Some of our last few presidential addresses have focused on the feelings of the times-Kathy Hytten, at the American Educational Studies Association, encouraging activist hope and community, Barb Stengel discussing the fear that structures our conditions but getting us to move beyond it and Frank Margonis criticizing those senses of responsibility that reinforce neocolonization. 1 Perhaps not surprisingly, I'm going to look at anger as a method of teaching and learning, a way to signal the

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... ity for change, and a way to demand attention. Anger may seem an unlikely bridge, but the method of anger I will be discussing is a kind of difficult invitation to move anger beyond affect in much the same way Hytten moves hope into action. If we think of anger as a method of attentiveness in a context where not enough people are attentive, anger is itself not a problem. We ought to be angry, we ought to be agitating the rethinking of those who are passively inattentive around us. As the saying goes, if you're not angry, you're not paying attention. I think lately anger has gotten short shrift because of how much destructive rage is circulating methodically but not so much intent on deepening thought. My first step distinguishes anger from what seems to cause most consternation about anger and what I think is not anger per se but a particular end state or a dull, vicious, blustering, verging into vengeance. Vengeance seems to me to be the target of much critique of anger, not anger itself, or at least not the motivating anger I'm discussing here. I think we should keep the anger's intensity of focus, both its abrupt intervention, and its simmering attentiveness. That world-shifting/point-of-view-altering quality of anger can help thought more quickly and intensely both by its dramatic signaling function and by its potential to meet someone less inclined to think kindly on their own ground. Further, I think anger is useful because the transformative educational imperatives many of us have all been advocating for often push too quickly Teaching Anger 2 Volume 76 Issue 1 into calm and don't stay with the anger of frustration, the anger of accusation, or our anger at insufficiency. Instead we hurry through transformation to a hoped-for resolution. We reasonably dodge stultifying guilt but don't live in the disruptive dissatisfaction of methodical anger long enough. Either encouraged to placate those with whom we're angry or just dim our grievances, we move on before our anger gets called out as the problem itself. "I can't hear you through your anger" is a strategy of ignoring anger that makes our angry response to a problem become itself the problem, eclipsing the problem that started it. This kind of double bind is irritating in many interactions, whether they be those where anger erupts or those where the demand for civility first undercuts the ability of those who have no way to disrupt civil ignoring in order to be heard.