"Good" vs. "Great" Teaching

Thirty-something years ago, Curmie read an article—perhaps it was in an academic journal, but he can’t remember for certain—that sought to distinguish between “good” teachers and “great” teachers.  Interestingly (to Curmie, at least), the author expressed his preference for the former: the in-the-trenches professional who successfully imparts and explains the prescribed course material while maintaining decorum and respect for authority.  This teacher is not boring, but the class is unquestionably about the material, not the teacher.

The latter, exemplified by the Robin Williams character in “Dead Poets Society,” is a showman, someone whose passion and energy are inspirational.  The author felt that such a teaching style was narcissistic or something.  Curmie remembers not being quite able to wrap his head around the idea that “good” was somehow better than “great,” wondering if the author might be a little jealous that his colleagues were more popular than he.

Anyway, something a few days ago made me reminisce a little about the great—in both the generally accepted definition of that term and the one adopted by that author—teachers I experienced in my many years as a student.  Like everyone else, Curmie had more than a few teachers who were neither good nor great.  His high school Analytic Geometry teacher was expert at the pedagogical equivalent of burying the lede, that Economics 1 prof in college could put coffee to sleep, and so on.  But Curmie was lucky—there were few of that description and a lot of the other kind.

Curmie read a few months ago that the woman who taught his 3^rd and 5^th grade classes had passed away at the age of 93.  It was only on reading her obituary that he learned that she had become principal of the school sometime after he’d moved away from the town.  His first thought was that whereas he was glad she got that promotion if that’s what she wanted, he was sad for those who came after him that they wouldn’t experience her in the classroom.  She wasn’t “great” according to the definitions of that author, but she was great in the mind of at least this former student. 

There were others who were certainly very good but, at least in my pre-college days, one stands out.  He was a young man, probably in his mid-20s, who taught 7th grade Social Studies.  I don’t know how it was that this Floridian came to teach in my school an hour and a half or two hours north of New York City.  But I do know that few if any people outside my immediate family have had as much influence in determining the person I ultimately became.

Imagine this, if you will, Gentle Reader: a bunch of tweens in the mid- to late-‘60s talking about the world around them.  This was the era of civil rights demonstrations, the women’s movement (then called Women’s Liberation), and the Vietnam War.  Importantly, we weren’t allowed to simply spout opinions; we had to have done research… so we learned how to do that.  I remember spending a lot of time in both the school and public libraries.   

In class we were introduced to anthropology and through it to cultures unlike our own, to the rationale both for the status quo and for dissent, to the essence of the Bill of Rights.  We debated ideas and perspectives in a way I’d never seen or heard.  We wrote research papers—mine was on environmental policy, especially as it pertained to air pollution (pretty heady stuff for a 12-year-old!).  And we were expected to cite sources appropriately (in a way few of my 21st-century university students could manage). 

His class opened my mind to the idea that education wasn’t just about memorizing facts, but about considering how facts fit together.  He taught us to walk that thin line, simultaneously respecting authority and being willing to challenge it, and I don’t think I ever as much as suspected what his politics were.  He was tough because he cared.  He was, in short, one of the best teachers I ever had.

Ah, but there was a problem, as you’ve probably already ascertained, Gentle Reader.  You see, what he was supposed to be teaching us was New York State history.  He wasn’t from New York and he believed, correctly I think, that such a course was essentially useless.  Even then, the population was increasingly mobile, and many if not most of us would end up living elsewhere.  I doubt that my own history of spending less than 10% of my adult life in New York (and that small fraction only because of grad school at Cornell) is an outlier.  Moreover, the really important stuff about New York history would appear in American History courses, and it’s unlikely that anyone, even those who never left the state, would ever care about the rest.

He did try to be “good” for a few weeks, but he sort of ran out of gas in our chronological progression shortly after John Peter Zenger.  Perhaps I’ve forgotten our section on the American Revolution, but I honestly don’t think we got that far.  There was a fair amount of history we didn’t cover, in other words!  Anyway, we learned about the Seneca Falls Convention because it marked a seminal moment in the women’s movement, not because it happened in New York State. 

For all I know, the teacher went to the administration and got permission to teach something other than New York State history.  I kind of doubt it, but I suppose it’s possible.  What I know with ever fiber of my being is that I’m extremely glad I got the course I did.  But he probably was, as Dickens might have said, “the best of teachers, the worst of teachers.”

Let’s grant that permission to scrap the prescribed curriculum was probably not forthcoming, and that cashing a paycheck for doing X and not actually doing X is unethical: more so, in fact, than Robin Williams-like flamboyance.  That I, and I strongly suspect a majority of my classmates, got far more out of this man’s course than we would have by learning the details of building the Erie Canal is, of course, consequentialism.  

But what if those consequences are eminently predictable?  I was, and am, fascinated by history, but I can’t imagine a year-long course in New York State history that would interest tweens in the slightest: not then, not now.  The course was, no doubt, the brainstorm of some idiot state legislator (the usual apologies for redundancy).  From my perspective, that puts us into “any change is an improvement” territory.  And the course he did teach was wonderful. 

He was, in other words, not a “good” teacher.  He was, however, great.  He didn’t mock authority, but he certainly circumvented it.  His course was not traditional by any stretch of the imagination, but in the words of the great 20th century philosopher Frank Zappa, “without deviation from the norm, progress is impossible.”  There was nothing particularly exciting about his teaching style—he didn’t jump onto desks or start chants, and the fires he lit were purely metaphorical.  But those were substantial conflagrations, even if only in our minds.

He lasted only the one year at my school.  Chances are, he was fired, but it could be that he just didn’t like the winter cold (he mentioned that more than once after trudging through the snow) and made the voluntary choice to head south again.  Either way, I hope he had a good life, and that subsequent generations of students had the opportunity to learn from him.

There were times in my teaching career when I sought to be “great”; other times I settled for trying to be “good.”  I never sought to teach something other than what the course description demanded (well, I did do things like extend Theatre History II past the 1940’s, but that was because the course description hadn’t been updated in decades, and I had the full approval of the department chair).  There were plenty of moments when I was a performer as much as a pedagogue, though, and some of my courses were idiosyncratically mine.

Did I succeed at being either “great” or “good”?  That’s not for me to say.  But, as I look back at that classroom from over a half century ago, I know that I have never been so grateful that someone else, someone I knew, broke the rules.  No, he wasn’t a John Hancock or a Rosa Parks, but his influence was direct and life-changing in an unquestionably positive way.  If I ever had a similar effect on even a handful of students, I’ll consider it a win.