The Theory of Relativity and Biggie Smalls or Why I Don’t Teach

Many years ago I decided I would get off my apathetic ass and teach high school. I made arrangements with my employer that allowed me to take two Education courses at night and fulfill a weekly observation requirement. I’d had my Bachelors for a long while and was doing exactly the same thing I’d done while earning it—working at a dead-end, soul-depleting job. This was a big step for me. I had made a decision. Decision-making was not something my family was very good at and I had made one. I would fulfill my Education course requirements and teach English at a local high school.

Well a funny thing happened on the way to a career choice. In 1996, Augusta College’s (now Augusta State University) Education department consisted of the most unadulteratedly arrogant group of people outside of my stereotyped perception of all Ivy League schools. Theirs was not to turn out educators but to feed their own sad egos. That was problem number one. Next, in the course of taking my first two classes, I learned that all senior high school text books were written at a 6th grade reading level. And no one seemed to have a problem with that. On top of that, those courses had nothing to do with educating. They were merely exercises in how not to be confrontational or offensive. In short, they were about how to be ineffective as possible. The final block that collapsed my Jenga tower was the time I spent “observing” a living breathing classroom full of our Up and Comers. I observed an AP class over several weeks. That means a class of “smart kids.” They were anything but. A teacher would have had better luck discussing Nietzsche with Corky (“Becca, I just don’t get this Ubermensch stuff!”) or explaining the Theory of Relativity to an as yet undead Biggie Smalls (“So bullets move fast, right?”) than with teaching those kids anything. They were undisciplined, self-absorbed, generally unappealing kids living out a sense of entitlement. In short, they would have fit nicely on the Augusta College Education department faculty.

Call it a shortcoming or an example of my own arrogance, but I can say with a clear conscience that I made the right decision to bail after completing one of those two classes. The public school system as I experienced it is unsalvageable. I wish I were deluded enough to think otherwise. But I'm not. Upon learning of my decision to abandon the teaching track, a close friend hit me with the clichéd line of “Well, if you can reach just one student, then you have really made a difference.” I lost it. If I ever, ever, become the type of person to be contented or comforted by the premise of helping one student while hundreds others flounder, then my days as a caring, (self-described) decent human being are over. Close the garage door and disconnect the carbon monoxide detector. It’s over. My time is better spent outside the structural and disciplinary limitations of our school system—a system intent on failure. It is better spent imparting what I know of Hemingway, Steinbeck, Twain, Welty, and Porter to my son or to a confidant in casual conversation. Don’t misunderstand. I am not entirely foolish and I am capable of doing the math. One is better than None in terms of helping. I know. But in the context of a mammoth, organized commitment to educate the masses, being a slot in that bureaucratic roulette wheel is about as appealing as...well as teaching the Theory of Relativity to an undead Biggie Smalls.

And, besides that, I wouldn’t know a Gerund if it rode the coattails of an intransitive verb to my house and bit me on the ass. I doubt you’d want me to teach your child anything.