On Teaching
James E. McGuire
January 27, 2014
“Greetings. I believe you were my
teacher at the Belvedere School, 1968-69. I just wanted to send my regards. Ben.”
The email just appeared in my inbox on May 31,
2013, 44 years to the day since I had last seen or spoken with Ben. What prompted this? How did he find me? What are his thoughts now about the teacher I
was then? What are my thoughts now about the teacher I was then? Of course, I remembered him. He was my favorite student.
I
became a teacher in the fall of 1968 at the mature age of 21. I had graduated from Harvard College in May
1968. The Vietnam War was raging and the
draft was still in effect. I was
classified “1-A”, a prime candidate to be drafted and to go to a war that I did
not believe in. The nation was in turmoil—about
the war, about Civil Rights, about the assassinations of Dr. Martin Luther King
and Robert Kennedy, about the great divide between the young student culture
and the older, blue-collar, World War II generation. Between solid American citizens who proudly
wore the American flag on their hard-hats while young people sewed the stars
and stripes to the ass-end of their blue
jeans or burned it along with their draft cards. It was the summer of ’68 and the Democratic
Convention in Chicago. That summer I was
working as a lackey on an estate—Crowfield---in Rhode Island. The estate was owned by Dr. Oliver Cope, the
head of surgery at the Massachusetts General Hospital, who was married to Alice
Longworth Cope, a Boston Blue-book Brahmin.
We watched the Democratic Convention together. When Mayor Daley ordering blue-helmeted riot
police to bring terror—dogs, batons, and tear-gas-to the protesters in Grant
Park—Dr. Cope and I said in unison, “I wish that I were there.” Startled, we looked at each other and
realized that we were wishing for the same thing for opposite reasons.
Mrs.
Cope had taken me under her wing in January of that year when I was desperate
for work to have enough money to finish my last year of college. My first job
that year was shoveling snow for selected families who lived in great houses on
Brattle Street, Cambridge—the Brattle Street arks. After graduation, she employed me to work at
Crowfield, doing whatever needed doing—cleaning and washing the garbage cans in
the kitchen; mowing the meadow; building an equipment shed with Dr. Cope with
oak lumber that had been harvested from an old estate oak tree, moving the
mooring stone in the sheltered harbor for the family sail boat, and then
dressing for dinner and serving drinks to the extended family and guests. During the dinner hour, my role shifted to
the Young Man from Harvard who offered a different point of view on world
affairs and the war.
Dealing
with the dilemma of every young man of draft age in 1968, Mrs. Cope intoned
with her plummy voice with Brahmin overtones, “That young men will die in war
is a certainty. Which will die is a
matter of random chance. I see no reason
why a young man from Harvard should be a victim of random chance.” With that
thought, she asked what I was doing to avoid the draft. I explained that student deferments had been
eliminated and so I could not go to law school.
Teachers could still be deferred from the draft, but I had no teaching
certificate and had no experience. She
thought about it and then observed, “One doesn’t need a teaching certificate
for private schools. I will make some
phone calls.”
Using the old girl connections bestowed upon those in the
Blue book, she called her friend, Mrs. Lincoln (Parker) Clark, who was still a
trustee at the Belvedere School, a preparatory school in Chelmsford,
Massachusetts. Several days later, she
announced that I was going to be an elementary school teacher, teaching sixth
graders at the Belvedere School, and boarding with Mrs. Clark. She also arranged that I would have a job as
a driver of the school bus/van to supplement my modest teaching income—$5,000
for the year. No interview was
required. My only obligations were to
say “yes” and to notify my draft board.
My only qualifications were my Harvard diploma and her recommendation.
My home
room class consisted of eight sixth graders, from Lowell, Chelmsford, and
Billerica, Massachusetts. They came from
different socio-economic backgrounds.
Ben’s father was a mailman for the U.S. Post Office. They also had different academic
abilities. Though none had special
needs, Tom Fitz was a slow learner and reader.
Ben was a genius. What they had in common was a commitment from their
parents to give them the best education they could afford. Their only entrance requirement was to show
up at school, ready to learn.
The
school was sensible enough to assign me to teach the social sciences only: reading, writing, literature, history. Math and science were taught by an
experienced “real” teacher. During those
blocks, I taught her fifth graders in social studies. My initial lesson plan
was a two-page memo talking generally about the topics/subjects I expected to
cover in the course of the year. The class
was small enough and the school budget large enough to let me supplement the
assigned pre-purchased course books with any books that I wanted to use.
I
had freedom to teach in ways that are now hard to imagine and created my own
curriculum. I decided to introduce my students to Shakespeare. We used a student abridged copy and read Hamlet. Ben was not content with that watered-down Shakespeare and read the whole original play as Shakespeare wrote it. Later, when we performed the play for the school, Ben “ad-libbed,” using Shakespeare’s dialogue in Elizabethan English.
Ben’s intelligence revealed
itself early in the school year. I
taught him how to play chess in October.
By December, he was wining most games.
My nephew David says that may speak more to my abilities as a chess
player than my assessment of Ben as a genius.
I am now playing chess with a grand-nephew Nathan, who is now about the
same age as Ben was then. So far I am
still wining. If he starts to win by
March, I might declare Nathan to be a genius too.
“Never
trust anyone over 30.” Jerry Rubin
repeated this memorable quote during the Days of Rage at the DNC in
Chicago. It was still fresh in the minds
of my students. I vowed that on any
topic that we discussed, I would tell them the “truth” as I saw it, if asked,
and there would be no boundaries for any topic that they wanted to discuss. Students were encouraged to bring in news
clippings from the daily newspaper for reading and class discussion. Ben came from a very open family, with three
older brothers, who were also grappling with the ethics of Vietnam and their
own draft difficulties. The war was
impossible to avoid and provided the class many opportunities to express their
views. Ben participated in those discussions
at a level markedly more sophisticated than his classmates. At times, I had to suspend the discussion and
move on to other subjects. I promised Ben that
we would get back to his comments, questions, and challenges later.
Later sometimes meant on the bus
on the way home from school. Since Ben
was one of the students on my school bus route and lived the farthest away, we
did have opportunities to talk when I was driving him home, usually after all
the other students had been dropped off.
Frequently, those discussions would simply pick up where the class discussion
had left off. Civil disobedience—what one
can do and what should one do when
confronted with laws that violate the individual conscience—was a recurrent
theme in those discussions.
The Confessions of Nat Turner, by William Styron (1967), Pulitzer
Prize winner, 1968, was on my book shelf behind my desk at the Belvedere School
along with other books that I had read and used in class discussions. One day Ben complained that he was looking
for a new book to read and found the available books in the school library not
sufficiently challenging. Impulsively, I
reached behind me and pulled down The
Confessions of Nat Turner. “Here,
read this and prepare a book report reflecting your thoughts on this topic.” At the time, I had not yet read the book and had
exercised no informed judgment in determining whether this was “age-appropriate”
or otherwise suitable reading for sixth grader.
(Confession of this author: as I
write this, I confess that I still have not read this book). I did
know that it dealt with a slave revolt in Virginia in 1831 that resulted in the
death of many people and ultimately led to the execution of Nat Turner. Though it won the Pulitzer, it was controversial
for many, including many of the black community who challenged its portrayal of
blacks under slavery, the nature of black revolts and uprisings against
slavery, and the ability of a white person to even write about slavery from the
perspective of a black slave. So this
seemed a good choice for a precocious young man trying to sort out his own
views on the civil rights movement, which was increasingly strident in its
demands and approach to achieving “freedom now.” Of course, the Vietnam War, the struggle for “freedom
now” voiced by the Viet Cong, the internal debate in the United States about
the war, and the draft, including the increasingly strident nature of draft
protest all served as an overlay for Ben’s reading of this book.
Ben struggled. He finished finally and handed in his book
report. I asked one simple
question: “Did this represent his best
effort?” He thought about it for just a
moment, took back the draft, and re-worked his own paper. When that version was handed in, I was both
impressed and humbled. It was sophisticated and thoughtful. It reflected a serious struggle with the
central issue about the role of violence in efforts to achieve freedom and
justice. Though I did not save a copy of
his paper, I will remember forever what can happen when we challenge young people
to think hard about great issues. That is what happens when we are given the
opportunity to teach. True for all
teachers; perhaps more so when the teacher knows that this student is a genius.
So of course I remembered Ben
and replied immediately to his email:
Benjamin:
What a bolt out of the blue!
I/we have thought of you often over the many years.
Without doubt, you were my favorite student then and among the top
five in my entire life of teaching, which I continued to do on the side during
my career in the law.
My wife Claire just calculated that you must now be approaching being
an adult, like 54 or 55?
We have so many questions: where are you? What do you do?
What have you done? How did you find me? What are your memories of that
teaching year? Do you still play chess?
We would love to hear more from you.
Jim
And then I received his
reply. What prompted the contact after
so many years?
“To answer your question, I think it was the impending
change in career direction that got me thinking about how I had arrived where I
am, and the various points along the way at which I might have chosen a
different path. I remembered beginning my lifelong struggle to balance a
distaste for authority with a desire to "make a difference" around
the time I passed through your class.”
He summarized his life and told
me of his future plans. He answered my
most ego-driven question: what are your
memories of me as your teacher?
“You
were the first of a handful of teachers who made a seminal impression on me. I
have always been grateful to you for challenging my intellect and respecting my
efforts to form my own opinions.”
Benjamin
I can think of no greater
tribute to a teacher.
