traumatic. “Students need to know their history,” I’ve often heard it said, but that doesn’t mean it’s going to be pleasant. History students who have identified with American ethno-nationalism may be irritated by feelings of guilt and may react defensively. Students of color and others who’ve been othered by that same ethno-nationalism may feel angry or humiliated or have a sense of bitterness renewed. No matter how hard one might strive, in accordance with the scientific method, to take a position of disinterest, it’s hard not to feel history personally when that history is one’s own.

Some students, I gather, are very verbal about their emotional needs and responses–requesting trigger alerts and calling for safe spaces and whatnot. My students aren’t making those requests (not that I’ve informed them of the option). They stay pretty tight-lipped most of the time. I tend to chalk this up to ill-preparedness, shyness, lack of confidence. But I don’t rule out other explanations. I’m always looking for ways to open them up, always considering how my own classroom behaviors may be encouraging or stifling their willingness to speak out, but I have to admit that I allow little if any space in my lesson plan for the reactions mentioned above. Ray’s research informs her that “emotions are central to student success,” but in my classroom students are mostly left to deal with their feelings on their own.

In his 1992 book, Ecological Literacy, David Orr discusses the tasks of the liberal arts. Among them, he says, is “to provide a sober view of the world, but without inducing despair.” Since I began to teach in the humanities, Orr’s quote has been a kind of guiding star from me. Ray’s talk has made me revisit it.

For one thing, I can see how I do plenty for the soberness. History is not an uplifting topic, American or otherwise. Brutal exploitation seems to be the default setting for humankind. An arc of justice is barely discernable, if one even exists. Sometimes my students will admit that they find history a downer. Their response is a typical mix of fatalism and cynicism. “History always repeats itself.” “People treat other people like crap.” These are intelligent responses. They are intelligent responses in a society—indeed, a worldview–built on the underlying message: “Get yours while you can.” I want students to think past these responses—I don’t want to simply reinforce them. But do I actually do anything to try and achieve that outcome? What do I do explicitly not to induce despair?

This isn’t the same thing as giving students hope, though it’s often put that way. I think Ray would agree. “I’m not really interested in hope,” she said. “I’m interested in affective resilience.” What does that mean? Facing reality, rather than, say, feel-good propaganda, exacts an emotional price. Resilience allows us to pay it from a healthy account. I believe that building academic skills, and especially critical thinking—(which calls for some disinterest!)–builds what Ray calls resilience. I might even say that I’m emotionally invested in that belief. But how upfront am I about that investment?

Here’s another way I’m interrogating Orr’s advice that we provide a sober view of the world without inducing despair. Again, it concerns demographics. If one’s students are white, especially white middle and upper class, I can see how some sobering might be required. Entitlement paints a rosy picture. My students are majority urban Latino and African American. Many if not most know poverty, by proximity if not firsthand. I can’t say for sure, but it’s hard for me to imagine that they don’t already have a sober view of the world. I can’t say for sure because of my own privilege. I’ve struggled economically, but I’ve never felt the threat of poverty so as to narrow my most important decisions to the strictly economic. If I can’t relate to my students’ points of view—racially, economically, culturally, or simply because I’m a good deal older than they are—how can I tell how sober their view of the world really is? Maybe this too could be aided by more transparency in regard to the emotional content. A line from Ray’s talk seems relevant here: “Centering emotions is a matter of educational equity and inclusion.”

The last part of Ray’s quote that I wrote out in full above refers to “cultivating resistance.” Resistance and resilience are similar-sounding words, and reading through Ray’s talk, I kept hearing one in place of the other. But they aren’t the same thing. Resilience—affective resilience was the term—is the capacity to effectively process despair, which in turn makes resistance possible. Resistance, in this sense, is political. It’s action and that action is collective. Another piece of Ray’s application was to offer students teaching in the history of social change and to teach them social change theory. There’s a lot more in her advice, in other words, for a teacher of history to chew on.