My oldest daughter, now living at
home, interrupted me mid-stream as I read a draft of this essay to her. I
thought the essay was pretty good: detailed yet succinct, folksy yet still
erudite, whimsical but accorded all the seriousness that it deserves. Moreover,
I believed that it conveyed my true passion for teaching, my genuine interests
in students and my humble belief that they are the future and hope of America,
that they could make the world a better place, and that I could help them see
the light. Lindsay thought otherwise. “Yeah, dad,” she said, eyes rolling,
“you’re passionate, you care, you want to make the world a better place”
– and then, with a dismissive wave of her hand, “yada, yada, yada.” She continued
(as I knew she would), “Look, all good teachers are like that. Cut to the
chase: you teach because this is who and what you are – end of story.”
I could see that she was in a hurry
to go up stairs – her favorite program was coming on – but I also
knew that, being my daughter, the end
of the story was nowhere in sight. “I’ve been living with and watching you for
twenty-plus years,” she went on. “For you, ideas are like toys: you play with
them, bounce them around, peel back the layers, peek inside, rip them apart,
patch them back up, stretch them into misshapen blobs, throw them into a file,
and then revisit them as old familiar friends. Then you start all over again.
What makes you good at what you do, as far as I can tell, is that you’re
incurably curious and, since your enthusiasm is infectious and you make
thinking seem like fun, your students go along for the ride. And they can’t
help but learn. But make no mistake about it: you teach because you couldn’t be
any other way. It’s simply who you are.”
I called her a “wise-ass” as she
left the room. Her retort, as she bounded up the stairs, was “Hey, I was
listening when you edited my papers all through high school and college. You
always said to be simple and direct. You’re going to make the world a better
place? Yeah, right! Your essay sounded like you were running for Miss America.
Stop phutzing around and get back to work – and show it to me when you
get it done!”
Out of the mouths of babes . . .
and the gauntlet had been dropped. Back to the drawing board.
After a few minutes, though not
fully recovered from the onslaught of her “yadaing,” I
began to ponder her words. Sure, I’ll admit that even if I wasn’t a “teacher”
and worked in some other capacity I would probably still make it my business to
keep informed about what was going on around me and try to understand what
makes the world the way it is, how it could be otherwise, and why people,
including myself, think and act they way they do. And I am certain that I would
“share” my opinion with – perhaps even try to impose it upon –
those around me. So, too, would I be interested in the entrancing – and
often bewildering – wonders of the natural world.
How did this come to be so? As a
sociologist, I couldn’t help but think . . . “What was it about my social
experiences – personal, cultural, and academic – that shaped me
into a person that revels in the land of ideas, plays with them, and feels
compelled to share them?”
"Man's
mind stretched to a new idea never goes back to its original dimensions."
Oliver
Wendell Holmes, American Author & Physician, 1809 – 1894
It was a dark and stormy night.
Somewhere off in the distance a dog was barking… Actually, this is true. I
remember it in vivid detail. I think I was about seven, it was after midnight
and I was awakened by the sound of thunder. As I lay there, watching flashes of
lightening through the bedroom window, my father, a small business owner by day
and intrepid explorer by night, came into my room. I swear that I saw a twinkle
in his eyes, and he said, excitedly, “Are you up? Come on, you gotta see this!”
No one else was awake.
I followed him out to the dining
room. I heard an old scratchy record playing in the background. Although I
didn’t know it at the time, he was playing his favorites: Dave Brubeck, Duke
Ellington, and Benny Goodman. (Years later, when I became a jazz aficionado,
they, too became my favorites. But I digress . . .) An old microscope, one that his father gave him as a teenager, was sitting close
to the edge of the table. He pointed to it, smiling, and I peered through the
eyepiece. At first, I didn’t see a thing, and my father looked puzzled when I
said so. But then he showed me how to realign the mirror to catch the light
just right and then how to adjust the focus, and a whole world opened before my
eyes.
He had taken a drop of water from
our fish tank and there, now in full view, were creatures I could not even have
imagined. Amoeba. Spirogyra. Daphnia. I was both dazzled and astounded by the intricacy of these
simple creatures, and I wanted to see and know more. He took a book, The World You Never See: Underwater Life off the bookshelf, showed me some incredible pictures, and I gobbled it all up,
hook, line and sinker. Seeing my
face light up he said, “Ah, the joys of serendipity.” I had no clue what that
meant, but I liked the sound of the word and it stuck in my mind. And then he
said – and I wrote this down – "Man's
mind stretched to a new idea never goes back to its original dimensions."
I still use this quote from Oliver Wendell Holmes, the noted 19th century American author and physician (not to be confused with his son, the
famous jurist).
This was my first taste of
“astonishment” – and I savored every last drop. I mentioned my late-night
awakening – in both the literal and figurative sense – to my mother
the next day. I told her that I had never seen dad so lit-up. Smiling, she said
that she knew that look well. “It meant,” she said, “that he was ‘jazzed’ about
something.” I wasn’t quite sure what she meant by this – and wouldn’t
really understand for another twenty years – but I knew right then and
there that that was what I wanted to
be: “jazzed” about something.
Although my father was clearly the
catalyst of my developing curiosity and yen for learning, I must note that my
ethnic and cultural background along with the historical context that
accompanied my formative years provided more than ample nourishment. Growing up
in a Jewish community in Brooklyn, New York during the turbulent decade of the
1960s has surely left its mark.
It wasn’t just that learning was highly valued by those of
my ethnic persuasion. So, too, was a
particular style of learning. It was
a social event. It was expected and you were encouraged to participate in
discussions. You questioned nearly everything. You challenged parents,
teachers, friends and foes alike to substantiate their arguments with evidence.
You were forced to provide sound arguments to back up your own position. You
argued incessantly, joyfully, always respecting the differences in opinions
that invariably surfaced.
Add to this a New York cultural
mode of communication – need I explain? – and the social issues and “teach-ins” on campus that set an agenda for an entire
generation of students and you have a social incubator for deep thought, a
social milieu that envelops and swallows you whole. Teaching and learning melds
together as one.
I knew by my senior year in college
that I would pursue graduate training in sociology and spend the rest of my
life being paid to be me. I thought that my undergraduate studies had prepared
me well, but after only one week at Columbia University I found that I was
noticeably rough around the edges. My thinking was too undisciplined, my
learning too helter-skelter and unfocused. It was here that I truly learned how
to learn, and thus how to teach.
Robert K. Merton, my mentor at
Columbia, was what we sociologists like to call a “role-model.” He was not only a giant in the field - he "fathered" both functional analysis and an entire new specialty the sociology of science - he was also a
consummate teacher. He took his students seriously and as a result we,
in true Meadian fashion, began to take ourselves seriously. This is a practice
I adhere to today.
Most important, Merton went to
great lengths to teach us how to think – not what to think, but how to
think – and how scholars actually go about their business of exploring
ideas. The process bears little resemblance to textbook accounts and, since we
are in the business of imparting critical thinking skills to our students, some
knowledge of how it operates in real life seems rather important.
Students know that the best hitters
in baseball – players destined to enter the Hall of Fame – fail at
bat nearly seven out of ten times. So it is, too, with the greatest scientists
of all time. The best and the brightest thinkers are wrong more often than not.
They blunder; they get it wrong. And sometimes these errors are real doozies.
But most of the time, these errors are fruitful, leading to important insights
that might never have been recognized if not for the fateful and productive
error. Knowing this, scientists continue to make bold conjectures, undeterred
by the specter of being wrong.
If you think about this for a
moment, you should recognize that this insight is quite liberating. To err is human, we’re often told.
But we don’t seem to like the idea very much and most try to avoid it all
costs. Balderdash! “Remember,” I tell my students, “we learn through trial and
error. There is a reason it is phrased this way rather than ‘trial and truth’
because that is the way learning typically occurs. Be bold. Dare to be wrong.
It’s an important path to enlightenment.”
Last, Merton stressed – as I
now stress – that the quest for knowledge is an endless process and, if
done properly, it is hard work. Questions and answers, Merton liked to say, are
a dime a dozen. It’s the important questions that matter – the ones that
strike at the heart of significant problems. And the only answers of importance
to scholars are those that generate a dozen or so more important questions. The
cycle never ends.
Once you carefully examine how
scholars do their thinking you often find that they are much like jazz
musicians. This gives me great comfort. Good, hard thinking follows ideas as
they wander about, twisting here, turning there, straying from the thread of a
dominant theme, and then coming back with some variation. It is improvisation
at its best. And it leads to the same unanticipated “aha” moments that jazz
musicians experience when they find a new melody in their improvisational
wanderings.
So, why do I teach? I think Lindsay
was probably correct. It is simply who and what I am. I’m a lifelong learner in
an unending quest for knowledge. I can honestly say that I’m “jazzed” by it.
And, as mentioned above, learning and teaching meld into one. I want students
to experience the pure joy of the “aha” moment, the flash of serendipity, and
then want to continue the journey. And, despite the hard work involved, I want them to know that they are
allowed to, and ought to, be smiling all the while.
It would be unscholarly of me,
however, if I ended this essay without mentioning at least one competing
hypothesis: I teach because I’m a frustrated jazz musician who can’t hold a
tune or play a chord, and improvising with ideas is all that is left.