From First to Last — A Teacher’s Tale
Lunch Break: What’s for Bullshit?
For fourth period of a Teacher’s Tale, please see:
Still, I had to eat. The contrary of body and soul was easily resolved by the appearance of a thick zapiekanka covered in cream sauce. How could one pontificate without being nourished?
I took my plate and sat down in the school cafeteria, where teachers ate side by side with students. The meal fostered an egalitarianism I enjoyed. To my left, a 10th grader named Michal munched on his kebab. He always read his Wyborcza Gazeta while shoving the wrapped lamb into his face.
To my right sat Neil Hunter, a Scot and fellow English teacher, my closest cohort. We chewed together for a while and turned over teacher thoughts, waiting to see who would launch first.
“How’s it going?” I asked while we both spooned the day’s soup.
He took a moment to swallow and answered with devilish intent, “I’ve taken to a new teacher’s tactic. The teacher’s boycott.”
Neil wore a black shirt and red suspenders. His head was carved from stone, with sharp penetrating cheekbones and brow. He was a PhD and performance artist and had a gravitas about him I hoped would rub off on me. Other times I felt it was misplaced in the confines of a non-descript schoolhouse.
“10th grade?” I asked, aware of our most recent exchange of grievances.
He nodded.
“We are engaged in a boycott.”
“How does that work?”
“Literature is off the shelves. Grammar exercises only. Monday through Friday. Ad absurdum.”
“Sounds more like purgatory.”
“If we make it a religious analogy,” he said in his musical Scottish lilt, “but let’s just keep it economic for the moment. I’m not a complete sadist.”
Throughout the course of a day, lunch with Neil was my only opportunity for genuine camaraderie. I relished the witty repartee.
“But if we do continue in that general direction,” he continued, “just for the sake of indulging ourselves, I’d rather compare it to feeding them a daily bowl of thin gruel. Like a renegade abbot.”
“Or a kapo,” I switched.
“Still in the holocaust?” he retorted. He knew well my magnetism to the subject. “I was thinking more along the lines of a Spartan hermitage,” he continued, “in the bleak German countryside. A scene out of Michael Haneke.”
“Well, I’m in the vicinity,” I replied. “Dresden. I’ve got my students in a slaughterhouse.”
“Vonnegut? They getting him?”
“I think too much. I’m drowning them.”
He ladled soup into his mouth. A thin gruel.
“You know,” I continued, “it’s only because I have to speak all day that I say half the things I do. When I get home, I rehearse disagreements for all my arguments.”
“But that’s because you’re a relativist.”
“I thought the correct label was bullshit artist.”
I proceeded to mock my typical evening dinner: “So dear, what brand of bullshit did you feed the children today? I don’t know honey, but I think it caused indigestion.”
Neil swallowed his food slowly, nodding his head.
“Well,” he continued, “I think you’re being a little too hard on yourself. What you’re serving is fairly more nutritious than the bullshit they normally feed on.”
“That’s true.”
I cut myself some slack. At least I wasn’t running a parish.
“And you’re doling out gruel!” I returned.
“Another kind of nourishment. Tough love. And what d’ya expect? It took them a month just to bring their assigned books to class, and when they did, turns out they bought the wrong versions.”
“How’s that possible?”
“By not paying attention! We’re doing Cookoo’s Nest. I told them specifically not to get the novel. It’s too dense for this level. And I find it much more lively to teach the play. The work’s not the most available, but I gave clear instructions on how to order it. But this group…they have to be handheld. Even then they wilfully let go. Screw it” — he forked another mouthful — “we’re doing grammar.”
“Funny,” I mused aloud, “how grammar has become a kind of punishment. Do you think the textbook writers conceive their compound sentences as lashes of a whip?”
He snorted.
“Can you imagine that career?” I continued the digression. “Sitting in a cubicle and arriving at 25 fill-in-the-blanks for gerund usage, all drawn from the motif of the Egyptian pyramids? And taking it seriously?”
“Some institutional lackey.”
“I think they’re all drawn from the half of pedagogy graduates who discover they hate teaching.”
“Yea,” Neil played the ball back, “but at the same time, they discover a secret teacher’s pleasure.”
“What’s that?”
“Administering pain.”
We ate.
“Maybe I’ll give them another chance to buy the play,” he reconsidered. “It would be a shame not to bring the harridan Nurse Ratched to life. I’m genuinely fond of the transformations that can take place with a script in hand. It’s good to stir up their inner wickedness.”
“Who do you have in mind?”
“I was thinking about Sarolta.”
“Sarolta? She can’t speak above a whisper. She’s the sweetest little thing.”
“So she thinks. But she’s got something trapped inside. She doesn’t know who she is.”
“Do you suppose everyone has a Nurse Ratched in them?”
He turned over his left shoulder to make eye contact.
“You’re asking me if everyone has a dark side? You should know that answer. It’s the source of anything creative.”
I took my time before replying: “No wonder my students fear creativity.”
“They’re linked, definitely.”
“And then not knowing what to do with their wickedness,” I progressed, “they end up writing grammar books! Or some other rigid equivalent. All Nurse Ratcheds, all hiding their potential beauty inside grammarian uniforms. They could have been actresses, they could have been poets…”
“They could have been teachers.”
We laughed.
“Sadly, it appears society has more slots open to people who wear uniforms,” Neil continued. “That’s rather a theme in the book.”
“You should continue to feed them gruel,” I said while finishing my zapiekanka. “Batter them down, reduce them. Lord over them like Nurse Ratched.”
“Nurse Ratched!” Neil repeated. He liked to crunch down on the gristle of her name.
“Then you can read the play and make the case for creativity over the madness of rules. You can teach a poetry unit after that.”
“Do you also suggest I dawn a starched white nurse’s kit for the occasion?”
“I think that might induce trauma. But maybe the stockings and stiff shoes! Seems an appropriate way to teach grammar. At least they’d be interested.”
Our plates were empty.
“The boycott continues then,” Neil resolved. “I’ll conform them to the rules of grammatical well-being. No place for misplaced modifiers. Cut them off. Lobotomize ‘em! No radical sentences!”
“Halt those run-ons. Discipline those commas!”
“I’ll have to buy the play myself,” he said reflectively. “I’ve got someone in mind for McMurphy.”
“Before or after the lobotomy?”
“After,” he replied with a grin.
Michal listened to the entire conversation with inward amusement. He was the most likely candidate.
We rose together, trays in hand. In our habitual patterns, Neil strolled outside to have his afternoon smoke. I continued further to the neighborhood café for my single espresso. We parted amiably on the sidewalk.
The sun was at its highest point in the sky.
For fifth period of A Teacher’s Tale, please see:
