William H. Aile
– FROM THE LAST ESSAYS OF W. H. AILE

On the humanity of teachers

Does a teacher have a life outside the classroom? I ask because, among other reasons I’ll come to, a student asked me once, and I seemed to understand what she was onto, whether I didn’t live under this desk. It was as perfectly absurd a suggestion as it was perfectly reasonable, or so I thought and now think – it was also, I surmise, something of a compliment, wittingly or not, to suggest that a teacher can’t be imagined outside of the classroom; though it may sound like the mark of a rigidity not suggestive of practical, let alone relatable, life, it is in fact to suggest that this pedagogue embodies a possibility that does not – or not yet – relate to life as the student knows it. And to what is the teacher committed if not to the possibility of a reality with which the student is not yet acquainted? It is often said to be the teachers’ burden to be relatable, to appear as though peers to the disenchanted young, as though we were friends for hire and not, as we essentially are, interested in changing them. My issues with humanity know no bounds, but my issue with “humanity” as it’s exalted into a behavioral ideal for a teacher is its tendency – all too apparent would one just imagine its intelligible use – to mean, in truth, the most “human” teacher shall be, in short, the most cool. Now, some of us find the history of the dative case quite cool, but what’s meant when teachers are told to be, in the name of humanity, cool, is: cool by students’ standards – and once this thought dawns on you it should at once become apparent that this goal is neither realizable nor a wise one if it were. Teaching, I regret to report, is the vocation of a few, and it attracts, beside these, a pitiable bunch. I think of primary schools, where despair saturates the happy hour, but the same, in twisted fashion, comes to hold true in the university, where a class of brown-nosers has been put in charge of the education of a generation on the basis of the term papers they’ve written. I have known, as a student, several professors, and as a teacher, too many colleagues, whose confidence, clearly, was staked on the thoughts of their students. The saddest fact on a campus is the professor seeking the good opinion of the pupil. Much ink has been spilt on the worthy questions surrounding sex between these species, teacher and student, but lamentably little, in my opinion, on the sad sad state of the souls of academics, for the only thing more pathetic, where these differ, than a prof fawning on freshers is one wanting them to affirm his style. I took a professor, Mr. N, who didn’t so much profess – let alone proffer – knowledge as pal around. Instead of Gramsci’s wouldn’t we rather hear his thoughts and share ours? A conspiracy, familiar to campuses the nation over, formed under his supervision, between the underprepared teacher and the underprepared student, to do away with preparation as a concept with sense. Be it noted, though, Reader: the underpreparation of one is not the same as of the other: N didn’t bother to think about what he hands down; the student doesn’t know what she’s missing; both are blind, but one is responsible to the other’s eyes. And, much as it is a teacher’s right to complain about her students, I must observe that, on this account, fate does not assign responsibility for the injustice done in this collusion equivocally. But before you dismiss N as a blight, kindly look into your own notes and ask how hard you’ve prepared to mold the souls of tomorrow, for each day you become husband to a dozen more, though you may, for all I know, be drunk at the head of the table pining for pupils at prayer time. Pray for N before firing him; he knows not what he doesn’t do. We recall that every terrible teacher’s a terribly underserved student; and brace, if you resent today’s, for tomorrow’s pedagogues. Let us now return to the question as to whether a teacher exists outside the classroom. If we laugh we laugh because they obviously do. But then, how obvious is this? What are the limits of the relevant room? If this student finds me in the hallway – the street, the bar, or whither go ye – will I act as though this weren’t my student, those weren’t my words, or weren’t borrowed against my conscience? Does school only matter, do the souls of students only matter, does what you teach only matter, within certain walls? If so, then kindly retire. For you disgrace and make a mere profession this great vocation, as though a lot of jaw were all that constituted an authoritative voice. For practicing what we preach is a minimum of morality we can expect of a teacher with any experience, for one learns, along with the fact that there is such a thing as too much teaching, that one is, at one’s best – and at one’s best is how one must picture it – never not, for the relevant thought might strike off the clock and if the possibility one aims to model for a fresher mind is not a complete falsehood, then there is no point at which we cease to be responsible for it and for the mind that takes it seriously.