I'm reading L.M. Montgomery's Emily of New Moon with a long-term student, a middle-schooler. (My assignment: to teach whatever I want. She's a very good student, so it's not a question of remediation.) We take turns reading out loud. I read it when I was in middle school, and it made a huge impression on me. It's sentimental, and there are frequent patches of purple prose (which I thought very fine back in the day), but on the whole I'm delighted and astonished by just how good it is — much better than Anne of Green Gables, which is saying a lot — the Anne books, at least the first two or three, deserve their reputation. The descriptions in Emily of New Moon may be too rich, but they're very imaginative and well-written, and the dialogue is great — especially the way Emily tries to redefine terms in arguments in which she's being bullied. And her eagerness to make friends, her interest in underdogs and outcasts, her curiosity about old family stories and town legends — it's all very good. Last but not least, she wants to be a writer, and there's a lot on the impulse to write and the process of writing, all of which is accessible to a middle school student without being in the least condescending.

Maybe I'm getting carried away, but I think the Emily books offer an education in Romanticism: I have in mind Emily's appreciation for natural beauty, her fascination with fragments and unfinished things, again her sympathy for misfits, her constant fight against the philistines of Blair Water. I think it was under the influence of the Emily books that I sought out anonymous poetry. (In fact for about a year I scorned poetry by known authors.)

And she's a free thinker: I remember that in Emily Climbs she boards with a very strict Presbyterian aunt who's active in her church, and a local newspaper assigns her to review the new pastor of her aunt's church. She thinks his sermons are incoherent and formulaic invective, but of course she can't say that. So she writes both a dishonest review, and (for her own satisfaction) an honest review, and by mistake sends in the honest review, which gets published. Her aunt is incensed, etc etc. It's very funny.

When I read her father's deathbed farewell I coughed and sniffed and all but burst into tears, until my young student said gently, "Maybe I should read."

A piece of very good news:

A middle school student I tutored pro bono for almost a year between 2005 and 2006 won a full scholarship to one of the best New England boarding schools!

!!!!

She's homeless, so (as Kaveri says) two birds with one stone.

The first essay she wrote for me was on the topic "The best things in life are free. Agree or disagree." (I did not choose it! It was randomly assigned!) She agreed, and adduced the example of public libraries. Still, it was a cruel assignment.

I went to an awful talk a few weeks ago. I hesitate to publicize this, because in the grand scheme of things, who cares? How much harm can a lecture for graduate students and faculty do? On the other hand, life is short, and I wasted two hours. And I worry about what kind of teacher someone who thinks along these lines might be.
So, the paper was prefaced by this observation: "My scholarship is inspired by Derrida's insight that we don't know what it is to read, and we don't know what it is to write." You may as well say, we don't know what it means to eat a ham and cheese sandwich, we don't know what it means to look into a human face. "If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel's heart beat, and we should die of the roar that lies on the other side of silence." But never mind. This bit of pretentious nonsense was laid down and never mentioned again. (Thankfully.)
There followed an extremely detailed discussion of "flowers," known to font fans as "ornaments" or "fleurons." (Most word processing programs come with one such font.) They became extremely popularly in the sixteenth century. Typesetters sometimes made mistakes in assembling the patterns. Did they take apart flower forms after having printed an edition, or did they preserve the forms for use in another book? The speaker had gone through countless volumes, trying (by keeping track of "mistakes" in patterns) to see if the forms were used in different books. Results inconclusive. Then: what did these decorations mean? Were they associated with a particular author? A genre? No, no. After twenty minutes of fruitless speculation (and many, many overhead transparencies), a half-conclusion: at most one might say that the books of members of the same coterie on occasion might have shared the same pattern of decoration. (An acquaintance remarked, "It sounds like cinema of the absurd.")
Last point: editions of sonnets often had a strip of flowers at the top and bottom of the page. It was put forth that sonneteers wrote with this frame "in mind." Ergo —? With what consequences? None were suggested. (Not one poem was mentioned in the whole talk.) Why adduce a cause for an imperceptible — a nonexistent — effect? (Marcel Duchamp: "If no solution, then maybe no problem.") In the Q&A a grumpy old professor asked if the speaker "had any evidence" for this assertion. (Uncomfortable laughter from the audience. But I felt relieved.) Of course not. "But when I write a 1000-word review, I'm acutely conscious of the word limit." Surely a sonneteer is acutely conscious of the fourteen-line limit, and the restrictive rhyme pattern. Once one has signed on with poetry's most demanding form, what difference could a strip of flowers in the header and footer possibly make?
Kaveri tells me about the harsh comments people make in MFA critiques. (Sometimes too harsh: "Your art is nothing.") And I can't help thinking, "Why aren't people a little tougher in humanities seminars?" I don't want anyone to run to the bathroom in tears, but this is ridiculous. Then I realized: maybe people aren't just being polite: I'd half-assumed that the laudatory (fulsome) comments and questions were less than sincere, but one listener assured me (on another day) his admiration was sincere. One man's medicine, another man's poison. I guess.

A two-part anecdote:

Last spring my supervisor (one of them) left a message on my voicemail: "You should read your student evaluations, which were very positive. I always read them after a term is over — it's heartening."
In spite of this friendly encouragement, I was too afraid to read them. (Asking one of the secretaries to find my file seemed, conveniently, like an imposition.)

Then last October I was in the computer room and happened to read this entry "On being observed." In the sixth paragraph White Bear begins to describe "That One Bad Evaluation." It sounded like every single evaluation I got in the PGCE. For example: "She went on to give advice like how to turn all my difficult, open-ended questions into yes-or-no questions. She said I should make each of them "especially those immigrant kids" give a response to one question per class, going around the room. She said I shouldn't read aloud... "
By the time I finished reading the entry I was shaking. "I must see those evaluations!" I thought, and raced up the stairs. But both the secretaries were out to lunch. As I dashed past my pigeonhole I noticed something. What's this? A big envelope. I sat on the floor and poured out its contents. The first thing I saw was a smiley face. ("Do you have any additional comments?") Then I read them. They were good. They really were. In one class all the students (as if by agreement) had ended their evaluations with "I [heart] her!" I nearly wept with gratitude and relief.
(I still can't believe the coincidence.)
I know, according to the observer, it doesn't matter what students think. But it does, of course.

I wonder how many positive evaluations it will take to undo the damage of the PGCE.

Tony Nuttall has died. I just found out. It's hard to believe. I wish I had studied with him! Something, anything. I went to one of his lectures at the beginning of the term and loved it — so concentrated and so lively. I resolved to attend them regularly, but in the end couldn't because of some schedule conflict. (I think it was the PGCE — God help me) I thought nonchalantly: "I'll audit some time in the future." Then he retired, and now he's gone. He was so friendly and approachable.

Patrick was late to class. "Where's Patrick?" I asked. "Probably shovelling snow," a classmate suggested. At these words Richard turned around and demanded, emphatically, "Dude, do you think for one minute that Patrick would let shovelling snow get in the way of his education?" I had to smile. Partly because Richard teases Patrick to his face, so it was nice to hear him stand up for Patrick in Patrick's absence (not that the imputation was so scandalous). And partly because ever since I've known these children, which is to say ever since they were 10, they've shown — nearly all of them — an extraordinary commitment to learning, a kind of patient/eager organized curiosity.

According to the New York Times, the online University of Phoenix is in trouble with regulators. The allegations: papers graded without comment; most courses taught by part-timers; instructors who boasted about how little they taught; misleading course descriptions. I had to laugh when I read that. If the University of Phoenix feels singled out, I sympathize. Who are these regulators, and where do they come from? Where do they get their ideas about universities?? If their standards are really so high, their work will never be done.
I have to say this sounded exceptionally dreary: "its campuses, most of which are office buildings near freeways."

Conversation on a bus:

A middle-aged man came onto a crosstown bus at Fifth Avenue. His scarf was identical to mine, and when he sat catty-corner from me I said, "Merton." "Balliol." It was like getting the wrong password. In some consternation, we compared scarves and found the difference. He had done a second BA in English in the 1970s. Then he did a PhD at Yale. We found out that one of his classmates supervised my senior essay. His one regret, he said, was not having done the PhD at Oxford. "A friend of mine started a PhD at Yale after an MSt at Oxford, and then quit because he hated it so much," I said. "He made the right decision. I should have dropped out.… There were a lot of older genteel types — who were nasty. And then there were the younger deconstructionists — who were about to become nasty." me: ":D! That sounds just like Yale!" By then we were at Central Park West, and I had to get off.
I always feel a kinship with people who hate Yale — this summer, for example, two of my classmates were students at Yale (one graduate, one undergraduate), and they both hated it. "I'm in good company," I thought. It was quite wonderful to agree on the awfulness of Yale with a perfect stranger in the few minutes it takes to cross Central Park, and then to part ways.

Fifth grade sentences:

Agnes:

We exchanged glances as the sub walked in.

Sam:

Wealth can make you cruel.

Fashion is boring and useless.

John:

Patience, little ones.

(That's my favorite.)

(In case you're wondering, "Why are they writing these sentences? Where are the hard words?" This was in an exercise on consonant blends and consonant digraphs. "Isn't that stuff for first graders, not fifth graders?" Yes it is, but occasionally I have to do what the office says I should do.)

Kaveri subbed for me. When the sixth graders found out that she knows me, they asked, "Have you heard Ms — sneeze?" "Yes." "And have you noticed that she doesn't just sneeze once, but does ten, fifteen little sneezes at a time?" "Indeed I have. Ahem, moving on now…"

(Maybe this is too trivial to mention on this blog. But —.)

I overheard Sueun, (a fifth grader) say to a new student: "Ms — went to Yale. It's an honor to be taught by her."

I was subbing for Steven, and when I walked into the classroom of sixteen-year-olds Timothy introduced me (unnecessarily, since I'd already taught six of those eight students) as "the smartest lady in the world!" "Tell everybody where you went to graduate school!" I was feeling shy, and didn't answer, so he said encouragingly (teasingly), "…dramatic pause…"

Today Patrick asked (out of the blue, before class) if Alcibiades was really a traitor, and as bad as people say, or have historians given him short shrift.

During break I heard Richard (ever the provoker) say to Patrick, "You lied?!  I thought you were a good boy!"  Patrick (ironically): "Robert is trying to taint my reputation because he's jealous."  Robert didn't catch the irony: "I'm not jealous!  Why would I be jealous?"

Yvonne, another seventh-grader, commented to Steven, "Patrick is so smart, and so humble too. I don't think I could be like that."

(I wrote this back in September; I don't know why I didn't post it then.)

All the students in my fifth grade class are new to me. As soon as I walked in Samuel begged to be moved: "I want to concentrate, and I can't concentrate if I sit next to John!" I saw the glint in his eyes and thought, "'I want to concentrate' — a likely tale!" Besides, John looked pretty stolid and undistracting. Samuel giggled and waved his arms around in a manner that did not inspire confidence in his determination to concentrate. I was going to say no, but then I noticed that there were too many people in his row anyway, so I gave in. And it soon became clear that he had meant it: he really did want to concentrate. The whole class did. I stepped out for a few minutes to go to the office, and when I came back their little heads were bent over their desks, tongues sticking out in effort. No one even looked up.

(Actually, no one's tongue was sticking out. But that's how cute they are, and how serious.)

I saw The History Boys. I'd wanted to like it, but I didn't.

One reviewer praised the play for being chock full of one-liners. This is true, and it's a problem. All subtlety and slowness are sacrificed for the cheap laugh, and the shallowness of it is exhausting. Because the characters are vehicles for one-liners, they're not real people. The more developed a character was, the more he seemed a caricature. This was especially true of the headmaster, Irwin, Hector, and Posner. Posner is the kind of ostentatiously sensitive, utterly defenseless gay teenager, full of comically rueful appraisals of himself, whom you only come across on a Broadway stage. I don't think he would have lasted very long in that school, or any school. The other boys were wisecracking slouches, which was more believable, but they were even more one-dimensional than Posner. More one-dimensional but less caricatured, like objects seen from a distance, since Bennett doesn't expend much effort on them. (Part of the problem might be this: the boys want nothing more than to be funny, whereas Posner, caricature though he is, wants to be taken seriously, yet Bennett forces him to deliver jokes anyway.)

And you never saw the boys adjusting to one another, or even hesitating and not knowing what to say, as they would in real life; that would have entailed attenuating their exaggerated features and rationing the one-liners, and Bennett loves his caricatures.

There's a similar problem with the sentimental Broadway showtunes that the boys regularly sing (complete with dance routines). I couldn't think of them as schoolboys; instead I saw theater people wallowing in nostalgia and acting out their professional self-love.

I like showtunes, and I like teenagers. But I've never known a teenager who loved camp, let alone a whole classroom of teenagers. And this play didn't for a minute convince me that it could happen.

Another reviewer said that you get to know all the boys; they're all individuals. In fact you really only get to know four of them, and all of these are defined by their attitudes (varied but clichéd) toward sex. This is the only kind of individuality that Bennett is capable of breathing into them. It's strange and regrettable, considering how many scenes of lessons there are in the play, and the infinite ways in which personality can manifest itself in a classroom. But then none of these scenes lasts more than three minutes — long enough to deliver a barrage of one-liners, but not long enough for character development.

But all this is incidental to the biggest problem, which is the play's premise. It offers two versions of education: a messy, passionate affair, for its own sake and unto itself, represented by the Falstaffian Hector; and an exercise in glibness, purveyed by the sleek future TV host, Irwin. Hector is on his way out; he represents the beloved past of education; Irwin represents the future, and we're meant to hate what he represents (if not the man himself). He has been hired to get the boys into Oxford or Cambridge. They have the grades, thanks to another teacher, dry, solid but unimaginative; what they need now is polish and class, and the way to impress admissions interviewers, Irwin tells them, is boldly to take the most counterintuitive view of a historical event or development, secure in the knowledge that brazenness will win the day.

There are several problems with this:

— I know that admissions interviewers would say that they're not looking for flash or class, but for something, anything, beyond a plodding recitation of facts — analysis, passion, opinion supported by evidence. It's an unanswerable position, and one that the play doesn't — can't — consider.
— Passion and appreciation are essential, but they're not the alpha and omega of education, even in the humanities. There's also the painstaking business of getting to know the language from all angles, of using it effectively, of matching words to things, and of learning to read closely. There was none of this, because rhetoric in this play is Irwin, is spin, TV, polish, cynicism, shallowness, etc. On the other side of this false dichotomy we get the boys' reenactments of love scenes from classic films (shallowness?), and Hector's self-involved ruminations. Of course there's such a thing as neat rhetoric that masks an intellectual vacuum, but that's just a higher stage in the battle for clarity and eloquence. It's not a short-circuit, and good teachers and students are not powerless against demagogic rhetoric. In fact, that may be what annoyed me most: the suggestion that good teachers are by definition helpless mumblers, insightful by the fireside (so to speak), but unable to defend themselves against fast talkers from the hard and shiny real world.

The big irony is that for all Hector's (and presumably Bennett's) disdain for style, flash, and class, The History Boys is as guilty of glibness as Irwin.

Before class my seventh-graders were all abuzz about their new school:
R __ P already got rejected by two girls!
P __ What?!
me __ P, just don't respond.
P __ OK.

Hours later I saw the humor in this. What tickles me is that this exchange, brief as it is, reveals two conspicuous features of the boys' personalities — R's outrageousness, P's sweet equanimity.

I asked that class to write a list of things they wanted to study. Here are the three responses I got:

Patrick
My recommendations for this semester are:
— Latin
— Old English
— word origins

Viren
1. Latin advanced from chapter 4
2. anything except this packet
3. reading — a book that is not boring
4. Latin
5. Latin
6. if nothing else — Grammar

Richard
— Latin
— Greek
— Little History of the World [Gombrich's book]
— No packet
— Grammer [sic]

(The hated packets are vocabulary exercises. It's useful for them to focus on style, usage and syntax apart from questions of logic and paragraph and essay structure, but I can see how the packets might get tedious.)

So I took those three out of the classroom and we did some Latin. As I gave them the handouts I said,

__This is from a college textbook, and the vocabulary notes are quite detailed and technical —
Viren__Oh, come on! [="Give us some credit!"]
me__ — so you're not responsible for everything in the notes.

But he's right; I shouldn't talk like that.

Note: I took a college course in Latin last year, and we used a middle school textbook. It turned out to be OK, because the teacher was good, but when I saw all those cartoons my heart sank. (And I'm glad the course was a review for me; I'd have been irritated to first encounter those things in such a book.)

The New York Times has published a letter I sent them:

To the Editor:

Re “In Elite Schools, a Dip in Blacks and Hispanics” (front page, Aug. 18): I teach at an after-school enrichment program in an Asian immigrant neighborhood in New York City. There, by studying English and mathematics in depth and at an accelerated pace, students in effect start preparing in elementary school for the entrance exam for the specialized high schools.

Well over half of the academy’s students are admitted every year.

Perhaps if the Specialized High School Institute were expanded into the lower grades, instead of prepping students for a mere three months before the exam, its students would achieve similar results.

New York, Aug. 18, 2006

'"Nearly all" are admitted' would have been more accurate, but I didn't want to sound too cocky.

They didn't publish this letter, which I sent a few weeks ago:

To the Editor:

I'm baffled by the hostility of your letter writers to an academic program in kindergarten ('Can't We Let Children Be Children,' July 31). While my kindergarten classmates and I played in the afternoons, in the mornings we had a rich program of reading, writing, and arithmetic. I don't think it made me "deficient" in "social and emotional skills," or "derailed [my] ability to think for [my]self," to quote your readers. In fact I would probably have been bored if I'd had to play all day. And best of all, I had learned to read fluently by first grade.

Bologna, Italy, Aug. 2, 2006

I remember when Sr. (then novice) Helena-Marie handed out our phonics workbooks she told us that by the end of year we would be able to read absolutely any word in the dictionary; most pupils gasped in amazement, but not me. “Of course we will! It’s about time,” I thought, but couldn’t help feeling very pleased at the prospect as I tried not to smile.

First thing every morning she read us a portion from the Iliad or the Odyssey; after our work was done she'd read other Greek myths. I remember as if it were yesterday Sr. Helena Marie showing us how an oboe worked, how it differed from a flute, or exhorting us to lift the spirits of those who are sad. (I pictured someone levitating.)

From Yumi:

i didn't get a chance to call you earlier tonight -- sorry! but i wanted to retell the lemon story before i forgot. because you're right; it really is a pretty unbelievable story. i mean, it's teacher training! this is how they teach teachers to teach! argh.

in the first part of the activity, the instructor put a row of lemons up on the chalk tray and asked us for "observable qualities" about the lemon. we were aiming to get to twenty. the qualities named included things like "yellow" "indented" "casts a shadow." she wrote these qualities up on the board and asked us to write them down. this took about twenty minutes.

then, we broke up into groups of three. she came around and gave each group a lemon and asked us to repeat the activity, but in our small group and with our particular lemon. a lot of the students got bored enough at this point to do things like bounce their lemons on the table, rip off pieces of the skin, and so on. surprisingly, everyone was well-mannered enough to actually follow directions and participate. (some people even appeared to be sort of "into it." god help us.) this part took about half an hour.

we then returned our lemons to the instructor, who put them back at the front of the room. each group elected a "representative" to read our list of qualities back to the class, reflect on the process, select our lemon from the group at the front, and explain how he or she found "our" particular lemon. each quality was written up on the board very slowly by the instructor, who couldn't spell to save her life.

we finished with a group discussion on how this activity related to a class on human development. replies: that all humans look alike from far away but are unique upon close observation. that you can see people/things better from up close and with a "hands on" approach. that even though everyone is an individual, we all have certain things in common as well.

i was sort of offended, not just at the inanity of it all, but also at being asked to think of my fellow human beings as, you know, LEMONS.

Kaveri commented:

the unintended message of this excercise seems to be that only microscopic examination enables discernment of human singularity-- our differences are tiny and insignificant.

A few weeks ago my sixth grade was going to critique Danny's essay in response to this question: If you could spend an afternoon with any author, living or dead, with whom would you spend it? What would you talk about?

Danny can be annoying, he's often lazy, but every once in a while I realize I don't give him enough credit; in any other class he'd be a star. He wrote his essay on Dave Pilkey, author of the Captain Underpants series (which I'd never heard of, but his classmates knew what he was talking about). His essay contains the following endearing passage:

We could exchange ideas for books that he is planning to write, or make comic books. I always run out of ideas when I try to write a story or a comic book, and after I finish it sounds lame from a lack of ideas. He could help me when I get stuck and we could have fun writing, drawing, and reading books.

I like the good-natured honesty of "lame from a lack of ideas."
The transcripts of student essays that I hand out are anonymous, but of course they're all eager to know who the author is, and since Danny is the class expert on the literature of silly and indecent humor, I and Danny, in his way, were the only ones keeping up the pretense of anonymity. Danny was torn between embarrassment and pride, and he dealt with his mixed emotions by hamming it up: whenever we pointed out a flaw (but mostly we said good things), he'd shake his head and sigh, "I can't believe the author made such a foolish mistake." In my printed transcript I had written "Dan" for "Dave," and Danny asked me, "Ms —, how could you make such a mistake?" And I answered in the same sorrowful tone that he was using, "Well Danny, some students' handwriting is not what it should be." The class erupted in laughter: "Ooh, she got you there!" Danny was laughing too.

Until I was switched to a fifth grade, I also taught the less good sixth grade; one of my students in that class, Jiwon, almost never spoke, either in class or during break. His voice has the muffled thickness of the voice of a boy I knew in high school who also never spoke — as if their vocal chords were out of shape, as if the machinery creaked when it was set in motion, and never got beyond the creaking stage. I think he's shy, but more importantly, he's only learning English. One might think, observing his awkward silence, that he had no English at all, but one would be wrong. He writes better, more fluently and more thoughtfully, than anyone in that class. Once we read a passage on Tecumseh's efforts to unite the midwestern tribes against the settlers. The students were then supposed to recreate the debate at the powwow where Tecumseh tries to convince the other chiefs to join him. Most students just gave two sentences summing up Tecumseh's position, but Jiwon produced a page and a half of dialogue, including Tecumseh's arguments, the chiefs' counterarguments, and Tecumseh's (and his allies') responses. He even had parenthetical directions: "[angrily]," "[hesitating]," "[with passion]." These stood out, because Jiwon himself speaks in a halting monotone.

I also teach a ninth grade consisting of four boys and one girl. It's no fun. They do what I tell them to do, and they study, but they never talk. But last week something interesting happened, finally. I'd asked them to write an essay on "a world upside down that you would like to see come true." Andrew wrote about a world where athletes and movie stars toil in obscurity while doctors, teachers, and garbage collectors are lionized and showered with praise. "What's this?" He'd erased something from his list of worthy professions. "Oh, uh, I originally included lawyers." His piece was a fierce rant, and he seemed surprised when I said that this kind of essay could be funny. I look forward to reading the second draft. [Update: it includes, on my suggestion, magazines and fansites on the social lives of plumbers and gardeners. I was a bit disappointed that he didn't go beyond my suggestion. But maybe he's not interested in being funny.]

Sixth grade:
In a sentence like "The dentist cleaned my teeth," they were supposed to label complements. They all got that "teeth" was the direct object, but one student labeled "my" as an indirect object. "It's just a plain old possessive adjective," I said. Then Diana showed me her paper. She had made the same mistake, and she understood why it was wrong, but, she explained (without using the terminology), she'd thought of "my" as a kind of dative of reference — which is exactly how that sentence works in other European languages. Could she and her classmate have had Spanish in mind?

I taught Mrs. Dalloway last week. It was a surprise to me, when I was re-reading the beginning in preparation for the class, how much I remembered of it, how clearly. I haven't opened it in nearly a decade, and yet I remembered so much of it, long descriptions as well as the tiny perfections — a look, a gesture that makes for a "decisive moment." I'd been half-afraid that I wouldn't be as impressed with it as I was when I first read it, but no, it still seemed perfect. And the rush of excitement that comes from teaching a work one loves to bits — there's nothing like it. Actually, there was something else: it's a hard book; the students knew it & I know it. And so I felt very useful. So often with novels I think, "What's there to explain or even talk about? It's all on the page." Of course, there's no telling what students won't understand, or, to put it more hopefully, what unusual interpretations they'll come up with, but I'm often disoriented.* That didn't happened in my Mrs. Dalloway class: I knew exactly what would be hard. (But actually I'm never at a loss for words when discussing works I love, even if they're as straightforward as The Witch of Blackbird Pond.)

*For example, Joyce thought that Henry Foster, in Brave New World, is being sincerely kind to Bernard when he offers Bernard soma. She'd missed the significance of "Let's bait him." And another example: Jae suggested that the Duke of Browning's poem is actually warning his future bride's emissary: "My next duchess had better have eyes only for me." I think that gives him rather too much credit for controlled calculation, but not for subtle cleverness, so it's a useful way of considering the poem.

A few weeks ago my second grade teacher got in touch to say that he was coming through the city. Could we meet? I hadn't seen or heard from him since second grade, so I was very surprised and really delighted. I remember him as tall, stern, demanding, authoritative; someone who would give a lot if you worked hard. I learned a great deal under his tutelage, but most importantly, he introduced me to the chronicles of Narnia. I had read the Little House in the Big Woods books, and many Nancy Drew books, and The Secret Garden (twice), and possibly The Little Princess (or maybe that was later?), and Bambi and Bambi's Children, and Mr. Popper's Penguins, and I loved all those, but Narnia was the world I lived in through the next few years.
He said he hadn't changed much in appearance, and this was true; he's still tall and physically imposing, and though he doesn't have a moustache anymore his face was as I remembered it. I hadn't noticed in second grade what a westerner he is — the drawl, the wide-brimmed hat which he never took off. But the biggest surprises had nothing to do with appearance. He said, for example, that he had learned a great deal in his year with us. At the time I thought he knew everything! He said he had been in awe of us, our parents, and the city. I have to confess that it was hard to hear this — one doesn't want an admired teacher to admit weakness, even years after the fact. On the other hand, everyone's human. He called himself a "farm boy," and in his case it's not a figure of speech — he had to miss several months of school every year to help out on his family's farm. There was only one book in his parents' house, the Bible, and nobody ever read that. Little by little, through his twenties, he challenged himself to read harder books — this the man who helped me so much as a reader when I was seven! If only he had had himself as a teacher.
As we spoke I couldn't help thinking of Jonathan Rose's The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes: "In the first years of the nineteenth century, shepherds in the Cheviot Hills maintained a kind of circulating library, leaving books they had read in designated crannies in boundary walls. The next shepherd who came that way could borrow it and leave another in its place, so that each volume was gradually carried through a circuit of 30 to 40 miles, on which the shepherds only occasionally met." They "drew inspiration from a whole subgenre of self-improving literature[, including] G.L. Craik's The Pursuit of Knowledge under Difficulties (1830-31)."