I want to respond to Marilyn Cooper's judgment that how we teach social consciousness depends on local contexts, which I want to confirm but also to note some ironies revealed solely through the passage of time. I teach at a small, suburban community college in the heart of the former Confederacy. Tony, 40+, from a rural town in Virginia, signed up three times for duty in Vietnam because he believed he was keeping us safe from communism, and he thought he was helping the Vietnamese people. He is both patriotic and deeply religious, and these personal devotions imbue his speech and habit. When he came back to Virginia, "defeated but with honor," college kids, he reports, spit on him. So, all these years he thought he could never come to college, he would be shunned. Neverthless, Tony became an expert electronic technician, supported his family well, devoted himself to community activities. A good man, a good life. I encouraged him to write of his experiences and to do research. He said he was grateful for finally being able to express himself openly. He was grateful also that his openly religious expression was also acceptable, for he confessed, he has "to be careful about this."

Annette lived not far from the University of Michigan campus in the 1960s, witnessed the student protests, all the while worrying over brother and friends in active service. Other of my students said: "Down here that war just tore us apart. Every night we heard Walter Cronkite tell us of the body count when we had fathers, son, brothers serving there."

I do not think we can "teach social change" directly. We can show students that there is a "world to read," but we can't tell them "how to read the world." We can open up topics, offer ways of approaching sources (traditional and experiential), teach how to write responsibly, clearly from sources, and how to protest, counter, confirm those sources. But we must stand back and let whatever conclusions result just linger there, without harsh judgment. For time tells, time refutes, and time heals.