Peter Shaheen
Instructor, Groves High School
On July 15, 1979, President Jimmy Carter challenged Americans to prevail against a malaise that had spread across the country and had threatened to malignantly redefine our national character. Unfortunately, Carter's speech backfired and Carter got clobbered in the next election. Perhaps our collective mouths were coated with the putrid film of a foreign policy that recently collapsed on itself, and perhaps our collective breath was fouled by another president who by putting himself above the law, made us all throw up our hands and turn our back on a government that had run aground. No amount of spitting and sputtering could rid us of this rancid national hangover. In truth, we had no idea what was happening to us. Hope had crusted over, and we were at a loss to explain the vagaries that were nothing more than symptoms of our discontent.
As undefined, unromantic, and ugly as the lethargy was in 1980, the enigmatic challenges that confront teachers today are every bit as real. While it is not a very creative consternation to confess to. Overcoming the intrinsic uncertainty associated with teaching and rising from the ashes of those doubts is very clearly my most severe challenge in teaching American literature. Given the current state of siege in which education, language arts in particular, finds itself, the remarkable thing is that more teachers aren't throwing their hands up in anguish. Instead. Like an aging featherweight, my colleagues and I find that we are losing our punch and having to increasingly rely on our guile to Lincoln Brigade fighting against enemies who are increasingly more difficult to define.
Truthfully,. I wish there was a sexier issue I could use to introduce myself. In fact, I have procrastinated for too long in writing this essay because I was praying for a more divine inspiration. As it turns out, I have fallen prey to the ambiguity that haunts me. So, this anything but sexy introduction might be initially entitled "Finding Enlightenment Among the Shadows of Uncertainty." My alternate title is, "Fat Chance."
It is a one thing to say that there are the traditional forces out in the community and state who resent teachers. These familiar adversaries are capable of only mild trepidation/ We know their faces and can recognize their voices. The defined themselves by their montras. Every district has their local Dotty Ickers who contend that. "Teachers should eat hamburger and learn to like it because steak is too good for them." Every district in Michigan realizes that the our dour faced governor's call for competition is a poorly veiled disguise for private school vouchers. While these forces are distracting and negative. They are transparent. Their droning sounds like a dentist's drill and proves to be discomforting in the short term, but in the end, they will have little impact.
The shadows of uncertainty that stick to us (excuse the heavy handed metaphor) like leeches sucking blood are more insidious and dangerous. Remaining vital and energized against these forces is problematic. We have to spend time defining factors that defy description. All the while, there is no certainty that the descriptions are accurate, Even knowing where to start is discerning. Yet. Jump in I must. And unfortunately, you must muddle through with me as we struggle together to put a face on the faceless.
My contention is articulated by Michael Apple of the University of Wisconsin who asks, "Whose purpose do we serve?" In teaching American literature, this question weighs heavy. Clearly American literature is a battlefield. There are an ever increasing number of banners being waived for an ever increasing number of politician contingencies. E.D. Hirsch and Harold Bloom marshal troops for traditional interpretation where the text is privileged and the trained scholar is the only key master properly ordained to deliver meaning to the ignorant. Paulo Friere struggles on behalf of the oppressed and "cointentional learning." Louise Rosenblatt, John Dewey, and a host of others cry for freedom and democracy. Michael Foucault fires his volleys for context and deconstruction. Feminist, African American, Latin critics and a host of others contend for the mind and soul of the reader. Invigoration stuff-- when you stop to mull it over, and perhaps I don't stop frequently enough-- that there is such a powerful arena of contending ideas in my, in all of our classrooms.
So on the one hand, we realize there are huge amounts of energy associated with an idea-- sort of like an atom, Such a loud boom our of such a tiny particle. Then the theory comes face to face with the practice and there's the rub. Is it just me of do kids seem to more than a bit passive about the whole process? Why are they sitting there with pens in their hands waiting for me to explain to them what that stinking green light at the other end of the bay represents? And why do I, like Charlie Brown moving towards Lucy to kick the stupid football, fall for their subterfuge and explain it to them?
When I complain to my colleagues, there are two separate responses. There are those who have been enlisted in a pedagogical army. Actually, they fall into the Bloom and Hirsch camp. I'm not sure it's fair to the real philosophers to assign NAS the honor of pedagogy just because they are scholars. These folk tend to destain ambiguity which is okay, but what about the thrills birthed in a marketplace of ideas? Some others let students discuss for awhile before we tell them the answer to our questions. I know it's not ok for me to teach that way. Their style fits me like the blue and brown plaid suit coat I wore to homecoming in high school with the gray shirt and snazzy bow tie. Despite knowing better, I catch myself coming back to the familiar. I find myself feeling like I have failed not only my students but myself as well. Can they survive the damage I have inflicted. Certainly they are more resilient than I.
So whose purpose am I serving? Does this "discuss and then give the real answer" format I fall back on serve the colleagues that one day will reteach the literature I taught? Does it serve the district curriculum that is published in the community so the ad building has a readily available answer to a parent when that parent asks, "Just exactly what do they do in that class anyway?" Does it serve the principal who is more interested in the reform notions that center on nuts and bolts like block scheduling and is unimpressed by issues of pedagogy particularly as they relate to an individual curriculum like language arts? Can I even to be pretending to serve the students' purposes when I babble out correct responses and encourage them not to read/engage the text because they know I will eventually wear down and give out the right answers even though I know better because I only have them for a semester or less and there so much left undone? Or am I serving my own purposes when I roll out correctness like ridilin pills, the sole purpose of which seems to keep the masses passively seated in five neat rows of sex? What evidence do I have to suggest that I'm any more effective at anything than my colleagues with different approaches" These questions bite me like plastic leeches.
Clearly, I am doing the best job of teaching I know how to do (and so are my colleagues). Clearly, there is nothing I'd rather do (except perhaps, play right field for the Detroit Tigers). But clearly, it is also painful to be less than perfect. This issue is not one of control but rather one of being vague and imperfect. Imperfection makes me an invisible man. Imperfection is walking on a beach and leaving no footprints behind. It is leaving teaching without leaving a legacy. It follows me like a shadow-- a malaise that haunts the soul, perhaps waiting at the next turn to clobber me. It is also a passionate power full of anxiety, reverence, and promise. It is the murky stuff we wade through every day in a deliberate attempt to reinvent ourselves from the obscure and inarticulate that surrounds us and defies definition. It is why I teach. It is what I admire and question about myself.
Email: pshaheen@edcen.ehhs.cmich.edu
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