On Teaching (2014)

         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.