Just this week in front of my students I divided 600 into thirds wrongly, and misspelt both synthesis and sovereignty. We could attribute this to mental lapses but I make consistent errors in front of students. I have sometimes told my students that I am the dumbest person in the room and I only know one thing philosophy. I do not just say this to be cute, I am a legitimate idiot and I am not proud of it; I would not like to be an idiot. I feel bad for my students, I wish they had a more component professor and I know I am only a professor due to the financial privilege I was born with. But because I had no hardship I could focus all my time on obscure thinking and now my students have an illiterate professor.

This is not to put down disability by any means, the opposite disability comes with the need to overcome and I have a choice not to be an idiot but I am too lazy to do so. There is no place in putting down those who have problems they cannot help, this is not the case for me. And it is a shame that I get to be in an undeserved cozy position, while others who work hard and struggle beyond their control have less than I. This is what in some sense really makes me a dumb professor, what does a person of privilege have to teach about the world? What do I know about the world from my limited suburban existence?

And because of this I am not an expansive thinker, I am an ideologue. I tell my students that I have bias and that students will never be punished for their biases (unless extremely intolerant). And while this is true, this does not erase the real problem that I am not a teacher but an espouser of ideology. Huguette Bourgeois commented to me, “you are captured by ideology — even if you seem to show that you have doubts about your convictions…you see intelligence is a balancing of personality not a list of ideas not integrated in context.” I can list a load of philosophical ideas from a perspective, but I am dumb in that I cannot bring ideas together let alone follow rules.

No wonder why I am poor at spelling and math, these matters have rules and because I am lazy I refuse to go about the effort to take on reasonable rules. I wonder often if I should stop being an educator because of my incompetencies and ideology. Perhaps the answer is yes, but I know how lucky I am so I keep going at something I should not be doing. To get out of stupidity a challenge is needed, ‘those who can’t do teach’ after all and I need to learn how to do before I can teach. Being dumb is lacking perspective, being dumb is lacking the discipline to learn when one can. Those who attribute dumbness or idiocy to disability are reprehensible and their intolerance should never be accepted.

People should feel very open to reasonably challenge academics. While I am the rare dumb professor, a classroom ought to be based on what corresponds to reality not the professors arbitrary authority. It is a shame that professors get to be an authority over classrooms rather than as a conduit of information and or a perspective. If there is one thing to take from this challenge professors when they are being dumb.

Being A Dumb & Lazy Professor was originally published in Nowisms on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

All your running around
searching for the answers to all your troubles,
where has that gotten you?
Isn't it time to rest your mind
and settle your heart
and discover the many joys
of living in this moment
Open your eyes to simple joys
and the world will gift you
with opportunities and a peace filled heart

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more mindful poetry

• Simple Things
• Craving More Beauty
• Still I Carry My Hope
• Nothing Special

The Moment was originally published in Nowisms on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.