French Revolution

In my Latin II class the other day, I performed a mini-lesson about the equestrian social order, which isn't really part of the meat and potatoes of understanding ancient culture but a smart thing for a few smart students who might remember it someday to know. Being a good teacher trained in the art of building on previous knowledge, I used the French estate model of a few centuries past in comparison, because that comparison is much more accurate than the American upper/middle/lower class paradigm. In the midst of this, a student stopped me to say: "I can't wait until next year, Mr. Jones, when I can take stupider teachers again." I laughed it off, but a minute later another student interrupted me: "Mr. Jones, what exactly does the French Revolution have to do with Latin?"

I stopped like a dear caught in the headlights. After all, the connection is obvious and relatively absolute to me. During my accidental pause, I looked around the room. About a quarter of the students were eating it up and suddenly felt immensely sorry for me. Another quarter were too busy taking notes to even bother to think about it, just knowing that I might throw out some random essay question on some random test in the near future. The other half (it seemed to me) were smirking as if there was some inside joke about the futility of my teaching of advanced material. Or not its futility, but that I had always assumed that such relative minutiae that were fascinating to me would be equally fascinating to all. I'm pretty comfortable in ym teacher's shoes this year, but it was a humbling moment.

As I've reflected on the incident, perhaps too much, I've come to understand that I don't even know how to frame all the existential questions, let alone the answers, that pertain to such an incident. I'm keeping my faith, however, that whatever it all is or means or isn't and doesn't mean, somewhere and somehow there's some good going on by whatever it is I'm doing.