Teacher Man REVIEW
After thirty years of teaching, Frank McCourt headed out the d%oor of his last school into retirement. Someone said to him “You should write a book.” He did.
“When I taught in New York City high schools for 30 years,” McCourt writes,
“No one but my students paid attention to me. In the world outside of the school I was invisible. Then I wrote a book about my childhood [Angela’s Ashes] and became mick of the moment. . . . I hoped it might sell a few hundred copies and that I might be invited to have discussions with book clubs. Instead it jumped onto the bestseller list and was translated to 30 languages and I was dazzled. The book was my second act.”
Referring to his poverty-stricken life in Limerick Ireland, McCourt begins his memoir of his teaching life by identifying all those he intends to blame and then subsequently forgive in the docket. “I could lay blame,” he writes,
“The miserable childhood doesn’t simply happen. It is brought about. There are dark forces. If I am to lay blame it is in the spirit of forgiveness. Therefore I forgive the following: Pope Pius the XII; the English in general and King George the VI in particular; Cardinal MacRory, who ruled Ireland when I was a child; the bishop of Limerick, who seem to think everything was a sin; and Eamonn DeValera, former prime minister and president of Ireland who directed teachers all over Ireland to beat the native tongue into us and the natural curiosity out of us.”
He goes on. He has a long list of grievances. But then he reserves a good deal of blame for himself from then on. If you have ever wondered how one should go about being honest about others in a memoir, this seems to be the way. Honesty fairly distributed with the heaping helpings reserved for one’s own ignorances, stupidities, and lack of integrity. McCourt does not pass himself off as a saint anywhere.
He describes the life of a high school teacher in self-deprecating terms. “In the high school classroom,” he says,
“you are a drill sergeant, the rabbi, a shoulder to cry on, a disciplinarian, a singer, a low-level scholar, a clerk, a referee, a clown, a counselor, a dress-code enforcer, a conductor, an apologist, a philosopher, a collaborator, a tap-dancer, a politician, a therapist, a fool, a traffic cop, a priest, and mother-father-brother-sister-uncle-aunt, a bookkeeper, a critic, a psychologist, the last straw.”
His story was interesting but I confess, I think I would have preferred reading the memoir I wrote about teaching. I think it is because it had more to do with what I was teaching and learning and less to do with what I suffered.
Maybe I should write a book.
Question for Comment: Who was your most memorable high school teacher? Why?
Comments