I remember only a few of my teachers.
It's unlikely that many of them remember me either; I spent a lot of time in school trying very hard not to call attention to myself, a quiet back-row kid.
I also was a low-maintenance student, who didn't cause trouble and turned in his assignments. Some of my teachers were pleasantly surprised when I did well on tests. Being a good student was in my skill set; I liked to read and, for the most part, found my studies interesting. I had no phobia for math; the characters didn't swim or oscillate on a page. I had a good home life. There was nothing to overcome.
We felt relatively safe at school, though there were incidents. One time, just before the morning bell for homeroom, a large sophomore took off his belt and popped another guy in the face with his rodeo buckle. There was blood and threats, and the police were called, and we never saw the belt-popper again.
And once in 10th-grade biology, a strange and often dirty kid who sat next to me took a scalpel and sliced himself from palm to elbow. I hugged him from behind while a football player took the blade from his hand and our teacher--a kindly man named Tom Carson--compressed the wound with a towel. He quietly asked the football player to run to the office to fetch help and sat with the kid as he sobbed.
An ambulance was called and the vice principal--a former Negro Leagues ballplayer named Riley Stewart--and the school nurse escorted our classmate out. Afterwards Mr. Carson, his shirt splotched with blood, asked us to be be kind. He reminded us we couldn't know what trouble was going on in the young man's life. He asked us not to gossip and none of us did; it never became one of those instant high school legends.
Years later I ran into Mr. Carson. He was an old man by then and he didn't remember me at all. But then I reminded him of a sheepskin-lined coat I used to wear that he thought looked like the one Chuck Connors had worn on "The Rifleman."
"I called you 'Lucas,'" he said, and I nodded but didn't remember it exactly that way. Then he said the name of the boy who'd tried to murder himself in class.
"He went into the Army, you know. I kept up with him for a while. I hope it worked out OK for him."
I didn't like 10th-grade biology much, the formaldehyde smells, and the need to pith the frogs to wax-bottomed pans before dissecting them.
There are a lot of indifferent teachers in the world, and more out-and-out bad ones than it's prudent to admit to. Both my sisters are teachers; I've heard their stories and know something about how petty and ignoble and political a profession it can be.
A lot of people view teaching as a fallback position, a soft landing or sinecure. I dated a couple of teachers who, although they were a lot of fun, I wouldn't have trusted with a box of safety matches or a plastic spork.
I was an above-average student in what was probably the best public high school in a middling district in a poor state. Most of my teachers were average at best--a few were very good, a couple were inexcusably incompetent--but a few were special. I didn't learn much biology from Mr. Carson, but learned something a lot more important.
To be a good teacher, you have to love your students more than your subject. You have to keep up with them for a while.
The best teachers awaken their students to their latent potential and suggest to them ways they might fit into the wider world. Teaching at its highest level is far more art than science, and the best teachers are much better at it than the vast majority of their honestly striving and caring peers.
A great teacher is probably as rare as a great doctor, lawyer, basketball coach, or newspaper columnist. We can't expect greatness; all we can really ask is competence, diligence and honestly applied effort.
But if there are few genuinely great teachers, there are probably a lot of good ones, and a lot more that are not so good. Though it's impolite to say, most teachers are by definition mediocre--and some are simply incapable of doing what they were hired to do. Our society doesn't value the profession. Despite the lip service paid to it by politicians and people like me, teaching in public schools is not a lucrative or high-status job. A lot of us, if we are honest, look down on teachers.
One of the things that ought to frighten us is the unmistakable fact that our public educational system, once the world's best, is now a baleful mess. The only thing American kids excel in any more is self-esteem; even as American math, science and reading scores dip below those of most other industrialized nations, our kids believe they are the best and the brightest.
Even more sobering than our unearned cockiness is the realization that we've done an especially poor job in providing opportunities for disadvantaged kids. Education used to be a way to break the cycle of poverty, but so many of our public schools are failing--have become "drop-out factories"--that the only hope for some working-class families who don't have the option of sending their kids to expensive private schools is to enter their children in lotteries for limited spots in more successful magnet or charter schools.
As much as we might like to believe in the idea of America as a meritocracy, if our public schools are dysfunctional and fail to prepare kids for college and the world beyond, then those with means will leave the public system for private education.
It's difficult, but not hopeless. It's still possible to get a good education in a lousy school--you just have to luck into a good teacher. Studies show kids are far better off with a good teacher in a failing school than with a mediocre teacher in an above-average school; the problem is good teachers are relatively scarce.
What we ought to do is transform teaching from a low-risk, low-reward profession to a highly remunerative job for which relatively few people can qualify. It's not a profession that attracts mercenaries, so we needn't pay them all they're worth, but teachers really ought to be paid, if not like the athletes we always say they're more important than, at least like the professionals we need them to be.
We ought to be able to identify and reward especially high performers, and wash out those who don't cut it.