[lit-ideas] Re: education
- From: "Lawrence Helm" <lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 4 Nov 2011 09:17:44 -0700
What face if I might ask do you present to your class? Is it the cheerful
optimistic visage that expects a joyful experience with the 40 to 60% that do
want to learn from you? Or is it a face steeled to endure the stings and
arrows of those who don’t?
I was reminded of Mr. Fields, an English teacher I had in the sixth or seventh
grade. I had written something in response to an assignment that caught his
eye. He took me aside and told me I had potential and should quit running with
the rowdy kids I ran with. Most of the class, as I recall, made fun of him,
but I liked him. I recall years later I asked about him and heard he was no
longer teaching. He had become an alcoholic and on at least one occasion a
whisky bottle rolled out from under his desk in full view of his students.
He might have said that 40 to 60% of his students hated him and anything he
said. The thanklessness of a task like his is that by the time someone
exercises the potential he predicted, he is not in a position to hear about it
or too old and ill to appreciate it.
I was raised in the “working class” dr Wager referred to. I lived near the Los
Angeles docks. My father drove a lumber carrier and after his divorce from my
mother, she worked in a market as a checker. Her second marriage was to a
truck driver. We weren’t oppressed in the sense Wager seems to expect. Mr.
Fields was right about my “rowdy” friends. They weren’t interested in
education. On the other hand I didn’t trust most of my teachers. For the most
part, they either presented the class with an antagonistic face, expecting the
worst, or they were taking an amusing stance assuming everything was a joke. I
recall “seeing the joke” and responding in my papers and reports to it. She
would give me amused jibes in class and I would give them back. I don’t recall
that she thought I had “potential” but she seemed to be amused by me.
Lawrence
From: Adriano Palma
Sent: Friday, November 04, 2011 5:02 AM
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: education
Importance: High
of the people I see the epidemic appear stable, in my view this idea that
everyone wants an "education" is a fiction, maybe even a useful fiction.
of the people I teach my estimate is that 40 to 60% hates me and anything I
say. they have the faint awareness that a "degree" might help them in terms of
workplace, to be sure they lack any interest in a problem (I mean an actual
interest in what the stars do, in what the minds do, and so forth)
regards
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