Illuminating "Illuminati"

Yesterday I showed my first-year seminar students the following definition of the word Illuminati: "Comprised of several of the world's most powerful heroes, the Illuminati is a secret organization that shapes the superhuman world and protects Earth from catastrophic threats."

"Is this what Tara Westhover is talking about when she refers to the Illuminati in Educated?" I asked. No, they said, and when I asked why, one said, "Because superheroes aren't real."

I suppose that's as good an answer as any. I pointed out that the definition I'd shown them came from a web page produced by Marvel, so it's relevant within the Marvel universe but not necessarily elsewhere.  

Then I showed another definition of Illuminati that went into great detail about an eighteenth-century Bavarian named Adam Weishaupt who had a penchant for secret societies. My students were pretty sure Tara Westhover didn't have Adam Weishaupt in mind in Educated, but they struggled to pin down a reason until I pointed out the source of the information: The Catholic Encyclopedia.

Westover's memoir, of course, concerns neither superheroes nor Catholic history but instead a father who's obsessed by conspiracy theories and convinced that going to college means being brainwashed by the Illuminati. Many of my students had read the assigned chapters with only a vague idea of what Illuminati might mean, but at least they're reading! And the word provided a good object lesson to introduce the primary purpose of the first-year seminar: developing information literacy and critical thinking skills.

They had more difficulty last week when I gave them a photocopy of the first few chapters of Educated and then required them to discuss them in class, for points. The discussion went really well, but I'd given them no information about the author or context so some students struggled to use the correct pronouns or place the scenes in the correct time frame. 

Afterward I asked a few students why they'd assumed the narrator was male and they said the character was doing "guy things," like working in a junkyard and messing around with guns. But I was more interested in my students' struggles to determine the historical context of the passage, with some insisting it must take place more than 100 years ago because the characters were relying on midwives and herbal tinctures instead of doctors and hospitals. A student who had spent time in the military said the reference to MRE's means it had to date from after the Vietnam conflict, which was progress, but it was only after I made them look up Randy Weaver and Ruby Ridge that they got the date right--1992. One student wanted to know why, then, the characters act as if they're living in "pioneer times." Really great question! Let's talk about that some more.

We've got quite a lot of Educated ahead of us so we'll have plenty of time to ask questions and learn to evaluate the reliability of answers, an activity that would surely lead Westover's father to insist that I'm a member of the Illuminati intent on brainwashing students. But I can live with that. If I can motivate a few students to stretch their minds beyond what they're so certain they already know, then my work here is done.