disorganized thoughts on teaching

Last night for relief from my apartment that has no air conditioning I walked up, as I often do I intolerably hot evenings, to the Barnes and Noble on 7th Avenue to read magazine and gaze, but fail to work up the attention to read the first few pages of books that I really should read. In most case I end up picking a big from the Essays section and sitting in the Romance section, which is relatively untrammled, except by some kids who walk by and giggle at the covers and titles that include the word "sex."

My reading selection was disjunctive as I sat down with Joseph Epstein's Narcissus Leaves the Pool and read an essay on the comparative merits of talent and genius. But mainly I thought about another essay of his I had read, probably in the Weekly Standard, on teaching. In that piece Epstein claimed that the only thing he'd ever learned from any of his students was the fact that he jingled the change in his pockets. That statement is the type I come to expect from Epstein--a slightly disengaged curmudgeon in great style who does have a reason to be against those drippy statements from other educators who claim to learn so much from their students.

So the past two days I've been teaching philosophy to high school students in Columbia's Summer Program for High School Students, and so I've been trying to think what I've learned not only from the students but from the action of teaching. And by that I mean other things than the fact that I realize my voice is pretty shaky when I start talking in the morning.

The first this is that I am spending more time wondering how I appear to those eleven kids. This isn't a self-consciousness I feel around friends, family, or other adults. Mainly, sadly, the thing I think is, "Do these kids think I'm ugly?" Following closely are "Do they think my clothes are ugly?" and "Do they think I'm smart?" and "Am I boring?" This says a lot more about me, of course, than any of the students.

Since we're doing philosophy I've been telling them repeatedly that they are free to disagree with me and be open and vocal about their disagreement. But during lunch yesterday I realized that this was probably a disingenuous claim. Not from me, but from teachers in general who have probably made the very same claim before. So the first thing I told them after lunch was that I realized that a lot of teachers are just lying when they make that claim. They completely agreed.

Perhaps this is irresponsible of me, but I am completely uninvolved with moderating the debates we have during the afternoon sessions. Partially because I don't know anything about formal debate, but I stay out of it even when arguments come close to being racist or generally completely general. Part of me does this because I don't want to be a part of the debate and let the students debate (and I'll add they do a very good job at being respectful of others), but mainly because I (naively or not) figure that my students are 15 years old and have a lot of time ahead of them to become more sophisticated in their thinking, to experience more, and leave some old stuff behind. Trusting their intellectual and moral capabilities isn't difficult for me, and I have no reason to think them to be anything other than talented, sophisticated, and extremely bright students. And for every clunky and arguably offensive comment they make I hear a sophisticated argument, a claim that hadn't occurred to me. So I'm going to be an optimist.

Of course, and this is a strong qualification, I am teaching eleven students from affluent families who mainly attend private schools. And they're lovely kids. That's not a but, but it is something.