Teaching as an Old Man

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From the Chronicle of Higher Education [Section: The Chronicle Review], Friday, March 20, 2009, Volume 55, Issue 28, p. B 20. See http://chronicle.com/weekly/v55/i28/28b02001.htm
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OBSERVER
Teaching as an Old Man
By Mike O'Connell
As a student, for some reason I was drawn to the old guys. My two favorite teachers in high school were assiduous amateurs: a retired Army colonel named Thomas Young and a retired Navy man named Gordon Patterson. While the girls fell for the young bachelors who drove sports cars and the boys admired the coaches who had played sports in college, I soaked up the wisdom and teaching prowess of self-possessed gentlemen who were pushing 70. In contrast to the classrooms led by graduates of state teachers' colleges, there were no paper airplanes in Mr. Young's French class and no the-dog-ate-my-homework excuses in Mr. Patterson's math classes. Young wrote the letter that got me into Dartmouth; Patterson's no-nonsense trigonometry course prepared me for the rigors of college calculus.


In college it was the same. There was ancient Professor Cudworth Flint, legally and practically blind, who waxed affectionate about the Romantic poets without the benefit or constrictions of the New Criticism. There was the venerable professor of modern poetry Thomas Vance, whose eloquence and erudition made the latest crop of Ph.D.'s on the campus look like sophomores. Neither of those men spent much time pouring red ink over my papers. A single summary line such as "Dry as dust" or "Show more, tell less" was enough to put me on the right path.

Now that I've reached the age of 65, I often think of those old men, those great teachers. Like my early role models Young and Patterson, I came to my present teaching gig late in life. But as a part-time adjunct lecturer at a rural branch of a state university for the past six years, I sense that I have worn out my welcome with the powers that be, partly because I've shown no inclination to quit. Many tenured teachers in public universities are glad to retire by 65. They are worn out and burned out, and, until recently at least, they realized that their pension check would rival their regular paycheck. To help things along, their offices are sometimes moved to smaller quarters down the hall near the mop closet. Department chairs like the idea of fresh faces and new blood, even if a job candidate's English dissertation is on Polynesian cooking or a finalist's 20-minute teaching tryout consists of a canned PowerPoint presentation followed by a group activity.


The older teacher in today's college environment may find the generation gap between him and his younger colleagues wider than the one between him and his students. He may have trouble initiating shoptalk with the younger generation of careerists whose dossier is scrutinized annually by multiple pretenure review committees. Some of these narrowly trained academics will not hazard an opinion on a controversial campus issue; they withhold judgment on a new book or writer until the official reviews are in. Some seem to have taken to heart the words of a Professor W.A. Pannapacker, who frequently writes for The Chronicle. He reminds them that they are "engaged ... in a lifelong project of reputation management." They must not rock the boat, they must not leave an e-mail trail. "The prudent advice for ambitious young academics," he says, "is to keep your mouth shut, stay away from practical activism, and write only with great precision on acceptable scholarly subtopics." Thus, the prudent academic who assigns students the tracts of Solzhenitsyn, Gandhi, and Tom Paine must make sure he does not resemble in word or deed any of those three.


Partly because I am too old to take a vow of timidity, the best two hours of my day are the ones I spend in the classroom. Here I can say, if I feel like it, that James Joyce never did much after Dubliners; that Jack London will be read and savored long after his high-brow detractors are in their graves; that we need not wait 20 years to proclaim "Brokeback Mountain" one of our great American short stories.


Teaching without tenure, with my job security subject to enrollment fluctuations and budget constraints, as well as to the whim of the department and university leadership, I sometimes find that my name is "inadvertently" or due to "clerical error" left off the schedule for the following semester, and I have to scramble for a course or two to teach. Sometimes I drive 45 miles west through the coulees to find an assignment at an even more remote community college outpost, or 40 miles north through potato fields to teach inmates at a medium-security federal prison.


Why don't I take the hint and fold up my tent? For one thing, I can tell that some of my colleagues recognize and appreciate my contributions. For another, my students are not clamoring for my ouster. In contrast with some of their liberally educated elders, my 18-year-old English 101 freshmen are functionally age-blind. They do not know how old I am, or if they do, they don't seem to care. Some seem to be possessed of the quaint notion that a college professor is supposed to be old, and that a lifetime of reading and writing and real-world job experience (in my case, that includes journalism and dairy farming) could well translate into quality teaching. If I drop my keys in the parking lot, they do not call for an Alzheimer's alert. They do not snicker when I take off my glasses to read fine print. They give me their attention and respect, and I try to return the favor. They get used to my unconventional practice of starting class at the stroke of the hour, and my philosophy that the class is a community with shared responsibilities and commitment.


Remembering the shaky beginnings of my own college days, I let them know I am in their corner, one that often is not crowded with supporters. If their car won't start after an evening class with the temperature below zero, they know who to come to for a jump or a ride home. A month into the course, they gather that my life has not been a bowl of cherries, and they are more than willing to write honestly about their own screwups and misfortunes.

Despite their lackluster ACT scores and checkered academic transcripts, my 21st-century English students don't need to be assigned pop-culture essays about binge drinking or drug wars to fight off their alleged attention deficits. Old war horses like John O'Hara and Irwin Shaw will do just fine, and will probably be better influences on their writing than the formulaic essays in the latest college primer. "Ever know a teacher or principal to compare with the bastard in 'Do You Like It Here?'" I ask these callow kids fresh out of class-conscious, small-town high schools. The hands go up, and the discussion runs over to the next class. "I never had a girlfriend," begins one boy's review of "The Girls in Their Summer Dresses." If candor can carry the day, that writer is off to a good start.


I'm all for clearing out the dead wood. But good teachers do not all wear out at the same age, and some get better with age. I heard Robert Frost command a college lecture hall when he was well into his 80s. The aisles were packed, and the overflow strained to hear his words from a crackling loudspeaker in the basement.
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Mike O'Connell has taught at several two-year colleges in the upper Midwest. He can be reached at smoo@chorus.net
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