I've never understood the societal expectation of compliance in these scenarios. as a teacher, if my students weren't questioning me, my methods, the goals, our structure, they weren't tuned-in. Keyed into the meaning behind the lesson. You can bet that if they'd come up with an argument to change something during the course of a lesson that made sense, we adopted it. My position of authority on my subject matter might have been ineluctable as far as the school were concerned, but understanding a student's own preferences for how they learned or perceived the world was always better from them than anyone else. Too often an adult came in telling me how a student thought. Felt. Learned. And I always wanted to know why, in a setting where our goal was to teach advocacy and encourage individuality, none of them were allowed to present that information to me themselves.

I don't teach anymore. But I miss it.