Post #166: Why I Teach

30 Dec. 2024

“Part of my joy in learning is that it puts me in a position to teach; nothing, however excellent or beneficial, will please me if the knowledge is to be for my benefit alone. If wisdom were offered me on condition that I shut keep it shut away and not divulge it to anyone, I should refuse it. There is no enjoying the possession of anything valuable unless one has someone to share it with.”

—Seneca, Sixth Epistle

     A little while ago, as another term was drawing to a close, one of my American exchange students asked me why I had decided to become a teacher. I am glad to report that this was not done in a tone of criticism or incredulity (“Why did you become a teacher?”), but something she was asking in all her classes, she explained, because she was trying to figure out what to do herself.

     The first thing that came to mind was that I’m not sure that I ever did decide, exactly. My first love, from about the time I started school, was soccer—not the kind organized by adults, but pick-up games on the school yard during recesses, and in my neighborhood after school. This was supplemented, throughout my earlier years, with all manner of other more or less spontaneous sporty activities and a few more institutionalized ones. My second love was the theater, starting in junior high; my third, writing, a little later. I would have been surprised then, possibly even indignant, to be told that one day I would be a teacher. My mom taught German (and literature more generally) and she was extremely committed to her calling; it meant a steady flow of good books during my childhood, but otherwise, as for most teacher’s kids, it did not seem much of a recommendation at the time.

     Teaching was not, then, something I sought out; it happened more than I made it. During my second year of graduate school, when I was 23, being a teaching assistant was part of my funding package, so I did not feel I had much of a choice in the matter. Not that I minded: I discovered that I enjoyed teaching, most of the time, and that I was reasonably good at it. That is how it began, and though I gained experience and probably developed my teaching style along the way, the basic parameters did not change much: it was a congenial way to make a living, I enjoyed it, and I had reason to believe that it was by and large appreciated by the students.

     Over time, however, something else became clear to me that was probably there all along, though not as visible initially, namely what a lovely thing it is to have something to share with young adults at the perfect age to make use of what you have to say. The undergraduate years, in my experience as a student and a teacher alike, sparkle with a kind of magic: the anxieties and confusions of the adolescent years may not have disappeared altogether, but they have receded considerably, to make room for a budding maturity alongside an unabated and now much less constrained zest for intellectual adventure—a combination marvelous to behold. It is an age ready for serious thought and mental independence, in other words, but still brimming with the curiosity of youth, and although one encounters plenty of jaded or cynical posturing, and some real late teenage angst, the shadows can still be overcome in most cases, or at least suspended for the moment.

     All teachers hope to strike a spark; few things are more touching and delightful than when it happens and one can see it catching in a young mind that is looking for something, it knows not what. But this does not happen very reliably, to say the least, and on bad days, which every teacher knows as well as the good ones, it can feel as if one is “striking matches on bars of soap,” as some wit or other once put it (I forget who it was). Having to perform, day in day out, before a crowd of picky, consumer-minded youngsters spoilt for amusements is no great recipe for anyone’s delectation; sometimes it works despite all that is arraigned against it, but when it doesn’t (not always by the teacher’s fault either), it can be as painful as stand-up comedy when one’s jokes fall flat (or if not quite so awful, then at least not much better). Nor is it a great joy, when one is doing what one can to engage such demanding customers, to know that any unguarded word or ill-considered gesture can and will be misconstrued and used against you, if anyone in the crowd happens to in the mood to take your scalp.

     I hasten to add for the record that I have nonetheless found the great majority of  my students to be quite fair-minded, kind, and generous. For all the typical self-regard of the young, and a growing tendency towards righteous judgment, they are also restrained by a touching sense of decency, in almost all cases, from throwing deliberately low punches. Honest teaching would become a terrifying proposition if it were otherwise. That said, even a single bad apple can be enough, alas, to spoil everything—and not even an irrecoverably rotten one, but perhaps only sour and spiteful for the moment, or otherwise under the weather as governed by a dubious climate of opinion. Genuine viciousness, I have not often experienced up close, despite the strands running through our Zeitgeist that give encouragement to the always latent human capacity for feeling virtuous when sticking in the knife, if one can get away with it. Still I’ve seen enough to know that there is a serious problem here, not something that can be snidely dismissed in the fashionable manner of the last few years as so much whining by the privileged. If only.

     In addition to problematic ideological turns, the technological trends of the past decade (coming on top of other destabilizers that have been much longer in the making) have not always been helpful, to put it mildly. A decade ago, I could still count on my students to be readers: a few were very good at it, the majority more middling, some only capable with a struggle, but not many brought to their undergraduate years a spirit of outright hostility or complete indifference to the printed word. That has changed, to my great chagrin, as reading seems to be losing respectability to an unprecedented degree. On the cheating side, mortal threats have been lurking all along, but these too are expanding alarmingly with the technological possibilities. The proneness to acute distraction, though partly a function of youth, still depends, as it ever has, very much on the specific group one is dealing with; even so the unfavorable undercurrents have been getting unmistakably stronger, courtesy of the crack-epidemic that is instant gratification via the smart phone and a gazillion other variations on the same aggravating (dictionary meaning) theme. It doesn’t get any less alarming for being, by now, such a familiar concern.

     What is, or is not, appropriate for a teacher to say to young adults in a classroom—sometimes quite independently of its truthfulness—has probably always required tricky calls that must, to increase the difficulty, often be made on the spot and on grounds of propriety that are ever-shifting and situational. What works in one context may backfire disastrously in another, and what sincerity may positively demand in one constellation, another may forbid just as forcibly. While playing it too safe makes for a phony, taking too many risks with straight talk may prove too disconcerting for an audience—or for some hearers anyway—and thus turn out to be suicidal for the overly frank teacher in an age that encourages students to become accusers.

     The subtle lines, not only of truth but also of tact and timing, that must guide good teaching around touchy subjects, nobody can draw mechanically, and risk can only be mitigated, not eliminated. Like it or not, there is no way around putting oneself on the line every moment anew, if one would not lapse into insincerity and lose credibility. The delicate balancing acts that this means for a conscientious teacher requires not only sound judgment, but mutual trust and forbearance in the classroom, which is not a given but must be continuously cultivated. Creating such a learning environment can be exhausting even at the best of times and under relatively benign conditions; where the atmosphere gets poisoned by a spirit of ideological fervor and correspondingly ready censoriousness, it can become intolerable. The charge that energizes a classroom may look like a teacher’s responsibility alone, but in fact it depends as much on the students’ willingness and ability make the current flow by doing their part, in good faith, as conductors and contributors.

     Can anyone imagine grading being fun? I doubt it. Perhaps there are teachers who don’t mind it much, but most dread it to varying degrees. Sitting in judgment in the manner that assigning grades demands is not pleasant, though it can be satisfying when one sees written evidence that something is getting through. At times, as when I once saw every single student in a class of thirty or so in Singapore make good sense of Plato’s Republic in an exam, it can even be astounding and inspiring. More usually, however, the astonishment comes from how little can register on distracted student minds. When the weaker candidates are at least willing to take responsibility for the poverty of their product, it is a melancholy, sometimes a heartbreaking exercise; when the relationship is inversed, which happens more than one might imagine, it can easily turn into one of the most tiresome educational situations, with the teacher on the defensive for having found fault with the assorted gems of a self-appointed little emperor.

     The runner-up in annoyance, for related reasons, is the kind of good student for whom nothing is good enough and who gets offended at a minus after an A, or heaven forbid a B+. Some students feel keenly how “special” they are by birthright; after all they have been told often enough (#111). Thus, like the crowned heads of yesteryear, they really do sometimes feel insulted when their sacrosanct opinions are subjected to the indignity of questioning. How dare you judge the majesty of my truth! Extreme cases of this rampant affliction, at times bordering on involuntary self-parody, remain relatively rare, though by no means unheard-of; but alas, the virus has been spread so far and wide with much enthusiastic encouragement by educators that these days it is the occasional symptom-free specimen who look abnormal.

     Even so, these incidental burdens of the teaching life pale beside the one great boon it brings, at least if one is lucky enough to have found the right niche. For then it can be a lifelong opportunity to keep learning along with one’s students, to keep going back to meaningful materials that reveal a new dimension every time one returns to them, and, on brighter days at least, to walk out of a classroom feeling that one has been able to contribute a little, something small but worthwhile, to help sustain the troublesome but inestimable life of the human mind. “Who would lose, though full of pain, this intellectual being, those thoughts that wander through eternity?” (Paradise Lost, see #32)

     If I came to teaching with more of a sense that I already know, I probably wouldn’t enjoy it nearly as much. I don’t teach in that spirit because the sentiment is quite alien to me: what I bring to the classroom instead (ostentatious as it may sound) is a deep and sincere conviction that I have as much to learn as anyone, even from readings I may have already covered countless times in some cases. Of course I must put forth some tentative answers along with many questions; but I insist, whatever propositions I may have to offer, that being able to tell what is ultimately right is quite another matter, far beyond my reach, even if I continue to believe in the possibility of such higher insight. (What I can see more clearly and indisputably are plenty of false turns.) Thus I too must enter, not so much by choice as by temperament and the nature of our human condition, into all the questions and possibilities that I put before my students, myself challenged by them once again no less than they are. Were they to ask me to give them the proper solutions to these human quandaries, as they sometimes do, I can only remind them that I never promised such answers, only my own tentative speculations—informed by decades of study, to be sure, but not therefore any more conclusive than theirs. Sometimes that contention (or confession, if you wish) meets with incredulity, other times it induces a kind of perplexity that is probably salutary.

     I would be delighted if I could make more sense of the world, and if such were my blessed lot, I might feel obliged, with all due caution, to acknowledge it before my contemporaries. But such is not my case at all, and surely teaching cannot be about pretending that one knows what one does not; to do so would undermine the very point of the exercise, so far as I can tell, which is to become more clear and truthful about where one really stands, high or low, knowledgeable or ignorant, wise or foolish. That education in the profound sense may indeed prove a gradual ascent towards the true, the good, and the beautiful—this I hope as fervently as anyone. But to devote oneself to the search, or even to pledge oneself to it, is not at all the same as to claim discovery and deem oneself in possession of the golden key, or the fleece, or the answer to the riddle, or whatever else one takes the quest to be about.

     It’s certainly not a matter of believing that all answers to life’s questions are equally good, that all is opinion, or that there are no definite errors, only divergent perspectives. What I see, instead, with most important questions, are a few good answers, many doubtful ones, and a near-infinite number of bad or even terrible dead-ends. Telling these categories apart is a lifetime’s challenge in which I may be somewhat more experienced than students several decades my juniors; but that does not make me any more reliably sure-footed, or more dependably inured to error. Hence the wisdom of Zarathustra’s tenet at the end of part I of Nietzsche’s gospel of the overman (#133): “One repays a teacher badly if one always remains nothing but a pupil.” This does not mean that the roles should be routinely reversed, only that one can never be quite sure who the real teacher is going to be in the next instance.

     It may seem, when students will sometimes come to me with their wider human and not just their narrowly academic questions and concerns, as if I might thereby be made to feel more authoritative, fancying myself a certified dispenser of wisdom from the great fount. But no, once more I find myself in nearly the opposite position: not puffed-up at all, but humbled and moved that they would trust me enough to ask me such things. It does not validate me so much as it redoubles my sense of obligation before the inquirers. At the same time, I will say that to find oneself able, at such a moment, to say something that actually helps someone with coming to his own conclusions, however big or small, is one of life’s great joys—not a personal accomplishment so much as a flash of grace and redemption.

     I would not want to give the impression that I am any more free than others from personal vanity, which has been called a kind of professional ailment in academic circles (by Max Weber, no less). So let me admit that I enjoy being listened to as much as anyone, or more. And why not? Surely we all need to feel important in our different ways, reassured somehow that what we do matters to others, and I have not risen beyond such human, all-too human self-regard. What I have arrived at, then, is hardly selflessness, but merely a sense that sharing what one has been able to discover, for what it’s worth, is a great way to remain a self, with all the limitations implied, while entering into a kind of secular communion with others that points beyond our separateness.

     The disavowal of wisdom, since at least Socrates’ day (who was not the only sage to make the discovery), can easily sound inversely pretentious, as if one were making an covert bid for what one is overtly disclaiming. To this paradox I can only reply by insisting that I would very much like to be wise; when I say that I am not, I don’t speak with false modesty, but with sincere regret. It is no back-door boast I am making, but an open admission of painfully felt insufficiency. What is more, if others were to discover even faint traces of sagacity in me, I would not be in a rush to contradict them: I would be thrilled if they were right! It’s just that if anyone took the trouble to ask me what I thought of the matter, I would feel obliged to admit that I do not, alas, seem very wise to myself at all, however much I would welcome evidence to the contrary.

     I trust that no one will form any exaggerated notions of my intellectual humility. When I report that I am quite unusually diffident and unsure of my judgments, I do not mean to suggest that I delight particularly in being argued with severely, let alone criticized sharply. Far from it: when I share something I’ve written, for example, I never make the mistake of asking for “just your honest opinion, please.” I shudder at such loose talk. What I say instead is quite different: “Do please be as enthusiastic as you can without lying to me. If you must absolutely criticize to be sincere, then go ahead, but kindly do so with the utmost care and full awareness that any adverse word may sour me on what I’ve written.”

     A little like a therapist of the old unhurried schools, or a confessor, a teacher should be able to listen to plenty of fairly evident confusion with sympathy and equanimity, no approval implied. Unmistakable clarifications have their place too, but students tend to be so sensitive about any hint that they might be wrong about something that it’s usually more effective to act as if what they are saying were quite sensible, even when it is demonstrably not, and then to correct course, pointedly if necessary, but at the same time as if it were no more than a natural continuation. “Have you considered this?” or “Are you sure about that?” marks disagreement clearly enough while leaving more room for a continued search after answers together than “You’re wrong,” which sounds to most ears like a door slamming shut, not to mention “Do you ever listen to what I’m saying or pay any attention to what you are reading at all?” However justified by the circumstances (it really can be shocking sometimes), such severities do not help; the facts of a situation surely matter, but they are not all that matters.

     I am reminded of the cautionary example of Karl Popper, who, celebrated champion of the open society though he was, could be almost comically petty and touchy when it came to hearing his views questioned or challenged. The paradox of intolerance, one might call it, with a bow before the man’s greatness and a smile at human foibles to which we are probably all more prone than we realize, or would like to be. Universities are hardly immune, but rather notorious for professors who pride themselves specifically on their presumed open-mindedness even while being known, somewhat tragically, for just the opposite among their captive audiences in the classroom. To be aware of the danger is not the same as being able to guard against it, but it’s a start.

     Not that students can be counted on for more infallible instincts than their teachers, of course. Within the strict parameters of what the protocols of political politeness allow, they tend to distinguish far too little between opinion and knowledge, and their taste for hearing each other ramble in inchoate ways, often to the point of train-wreck, is something that a teacher can indulge only in small doses if he would live up to his responsibility for keeping the trains on track, and more or less on time. When it comes to a handful of hallowed articles in the great secular student creed, mostly concerned with dogmatic affirmations of dubious equalities, their belief in self-evident and absolute truths borders on the fanatical, and the self-appointed guardians of classroom morality will not shrink, despite their professed relativism, from persecuting transgressors with all the zeal of assistants to the Inquisition.

     “The customer is always right!” proclaims the commercial ethos that these students (and not only they) have imbibed from the cradle. Even in the marketplace, it’s a more questionable maxim than it appears; to allow it to be carried uncontested into the classroom would spell the death of education. Reformers have long been concerned with the powers thus conferred on teachers, who must govern not as democrats, but as petty potentates constrained by various constitutional arrangements. The reach of such pseudo-monarchical might, in the classroom as elsewhere, has been too often exaggerated, as if human beings were easily moved, let along outright coerced, by powers granted on paper. Teachers in the frontline trenches of education know quite well that if they rely on nothing more than their institutional prerogatives, they will hold very little sway over the hearts and minds of their charges, who are nothing if not experts at playing the game of education for points.

     Anyone who rests too easily in the high chair of certified authority and presumed expertise, or who relies overly on grades for leverage, is doomed to being heard only as words are that pass in through one ear and quickly out the other. He may even find himself reduced to an object of mockery and scorn, which is not as easily brushed off as one might naïvely imagine. Thus experience teaches without mercy that effective power in the classroom is a delicate balancing act, with the weight by no means concentrated on one side only. Anyone foolish enough not to realize that he is walking into a potential lions’ den will be quickly disabused of his illusions. Cubs too have sharp teeth, no matter how endearing and playful they may appear most of the time.

     Rather than being confirmed in the glorious mental powers that he might wish to possess, a teacher true to his calling is liable to be reminded at every turn that real education will forever be, for him no less than for his students, a training ground and a field of exercise beset on all sides by unacknowledged errors and confusions, one’s own as much as anyone’s. “Know thyself!” his calling will keep ringing in his ears, “and take great care to comprehend our human condition as it is, not as you would like it to be,” with all the unflagging vigilance and cautionary wisdom that is required before the subtle siren songs of conceit and complacency. To which temptations he is nonetheless bound to succumb, as we are all, again and again, despite our best efforts. And that is quite all right too, a mere reflection of our imperfect human condition, so long as one is under no great illusions about it.

     (With thanks to Mimi and Rafi for inspiring this reflection.)