The way I knew I was right about something was the kids got

Host: The university lecture hall had gone quiet — the kind of quiet that hums with thought rather than peace. The chalkboard behind the podium was smeared with the ghosts of erased ideas: words half visible, half gone, like echoes of the day’s argument. The air still held the scent of chalk dust, coffee, and confrontation.

Outside, the last of the afternoon light spilled through tall windows, pooling gold across the empty seats.

Jack stood at the front of the room, still holding a piece of chalk, his grey eyes alive with the faint, dangerous spark of victory — or doubt. Jeeny sat in the third row, arms crossed, her notebook open, her expression unreadable.

Jack: “Allan Bloom once said, ‘The way I knew I was right about something was the kids got angry. That’s very important: you touch that anger.’”

He smirked faintly, letting the words settle in the air like challenge. “There’s something exhilarating about that, isn’t there? Knowing you’ve struck a nerve.”

Jeeny: “Exhilarating or egotistical?”

Host: Her voice was calm, but the question landed with precision — not an attack, but a probe.

Jack: “Why not both? Truth’s supposed to hurt. If no one gets angry, maybe you haven’t said anything worth saying.”

Jeeny: “Or maybe you’ve just shouted louder than you’ve listened.”

Host: The light shifted as a cloud passed, dimming the room. The argument was already warming like a fuse.

Jack: “Bloom wasn’t talking about shouting. He was talking about provocation — education through friction. You challenge the comfortable so they start thinking again.”

Jeeny: “But anger doesn’t always mean understanding, Jack. Sometimes it’s just defense. When people get angry, they stop listening.”

Jack: “Not always. Sometimes anger is the first sign of awakening. It means you’ve hit something raw, something true. That’s the teacher’s job — to disturb the peace of ignorance.”

Jeeny: “Then you’re confusing enlightenment with irritation.”

Host: She closed her notebook, standing now. The floorboards creaked softly under her steps as she came closer to the front. “You want to believe anger equals insight because it flatters you. It means you’re the rebel, the breaker of illusions. But what if you’re just adding noise?”

Jack: “Noise can be the first sound of music, Jeeny. You’ve got to break silence to make symphony.”

Jeeny: “And if the symphony leaves everyone deaf?”

Host: The tension between them crackled — not hostility, but the fierce intimacy of two people who care too much about truth to let it go untested.

Jack: “Look around, Jeeny. The world’s drowning in apathy. No one reads, no one questions — everyone scrolls and sleeps. If anger is the price of awakening, I’ll pay it gladly.”

Jeeny: “That’s the problem — you think awakening means outrage. It doesn’t. It means awareness. And awareness doesn’t always need to burn; sometimes it just needs to breathe.”

Host: A long silence followed, filled only by the faint hum of the overhead lights.

Jack: “You’re afraid of anger because it’s messy.”

Jeeny: “No. I’m wary of it because it’s addictive.”

Jack: “Addictive?”

Jeeny: “Yes. Once people learn to feel alive through outrage, they stop learning altogether. They don’t want understanding — they want the high of being offended.”

Host: He looked at her then, long and hard — as if searching for the flaw in her logic, and finding only his reflection.

Jack: “So what? We stop provoking? We just teach people what they already believe?”

Jeeny: “No. We provoke, but with purpose. You don’t touch anger for the thrill of it. You touch it like a surgeon — carefully, intentionally, knowing it can heal or harm depending on how deep you cut.”

Host: The words hit the air like the final note of an old melody — sharp, clear, necessary.

Jack: “That’s poetic. But Bloom wasn’t delicate. He wanted friction. The kind that forces self-examination.”

Jeeny: “And he was right — to a point. But too many teachers forget that awakening minds isn’t the same as wounding them. The goal isn’t to make students angry. It’s to make them honest.”

Host: She stepped closer to the podium, now standing across from him — the academic and the empath, staring each other down like two sides of the same truth.

Jack: “So what do you do when honesty requires offense? When truth and comfort can’t coexist?”

Jeeny: “Then you tell the truth — but without arrogance. Because the point isn’t to prove you’re right. It’s to prove reality deserves attention.”

Host: The faintest smile crossed his face — not triumph, but respect.

Jack: “You think Bloom forgot that?”

Jeeny: “No. I think the world forgot how to hear him.”

Host: A silence followed — the kind that grows after a hard truth lands. The sun emerged again, spilling warm light across the chalkboard, where half-erased words still glowed faintly: Reason. Justice. Faith.

Jack reached up and wrote one more word beneath them — Anger.

Jack: “You know, maybe that’s what he meant all along — that anger is proof we still care. That we still have pulse enough to protest, question, fight.”

Jeeny: “Yes. But the teacher’s job is to help the pulse find rhythm — not to keep it racing forever.”

Host: She smiled faintly, softening the edges of the debate. “Bloom was right — anger’s important. But only if it’s a doorway, not a destination.”

Jack: “And the best teachers?”

Jeeny: “They make you walk through that doorway, but never live there.”

Host: The camera panned slowly across the classroom — the dust, the chalk, the empty desks waiting for their next occupants, the faint hum of learning that never really leaves a room like this.

Jack set the chalk down. Jeeny picked up her notebook. Their eyes met — not in victory, but in shared respect for the complexity of awakening.

And as the light dimmed again, Allan Bloom’s words echoed through the room — not as arrogance, but as invitation:

“The way I knew I was right about something was the kids got angry. That’s very important: you touch that anger.”

Because to touch anger
is to touch the live wire of thought —
the place where belief meets resistance,
and the soul, for one trembling moment,
remembers it’s still alive.

But to teach well
is not to ignite fury,
it’s to guide the fire —
until anger becomes awareness,
and heat becomes light.