Remembering Myself

As I read these papers about A Clockwork Orange, I am trying to remember if I ever were as innocent as some of these students. I don't think so. I was pretty tough, and a hardened reader, in any case. If I hadn't met up with circumstances in person, and I met up with a lot of hard stuff at a very early age because of where I lived and the kind of family I was born into, I'd come upon them in novels and other works of art.
I wasn't shocked or even surprised by much. I don't remember resisting anything I was exposed to in college, though much was new. I was hungry for it. It was the first time I ever got what I needed in school, which had always before been a source of frustration for me.
With some of these students, I feel as if they are 11 rather than 18 or 20. They are so sheltered and so afraid of seeing anything that challenges their previous assumptions. A student told me today that he thought he was going to find Foucault more shocking than Kubrick!
But quite a few, again, are not afraid to engage. The students were again at the edge of their seats as I summed up Foucault's arguments in the chapter I asked them to read. They asked a lot of questions, and eagerly attacked the study questions about the chapter with their groups. It does turn a lot of what we assume upside down.
One student, a brilliant but arrogant guy, demanded that I come up with a list of critical theorists he should read. I will have to work at that for him, and bring him some books from home.
Though I am glad that I didn't have to teach the student who initially refused to watch Kubrick's film another curriculum, her performance on the paper (very poor) and her apparent response to Foucault may make her drop the class now. It is too bad. Perhaps the gap was too great to leap in one short semester.