Pondering the Word Untenable

By Margaret Sweatman, English

I’ve heard the argument in diverse contexts that Canadian universities are “untenable.”  It’s a canny choice, the word “untenable,” in the company of professors, tenured and otherwise.

Doubt is necessary, unless it’s insinuated into a workplace with the intention of making people frightened.  Or unless the people in the workplace let themselves be frightened.

I’m writing this at night after a long day of mostly pleasurable work.  I’ve still got work to do tonight for tomorrow.  The roof is leaking and my car is broken.  My entire working life has been untenable, though I come from a generation of five-hundred dollar yearly tuition, of bursaries given to students from rural areas, of bursaries even for the offspring of the middle class. That economic situation made my untenable career – and the careers of many of my contemporaries of many disciplines – possible.

Our students’ working lives are now untenable.

Yesterday, I was speaking with a student, a Science student taking a Literature course for which she has to read two novels a month.  She’s working four days a week at a store and going to school the other three days a week, taking five courses with a focus on Biology.  Last summer, to prepare for our course, she read Robert Fitzgerald’s beautiful translation of Homer’s Odyssey, a secondary text for the course.  She applies diligence, honesty, humility and imagination to her work.  She came to see me about a comparison of Jose Saramago’s novel Blindness with Homer’s Odyssey.  When I told her that her thesis is strong and viable, her eyes ran with tears of exhaustion, although she was also rational and clear-headed.

People who need to study are often bullied one way or another, here and in all the nations of the world: one’s love of the variability of knowledge brings out the bully in “sensitive” people.

I recently heard on the radio the elegant voice of Prince Hassan of Jordan, as he argued that his country’s “most important asset” is the people’s “ability to think” – this in a response to a youth-driven fight for the humanitarian ideals of individual freedoms.

What do I hope for this place where I now work?  It’s obvious.  And difficult to achieve.  Trust and good will.  And the long view.  Information.  And reason.  Despite how tired we might feel.