In AP Literature, one of the worst classroom experiences I’ve ever had, we were forced to read Jane Eyre. My teacher, being an extreme feminist and boring cat lady, took class time to attack the boys in the class spewing facts about rape culture and oppression and used the example of how Mr. Rochester locked his first wife away as a metaphor for high school parties. Her first problem was that she was attacking the smartest and self-educated guys in the school so naturally we were aware of the situation and were completely unharmed by her rant. What did piss us off though was that she was using the AP curriculum, set by the AP board, to “teach” us about her ideas on how men are automatically satanic beings. Yes, I understand Jane Eyre has themes of male dominated society. While only a few of us relied on Sparknotes for the entire novel, the guys that actually read it confronted her about the curriculum set by the AP people. Amid one of her rants, a normally quite boy stood up with curriculum in hand and asked, “Mrs. Wade, where on here is what you are teaching us about?”. Needless to say, he was called down to the Vice-Principal’s office for “oppressing a female teacher and demeaning one’s gender”. The VP, having a shred of common sense, realized that his comment had no relation to gender of any kind. After the teacher tried to babble her case, the VP sent both of them back to the room and the student was transferred to another section of AP Literature with a new teacher. From now on, when anyone mentions Jane Eyre, all I can think about is an uneducated teacher who was supposed to sponsor our knowledge of literature that ended up being roasted by the VP for singling out a student about a respectful question on the subject.
