The Graves of Academe | Page 8

could know of it after one year of study? Was there something wrong with that? Was there something wrong with me that I suspected that there was something wrong with that?
It took me many years to find answers to those questions, and, when I did, it wasn't because I was looking for them. It was because I finally settled in what was called a State Teachers College. (Like Pikes Peak, it had no apostrophe.) As it happens, it is no longer a State Teachers College. The legislature later enacted a long and complicated law which had, as far as I can tell, the sole effect of removing from that title the word "Teachers." The college has not changed much, except that where it was once unashamedly a teachers' college, it is now ashamedly a teachers' college. There I was, and I couldn't help looking around.
At the end of my first semester, I walked into a classroom where I was to give a final examination. (We don't do much of that anymore, since it may just be a violation of someone's rights.) On the blackboard was the final examination that had just been given to some other class. Very neatly written it was, too. The last question - I'll never forget it was worth fifty-two percent of the grade: "Draw all the letters of the alphabet, both upper and lower case." Draw.
There is some truth in the "ivory tower" notion of academic life. I had spent my whole life in one school or another, and I was, of course, faintly aware that I was only faintly aware of what was going on out in the world. When I looked at that blackboard and imagined all those students dutifully "drawing" the alphabet in their blue-books, I realized that I didn't even know what was going on down at the other end of the hall. Nevertheless, it still didn't occur to me that this astonishing examination had something to do with those questions that I had long since stopped asking myself.
It turned out, of course, that what I had seen was a final examination in one of those "education" courses, about which, at that time, I knew nothing. Well, that's not quite true: I did know one thing, because earlier that semester I had looked into a classroom where something amazing was happening. There, in front of the class, stood an unusually attractive young lady, a student, tricked out in a fetching bunny outfit - not the kind you're probably imagining, just a pair of paper ears pinned into her hair and a stunning puff of absorbent cotton somehow or other tacked on behind and clothes, too, of course, but I can't recall any details. She was reading aloud, with expression, and even with an occasional hop, from a large book spread out flat at about hip level, glancing down at it remarkably infrequently. Large type. She was doing a practice lesson. I awarded her instantly an A plus.
So I knew two things about the making of a teacher. Both seemed engaging rather than repellent. After all, who can be against legible writing on the blackboard? To be sure, I myself wouldn't have assigned it a value of more than half the grade on a final examination; perhaps, had it been in my charge to foster, I would simply have required it as a tool of the trade without bestowing upon it any special credit at all. And it did occur to me that what the students drew in their examination books might not be an accurate measure of their skill in drawing the same things on a blackboard, an unusually intractable medium, but the motive seemed good. And as for pretty girls in cunning outfits, what could be more cheering? It seemed to me that those teacher-trainers must be amiable and playful folk with well-developed aesthetic sensibilities and a penchant for drama, in bold contrast to the rest of us who taught what you call "subjects," dour and narrow people reciting lectures and devising "thought" questions. And who knows? Could it be that I would now actually remember the political consequences of Henry's sad pilgrimage to Canossa if only my history professor had put on sackcloth and lectured on his knees?
And I began to watch the teacher-trainers in idle moments, in my idle moments, that is, not theirs. They were rarely idle. They were busy rumbling down the hall pushing metal carts laden with projectors and loudspeakers, which they actually knew how to hook up and operate. I could hear them in the next classroom shoving the desks into sociable circles so that, as in King Arthur's court, no one would be disadvantaged by having to sit below the salt, or breaking up into small groups, so that understanding could be reached