Teacher Man

by Frank McCourt

  I dunno, professor, I mean that seems like a lotta trouble. I'm just writing this paper about the Giants and why they're having a losing season. I mean I'm not training to be a lawyer or nothin'.

  Mr. Tomas Fernandez was twenty-nine. He worked as a mechanic for New York City. He hoped an associate degree would help him get a promotion. He had a wife and three children and sometimes, in class, he fell asleep. When he snored, the other students would look at me to see what I was going to do about it. I touched his shoulder and suggested he take a break outside. He said, OK, left the room and did not return that night. He missed class the following week and when he returned said, no, he wasn't sick. He was over in New Jersey at the football game, the Giants, you know. He had to see the Giants when they were at home. Couldn't miss his Giants. He said it was too bad this class was on Monday, same night as the game when the Giants were home.

  Too bad, Mr. Fernandez?

  Yeah. Like, you know, I can't be in two places at one time.

  But, Mr. Fernandez, this is a college. This course is required.

  Yeah, says Mr. Fernandez. I understand your problem, professor.

  My problem? My problem, Mr. Fernandez?

  Well, like, you have to do something about me and the Giants. Right?

  It's not that, Mr. Fernandez. It's just that if you don't attend class you are going to fail.

  He stares at me as if trying to understand why I'm talking in this strange way. He tells me and the class how he's followed the Giants all his life and he's not going to desert them now that they're having a losing season. No one would respect him. His seven-year-old son would despise him. Even his wife, who never cared about the Giants, would lose respect for him.

  Why, Mr. Fernandez?

  That's easy to see, professor. All these Sundays and Mondays I spent on the Giants she waits home for me, takes care of the kids and everything, even forgives me the time of her mother's funeral when I couldn't go because the Giants were in the playoffs, man. So now if I was to give up the Giants she'd say, What was it all for, me waiting and waiting? She'd say it was all wasted. That's how she'd lose respect because there's one thing about my wife, she sticks to her guns the way I stick to the Giants, know what I mean?

  Rowena from Barbados says she thinks this discussion is a waste of class time and why doesn't he grow up. Why didn't he take this class on another night besides Monday?

  Because the other classes were full and I heard Mr. McCourt was a nice guy that wouldn't mind if I went to a football game after working all day. You know?

  Rowena from Barbados says she doesn't know. Shit or get off the pot, mon, excuse the language. We come here after a hard day's work, too, and we don't snore in class and run off to football games. We should have a vote.

  Heads nod around the room, yes to the vote. Thirty-three say Mr. Fernandez should attend class, no Giants. Mr. Fernandez votes for himself. Giants all the way.

  Even though the Giants are on television that evening he's gracious enough to stay till the end of the class. He shakes my hand and assures me he has no hard feelings, that I'm really a nice guy, but we all have our blind spots.

  Freddie Bell was an elegant young black man. He worked in the men's clothing department at the Abraham and Strauss Department Store. He helped me select a jacket there and that led to a different level of relationship. Yes, I'm in your class but I helped you pick out that jacket. He liked to write in a florid style using big words and rare words lifted from dictionary and thesaurus and when I wrote on his paper, "Simplify, simplify (Thoreau)," he wanted to know who was this Thoreau and why would anyone want to write like a baby?

  Because, Freddie, your reader might appreciate clarity. Clarity, Freddie, clarity.

  He didn't agree. His high school English teacher told him the English language was a glorious organ. Why not take advantage of this tremendous instrument? Pull out all the stops, so to speak.

  Because, Freddie, what you're doing is false, forced and artificial.

  That was the wrong thing to say, especially with thirty of his fellow students watching and listening. His face froze and I knew I had lost him. That would mean a hostile presence in the class the remainder of the term, a discomfiting prospect for me, still making my way in this adult-student world.

  He struck back with language. His writing became more elaborate and tortured. His grades slipped from As to B minuses. At the end he asked for an explanation of the grade. He said he'd shown his essays to his old English teacher and he, the old English teacher, simply could not understand how Freddie could get less than an A plus. Look at the language. Look at the vocabulary. Look at the levels of meaning. Look at the sentence structure: varied, sophisticated, complex.

  We faced each other in the hallway. He would not give up. He said he worked hard in my class looking up new words so that I wouldn't be bored with the same old words. His old English teacher said there was nothing worse than reading miles of student writing and never coming across an original thought or some fresh vocabulary. Old English teacher said Mr. McCourt should appreciate Freddie's efforts and reward him accordingly. Freddie should get credit simply for venturing into new territory, for pushing the envelope. Also, said Freddie, I work nights to make a living and pay my way through college. You know what that's like, Mr. McCourt.

  I don't see what that has to do with your writing.

  Also, it's not easy when you're black in this society.

  Oh, Christ, Freddie. It's not easy being anything in this society. All right. You want an A? You'll get it. I don't want to be accused of bigotry.

  No, I don't want it just because you're pissed off or because I'm black. I want it because I deserve it.

  I turned to walk away. He called after me, Hey, Mr. McCourt, thanks. I like your class. It's weird, that class, but I figured I might even become a teacher like you.

  I am teaching this course that requires a research paper. The student must demonstrate the ability to select a topic, engage in basic research, make notes on index cards so that the instructor can determine the source of the material, provide scholarly footnotes and a bibliography of primary and secondary sources.

  I take my students to the library so that the pleasant enthusiastic librarian can show them how to find information, how to use the basic tools of research. They listen to her and look at one another and whisper in Spanish and French, but when she asks if they have any questions they stare, embarrassing the librarian, who so wants to be helpful.

  I try to explain the simple idea of research.

  First, you choose a topic.

  What's that?

  Think of something you're interested in, maybe a problem bothering you and people in general. You could write about capitalism, religion, abortion, children, politics, education. Some of you come from Haiti or Cuba. Two rich subjects. You could write about voodoo or the Bay of Pigs. You could look at some aspect of your country, human rights, for instance, do a little research, look at the pros and cons, think about it, come to a conclusion.

  Excuse me, professor, what's pros and cons?

  Pro is for, con is against.

  Oh.

  The Oh means they have no notion of what I am talking about. I have to backtrack, come at it from another angle. I ask them where they stand on capital punishment. The looks tell me they don't know where they stand because they don't know what I'm talking about.

  Capital punishment is the execution of people by hanging, electrocution, gassing, shooting or garroting.

  What's that?

  A kind of strangling they have mostly in Spain.

  They ask me to write it on the board. They scribble it in their notebooks and I make a mental note that if ever a class dragged I'd turn immediately to the various methods of execution.

  Vivian from Haiti raises her hand. That's wrong, that executing, but I think it's OK for the other thing, the one about the babies, Oh, yeah, the abortion. They should be shot.

  All right, Vivian. Why don't you write that in
your research paper?

  Me? Write down what I'm saying? Who cares what I'm saying? I'm nobody, professor. Nobody.

  Their faces are blank. They don't understand. How could they? What's this about the other side of a story? Nobody ever told them they had a right to an opinion.

  They're not shy about speaking up in class, but putting words on paper is a dangerous step, especially when you grew up with Spanish or French. Besides, they don't have time for all this. They've got kids to raise and jobs and they have to send money to their families back in Haiti and Cuba. It's easy for professors to give all these assignments but, man, there's another world out there and God only put twenty-four hours in the day.

  There are ten minutes left in the hour and I tell the class they should feel free now to explore the library. No one moves. They don't even whisper anymore. They sit in their winter overcoats. They clutch book bags and wait till that exact second when the hour ends.

  In the hallway I tell my friend, veteran professor Herbert Miller, of my problems with this class. He says, They work days and nights. They come to class. They sit and listen. They do their best. These people in the admissions office let them in, then expect the teacher to perform a miracle or be the hatchet man. I'm not going to be the enforcer for the front office. Research? How can these people do research papers when they still struggle to read the damn newspaper?

  The class would agree with Miller. They'd nod and say, Yeah, yeah. They think they're nobody.

  That was something I should have known all along: the people in my classes, adults from eighteen to sixty-two, thought their opinions did not matter. Whatever ideas they had came from the avalanche of media in our world. No one had ever told them they had a right to think for themselves.

  I told them, You have a right to think for yourselves.

  Silence in the classroom. I said, You don't have to swallow everything I tell you. Or what anyone tells you. You can ask questions. If I don't have the answer we can look it up in the library or discuss it here.

  They look at one another. Yeah. The man is talking funny. Tells us we don't have to believe him. Hey, we came here to learn English so's we can pass. We gotta graduate.

  I wanted to be the Great Liberating Teacher, to raise them from their knees after days of drudgery in offices and factories, to help them cast off their shackles, to lead them to the mountaintop, to breathe the air of freedom. Once their minds were cleared of cant they'd see me as savior.

  For the people in this class life was hard enough without having an English teacher preaching about thinking and bothering them with questions.

  Man, we just wanna get through this place.

  The research papers turned out to be an ecstasy of plagiarism, articles on Papa Doc Duvalier and Fidel Castro lifted from encyclopedias. Vivian's paper on Touissant-L'Ouverture rambled on for seventeen pages in English and Haitian French and I gave it a B plus for the labor of copying and typing. I tried to redeem myself with a comment on the title page to the effect that Touissant thought for himself and suffered for it and I hoped Vivian might follow his example, though not to the suffering part.

  When I returned the papers I tried to say positive things about them, to encourage the authors to dig into their subjects even more.

  I was talking to myself. It was the last class of the year and they were looking at their watches, ignoring me. I walked to the subway, dejected and angry with myself for not having made some kind of connection with them. Four women from the class waited on the subway platform. They smiled and asked if I lived in Manhattan.

  No. I go two stops in Brooklyn.

  I didn't know what to say after that. No chitchat. No banter from the professor.

  Vivian said, Thanks for the grade, Mr. McCourt. That's the highest I ever got in English and, you know, you're a pretty good teacher.

  The others nodded and smiled, and I knew they were just being nice. When the train came in they said, See you, and hurried along the platform.

  My college teaching career ended in a year. The department chairman said even though there was brisk competition for my job and applications from people with Ph.D.s, he'd stretch the rules, but if I wanted to stay I'd need to show evidence I was pursuing a degree on the doctoral level. I told him I wasn't pursuing anything.

  Sorry, said the chairman.

  Oh, it's all right, I said, and went searching for another high school teaching job.

  Alberta said I was going nowhere in life and I congratulated her on her astuteness. She said, Cut out the sarcasm. We've been married for six years and all you do is meander from one school to another. If you don't settle down to something very soon you'll be forty and wondering where your life went. She pointed to people all around us, happily married, productive, settled, content, having children, developing mature relationships, looking to the future, going on nice vacations, joining clubs, taking up golf, growing old together, visiting relatives, dreaming of grandchildren, supporting their churches, thinking of retirement.

  I agreed with her but I couldn't admit it. I gave her a sermon on life and America. I told her life was an adventure, and maybe I was living in the wrong century. I should have lived back in the days of the Conestoga wagon, when the wagon master in Western movies -- John Wayne, Randolph Scott, Joel McCrea -- cracked his whip and called, Move out, and the studio orchestra went into raptures, fifty violins swelling with prairie patriotism, pure wagon-train music, violins and banjos welcoming the harmonica wail, men in wagon-driver seats going, Hup, hup, hup, or men walking, leading horses and oxen, with wives up there holding reins, some wives you can see are pregnant and you know, because you've been here before, they'll have their babies in the middle of an attack by ferocious Apache, Sioux, Cheyenne. They'll get the wagons in a circle and fight off those howling braves threatening nice white mothers in labor but still, those Indians are magnificent in their feathers, on their horses, and you know the Indians will be driven off because every white man, woman, child, even the women in labor, will blaze away with rifle and revolver, will swing rolling pins and frying pans, defeat the pesky redskin so that the wagon train can move on again, so that white people will conquer this wild continent, so that the expansion of America will not be stopped by locust, drought, Rocky Mountains or whooping Apache.

  I said that was the part of American history I loved. She said, Oh, Conestoga wagon, my ass, go get a job, and I snapped right back with a line from Dylan Thomas, A job is death without dignity. She said, You'll have your dignity, but you won't have me. You could see there was little hope for the future of that marriage.

  The head of the Academic Department at Fashion Industries High School did not like me but there was a teacher shortage, no one wanted to teach in vocational high schools, and there I was, available and with McKee experience. He sat behind his desk, ignored my hand, told me he ran a dynamic department, rolled his shoulders like a boxer to suggest great energy and determination. He said the kids in Fashion High School were not academic hotshots but decent kids learning useful trades like tailoring and cutting, shoemaking, upholstery and, damn it, there was nothing wrong with that, eh? They'd be valuable members of society and I should never make the mistake of looking down my nose at kids in vocational high schools.

  I told him I had just spent eight years in a vocational high school, wouldn't dream of looking down my nose at anyone.

  Oh, yeah. Which school?

  McKee on Staten Island.

  He sniffed. Well, that doesn't have much of a reputation, does it?

  I needed that job and didn't want to offend him. I told him that if I knew anything about teaching I learned it at McKee. He said, We'll see. I wanted to tell him shove his job up his arse, but that would be the end of my teaching career.

  It was clear my future was not in this school. I wondered if I had a future anywhere in the school system. He said four teachers in his department were taking courses in supervision and administration and I shouldn't be surprised to see them one day in high po
sitions in schools around the city.

  We don't sit on our asses here, he said. We move on and up. And what are your long-range plans?

  I don't know. I suppose I just came here to be a teacher, I said.

  He shook his head, couldn't understand my lack of ambition. I wasn't dynamic enough. Because of him those four teachers taking courses were moving on and up and out. That's what he said. Why should they spend their lives in the classroom with kids when they could travel the corridors of power?

  I felt brave for a moment and asked him, If everyone moved on and up and out who would teach the children?

  He ignored me, allowed himself a little smile with a mouth that had no lips.

  I lasted one term, September to January, before he forced me out. It may have been the matter of the shoelace and the rolled-up magazine or it may have been my lack of dynamism and ambition. Still, he praised me at a department meeting for my lesson on the parts of a sentence where I used a ballpoint pen as a visual aid.

  This is the plastic tube that holds the ink. If you removed this tube from the pen what would happen?

  My students look at me as if they can't believe I'm asking such a dumb-ass question. Man, you wouldn't be able to write.

  OK. Now what is this I'm holding in my hand?

  Again the patient look. That's a spring, man.

  And what would happen if we removed the spring?

  When you try to push the tube out it won't write because there's no spring to push it and keep its little nose out there where all the writing is done and then you get in a lotta trouble because you can't write your homework and the teacher's gonna think you're crazy if you come in telling him about missing springs or tubes.

  Now look at what I'm writing on the board. "The spring makes the pen work." What is the subject of this sentence? In other words, what are we talking about in this sentence?

  The pen.

  No, no, no. There's an action word here. It's called a verb. What is it?

  Oh, yeah. The spring.

  No, no, no. The spring is a thing.

  Yeah, yeah. The spring is a thing. Hey, man. That's poetry.

  So, what does the spring do?

  Makes the pen work.

  Good. The spring performs the action. We're talking about the spring, right?

  They look doubtful.