Scholastic Inaptitude Test: A Quickie

Just a quickie today, because it’s late in the game and I’ve got deeds to do and promises to keep and lots (and lots) of papers to grade and a chapter to edit. So, sort of as a follow-on to S*cks to be me…

I’m teaching a lot these days. Sometimes it’s in person. Sometimes it’s online. Sometimes it’s English. Sometimes it’s History. Sometimes it’s at one college, sometimes another.

Now, this is interesting because I don’t have a Ph.D. and probably never will. But, the students don’t seem to mind, particularly. And this is in spite of the fact that one of my own former professors said that I was incapable of scholarship and that I was “Unfocused.”

Maybe my students tolerate me because they aren’t particularly focused themselves. Oh, not that they’re aren’t focused on getting their degrees…their eyes are on the prize indeed…but they are not, shall we say? Homogenous. They are a diverse lot.

In just the last couple of semesters I’ve had students who were from pretty much every place on earth. There was a Hungarian, a Peruvian, five Nepalese, an Austrian, a Moroccan, a Saudi, three Chinese, one Taiwanese (“I think of myself as a citizen of Greater China”), a Japanese, several Koreans, five or six Indians, an Ethiopian, a Columbian, a Nigerian, an Israeli on leave from his army service (he was a sniper by training), a Belarusian, two Bulgarians, two Russians, a Salvadorian (“I’ve survived three earthquakes”), an Ivorian, an assortment of Brazilians, a Venezuelan (“I decided I wouldn’t go back after I was kidnapped. I mean, the second time”), and, of course, just to top it off, a very articulate gentlemen who was born in Brazil but made his first fortune in Peru, travels the world as multinational consultant and was a visiting professor at MIT. But, you see, he doesn’t have a bachelor’s. Many European and South American educational system don’t, that is, require them. So, he was in my class…

This was, of course, in addition to the usual assortment of students who were more “typical” albeit not always less colorful. There was, for instance, the woman who bred ferrets for a living, the young man who had danced professionally with the Twyla Tharp Company, the Marine Corps vet who looked as though he were 12 (he was all of nineteen) and who had earned a Purple Heart in Iraq, and one very intelligent young man who identified himself as a “member of the deaf community” and came to class each week with two signing interpreters.

I like to think we get along fairly well. I watched with some amusement while the two Bulgarians discovered one another and began, over the course of the term, a mild flirtation. Then, too, there was the delicately negotiated relationship between the Peruvian, whose parents owned a Guinea Pig farm (her research paper was on the proper way of preparing one for dinner. It seems you serve them with potatoes), and the woman who raised ferrets and was, we soon discovered, a member of PETA.

But, my story actually doesn’t involve my class, but rather one of my professors. The same one I mentioned above. The one who said I was unfocused. He is very Focused. He is Tenured. He is Outstanding In His Field. He is a Recognized Authority. I came to call him “The Hindenburg.”

Anyway, one day, before I left his program (as unfocused as ever, as incapable of scholarship as before), I was standing in a hallway and happened to be telling some friends about all my many sorts of students. He came out of an office and heard me. Then, he looked a little pained and asked, “How do you stand it?”

At first, I thought he was joking. But, a glance at his face set me straight. He meant what he said.

I stammered out something about enjoying my work, and that the students were fascinating. Meshing my world-view and theirs was a delightful puzzle. Each time I succeed in teaching them something, it was a personal victory to be savored.

My professor looked at me coldly. His mustache quivered. Then, he said, “ I suppose . . . if you’re interested in …teaching.” He made the word sound like a disease. “Those kind of people.”

Then, with a dismissive shrug, he waddled off to some class or another. There, he would face (I knew) a comfortingly monolithic community. A bland assortment of suburban youth, secure in their upper- to upper-middle class privilege, would snore comfortably and non-threateningly in the tightly linear rows of seats before him. They would offer him no challenge. He would present them with nothing unexpected. Everyone would be happily focused.

And as he left, I realized something.

I do not miss being “capable of scholarship.” I do not mind being unfocused. I would rather strive (however feebly) to be a teacher than a Tenured Authority In My Field. I would rather stay among my night students and my part-time students, at Community Colleges and Programs of Continuing Education.

Or, to put it all another way…

Given a choice between my professor’s privileged Few and my energetic, exciting, and sometimes challenging Many, I’ll take the Many.

You meet a better class of people.

Onward and Upward.

































Copyright © 2009 Michael Jay Tucker