Teacher Man: A Memoir (24 page)

Thinking of those other English teachers and the solid stuff makes me uneasy again. They’re following the curriculum, preparing the kids for higher education and the great world beyond. We’re not here to enjoy ourselves, teacher man.

This is Stuyvesant High School, the jewel in the crown of the New York educational system. These kids are the brightest of the bright. In a year they’ll be sitting at the feet of distinguished professors at the best universities in the country. They’ll be taking notes, copying words that will require looking up. No farting around with cookbooks and visits to the park. There will be direction and focus and serious scholarship and whatever became of that teacher we had back in Stuyvesant, you know the one.

O
n Monday I’ll make the announcement. There will be groans and muted catcalls and whispered comments about my mother but I have to get back on track like all those other conscientious teachers. I will remind my students that the mission of this school is to prepare them for the best colleges and universities so that they can graduate someday and make solid contributions to the welfare and progress of this country, for if this country falters and fails what hope is there for the rest of the world? You bear a heavy responsibility as you go forth and it would be criminal of me, the teacher, to waste your young lives with the reading of recipes no matter how much you enjoy the activity.

I know we’re all having a good time reading recipes with background music but that is not why we were put on earth. We have to move on. That is the American way.

Mr. McCourt, why shouldn’t we read recipes? Isn’t a recipe for meat loaf as important as these poems that no one can understand anyway? Isn’t it? You can live without poetry but you can’t live without food.

I tried to balance Walt Whitman and Robert Frost with meat loaf and recipes in general but rambled into a mumble.

They groan again when I announce I am going to recite my favorite poem. That pisses me off and I tell them, You are pissing me off. A shocked silence. Teacher using bad language. Never mind. Recite the poem.

Hey, what’s going on here? That’s not a poem. This is high school and he’s giving us Mother Goose? Is he pulling our leg? Playing little games with us?

I recite the poem again and encourage them to waste no time in digging for the deeper meaning.

Aw, come on. Is this a joke? Man, this is high school.

On the surface the poem, or nursery rhyme, seems simple, a plain story of a little girl who has lost her sheep, but are you listening? This is significant. She has learned to leave them alone. Bo Peep is cool. She trusts her sheep. She doesn’t go bothering them as they nibble away in pasture, glen, vale and hillside. They need their grass, their roughage, and the occasional draught of water from a tinkling mountain stream. Also, they have little lambs who need time for bonding with their mothers after they’ve frolicked all day with their peers. They don’t need the world barging in and destroying the mood. They might be sheep, they might be lambs, they might be ewes, they might be rams, but they’re entitled to a little communal happiness before they are transformed into the mutton we devour, the wool we wear.

Aw, God, Mr. McCourt, did you have to end it like that? Why couldn’t you just leave them out there, sheep and lambs, all loving and enjoying themselves? We eat them, we wear them. It’s not right.

There are vegetarians and vegans in the class who thank God right here and now they have nothing to do with exploiting these poor animals and could we get back to Bo Peep? They’d like to know if I’m trying to make some kind of point.

No, I’m not trying to make some kind of point except to say I like this poem because of its simple message.

What’s that?

That people should stop bothering people. Little Bo Peep backs off. She could stay up all night, waiting and whimpering by the door, but she knows better. She trusts her sheep. She leaves them alone and they come home, and you can imagine the joyful reunion, a lot of merry bleating and frolicking and deep expressions of satisfaction from the rams as they settle in for the night while Bo Peep knits by the fire happy in the knowledge that in her daily rounds, caring for the sheep and their offspring, she has bothered nobody.

In my English classes at Stuyvesant High School the students agreed that nothing on television or out of Hollywood could equal, in violence and horror, the story of Hansel and Gretel. Jonathan Greenberg spoke out. How can we subject children to the story of some asshole of a father who is so dominated by his new wife he’s willing to lose his kids in the woods and let them starve to death? How can we tell children how Hansel and Gretel were locked up by that witch who wanted to fatten and cook them? And is there anything more horrible than the scene where they push her into the fire? She’s a mean old cannibal of a witch and deserves what she got but wouldn’t all this give a kid nightmares?

Lisa Berg said these stories have been around for hundreds of years. We all grew up with them and enjoyed them and survived them, so what is the big deal.

Rose Kane agreed with Jonathan. When she was little, she had nightmares over Hansel and Gretel and maybe that was because she herself had a new stepmother who was a bitch on wheels. A real bitch who wouldn’t think twice of losing her and her sister in Central Park or some distant station in the New York subway system. After she heard the Hansel and Gretel story from her first-grade teacher she refused to go anywhere with her stepmother unless her father was with them. That would infuriate her father so much he’d threaten her with all kinds of punishment. You go with your stepmother, Rose, or you’re grounded forever. Which, of course, proved he was completely dominated by the stepmother, who had a carbuncle on her chin like all the stepmothers in fairy tales, a carbuncle with little sprouting hairs that she was always plucking.

Everyone in the class seemed to have an opinion on the Hansel and Gretel story and the main question was, Would you tell this story to your children? I suggested that the pros and the antis separate and sit on opposite sides of the room and it was remarkable to see that the class was split down the middle. I suggested also that there should be a moderator for this discussion but passions were running high, no one was neutral on the matter, and I’d have to take the job myself.

It was minutes before I could calm the hullabaloo in the room. The anti–Hansel and Gretel side said their children could be damaged so badly it would lead to huge costs in psychotherapy. Oh, bullshit, said the pro side. Come off it. No one is in therapy because of fairy tales. Every kid in America and Europe grew up with these stories.

The antis brought up the violence in Little Red Riding Hood, the wolf swallowing the grandmother without even chewing her, and the meanness of the stepmother in Cinderella. You wonder how a kid could survive hearing or reading any of this.

Lisa Berg said something so remarkable it caused a sudden silence in the room. She said kids have stuff in their heads so dark and deep it’s beyond our comprehension.

Wow, someone said.

They knew Lisa had hit on something. They weren’t so far removed from childhood themselves, although they wouldn’t like to hear you say it, and you could sense in that silence a drifting back to a childhood dreamland.

Next day we sang fragments from my childhood. There was no point to the activity, no deeper meaning. No test loomed to infect our singing. I felt twinges of guilt but I enjoyed myself and from the way they sang, those Jewish, Korean, Chinese, American kids, I assumed they enjoyed themselves, too. They knew the basic nursery rhymes. Now they had melodies to go with them.

Observation report I would have written if I were Assistant Deputy Superintendent of Pedagogy at the Board of Education,
110
Livingston Street, Brooklyn, New York,
11201
:

All right, the bell has rung. Once again you are mine. Open your books. Turn to this poem, “My Papa’s Waltz,” by Theodore Roethke. If you don’t have a book, look over someone’s shoulder. No one in this class will begrudge you an over-the-shoulder look. Stanley, would you read the poem aloud? Thanks.

Thanks again, Stanley. Take a few minutes to look over the poem again. Let it sink in. So, when you read the poem, what happened?

What do you mean, What happened?

You read the poem. Something happened, something moved in your head, in your body, in your lunch box. Or nothing happened. You’re not required to respond to every stimulus in the universe. You’re not weather vanes.

Mr. McCourt, what are you talking about?

I’m saying you don’t have to respond to everything a teacher or anyone else sets before you.

They look dubious. Oh, yeah. Tell that to some of the teachers around here. They take everything personally.

Mr. McCourt, do you want us to talk about what the poem means?

I’d like you to talk about whatever you’d like to talk about in the general neighborhood of this poem. Bring in your grandmother if you like. Don’t worry about the “real” meaning of the poem. Even the poet won’t know that. When you read it something happened, or nothing happened. Would you raise your hand if nothing happened? All right, no hands. So, something happened in your head or your heart or your bowels. You’re a writer. What happens when you hear music? Chamber music? Rock? You see a couple arguing on the street. You look at a child rebelling against his mother. You see a homeless man begging. You see a politician giving a speech. You ask someone to go out with you. You observe the response of the other person. Because you’re a writer, you ask yourself always always always, What’s happening, baby?

Well, like, this poem is about a father dancing with his kid and it’s not pleasant because the father is drunk and insensitive.

Brad?

If it’s not pleasant, why does he hang on like death?

Monica?

There’s a lot going on here. The kid is dragged around the kitchen. He could be a rag doll for all the papa cares.

Brad again?

There’s a giveaway word here, romped. That’s a happy word, right? I mean he could’ve said danced or something ordinary, but he says romped and, like you’re always telling us, a word can change the atmosphere of a sentence or a paragraph. So, romped creates a happy atmosphere.

Jonathan?

You can tell me I’m out of order, Mr. McCourt, but did your father ever dance you around the kitchen?

He never danced us around the kitchen, but he got us out of bed late at night and made us sing patriotic Irish songs and promise to die for Ireland.

Yeah, I figured this poem had something to do with your childhood.

That’s partly true, but I asked you to read this because it captures a moment, a mood, and there might be, forgive me for this, there might be a deeper meaning. Some of you want the worth of your money. What about the mother? Sheila?

What’s going on in this poem is very simple. This guy has a hard job, coal miner or something. Comes home with a battered knuckle, hands caked with dirt. The wife sits over there mad as hell but she’s used to it. She knows it’s going to happen once a week when he gets paid. Like your dad. Right, Mr. McCourt? The kid loves his father because you’re always drawn to the crazy one. Doesn’t matter that the mother keeps the house going. Kid takes that for granted. So when the dad comes home, oh, he’s all charged up from the drink and gets the kid all excited.