Gunner v. Troublemaker

In law school, there are two types of people to beware of. One of them is the gunner. The gunner is one who, no matter what the class discussion is about – some broad all-encompassing question of Constitutional Law or some minor and obscure point of tax law – has to contribute his or her two cents. And about two cents is about as much as that person’s point is worth. You know the signs of a gunner if an individual starts expressing his opinion – note, opinion, not answering a question in furtherance of discussion - one or more times per class period, every class period; is usually wrong; and causes a unanimous class-wide eye-roll every time he speaks up. They are the over-eager, leaky puppy of law school.

The other type of person to look out for is the troublemaker. The troublemaker is the one who, for no particular reason, thinks their smart-ass, off-the-cuff, typically rude comments are somehow regularly welcome in the classroom. This individual is usually trying to get a rise out of people. If a professor asks, “Now, why do you think the court decided to institute this doctrine in this case?”, the troublemaker will usually respond with a comment such as, “Textbook material?”

These comments are occasionally welcome as a way of breaking up an otherwise monotonous subject matter. No doubt, some of us wish we had said something of the sort in class at some point or another. However, the troublemaker does not really understand the meaning of the word “moderation” when it comes to these remarks. No, he thinks that his disruptive, irrelevant dialogue is meant to be part of the overriding discussion on a regular basis. Typically he is quite self-aware and is usually trying to get a rise out of people. While the motivations behind being a gunner are quite obvious – currying favor with the professor and general self-glorification – the troublemaker’s motive is a bit more elusive. No one really knows why these people have an extra $200,000 lying around just to go to law school and make snarky remarks. Perhaps they are, indeed, intelligent and are so bored by the rest of us mediocre students that they must entertain themselves in their own fashion. Really, we’ll never know.

What becomes extremely amusing is when you get an interesting case of Gunner v. Troublemaker during class. I had the privilege of witnessing such an exchange during my Education & Policy class this week, and I have to say it was a rare treat. I did not much care for Troublemaker before today. He had been in my Family Law class in a previous semester and, while I don’t think he fits into the normal category of Troublemaker in that he is actually kind of earnest so that it softens his arrogance to a degree, he tended to irritate me a bit. Today, however, I have decided that I like this individual quite a bit, at least in this context.

Our discussion today centered on compulsory education. Troublemaker was doing a presentation for extra credit on the topic, and posed the controversial idea that compulsory attendance should be abolished and replaced with optional free public education, with funding allocated according to attendance. Pause here to say that Troublemaker did not actually believe the views he was espousing on this subject, but still presented it in a very logical, well-defended manner. He actually does have a bit of a knack for playing devil’s advocate. He therefore laid out a system where mandatory attendance would be abolished for minors and replaced with a system where parents would be responsible for directing the child’s educational path. That might be traditional public school, private school, home schooling, or apprenticeships and vocational training.

This whole thing drove Gunner absolutely nuts. She, a former teacher (note: Troublemaker was also a former teacher), could not believe someone was having the audacity to suggest that her beloved mandatory attendance system could, in any way, be flawed. Pause here to note that Gunner belongs to an elite group of people in the class that have formerly been employed in education, and if you have not previously been a teacher or school administrator, you have absolutely no basis for your opinion and should be disqualified from class discussions out of hand. Because, clearly, alienating outsiders to the education system that could bring in new, innovative, and fresh ideas is the answer to the education crisis in America today. Moving on.

Many people were exceedingly amused by this exchange, myself among them. Gunner asked for data. Troublemaker pointed out that this system was not really in place anywhere like the U.S., so data was unavailable, but posed some smaller examples – such as popular elective courses attracting students who didn’t have to take them but instead wanted to – that were relevant. Gunner was not satisfied with this – what about the social structures that school serves as a doorway for? Troublemaker indicated that social services do exist, and that these social services might actually be a better manner of reaching out to needy families than trying to institute such programs through public schools. Etc. Etc.

The discussion continued in much the same way for about 30 to 40 minutes. Occasionally a couple other people got to talk besides Gunner, but she had an obnoxious tendency to interrupt, interject, and generally tried to dominate the entire presentation. She took everything very personally. No answer was good enough for her. I really wanted to look at her and say “Calm down. This is a class discussion; no one is actually talking about implementing this here.” Many people do not seem to realize that good solutions can often be found by posing a completely off-the wall, crazy idea just to get a discussion going – such ideas can often spawn less-crazy ideas that might actually work. To her, this was an all-out attack on her personal beliefs rather than an interesting class discussion that really got some people’s heads working.

This Gunner also absolutely had to get the last word. No two ways about it. When it seemed like everything was winding down so the professor could resume regular class, she had to throw her hands up in the air (literally – it was like jazz hands) and spout off some inane bullshit just to demonstrate that she was, in fact, smarter than Troublemaker and that his system could never, in a million years, work. He didn’t seem to care much, smiled politely, and stepped down. Her eye-rolling and impatient sighs after class as she talked to her Elite Group of Former Educators were just as amusing to watch as her progressive hysteria during class. Well played, Troublemaker. Well played.