Frank McCourt - Teacher Man

Next day, hungover and suffering, I traveled to Eastern District High School in Brooklyn for my teaching test, the last hurdle for the license. I was supposed to arrive an hour before the lesson, but took the wrong subway train and arrived half an hour late. The English department chairman said I could come back another time, but I wanted to get it over with, especially since I knew I was on the road to failure anyway.

The chairman handed me sheets of paper with the subject of my lesson: War Poems. I knew the poems by heart, Siegfried Sassoon’s “Does it Matter?” and Wilfred Owen’s “Anthem for Doomed Youth.”

When you teach in New York you’re required to follow a lesson plan. First, you are to state your aim. Then you are to motivate the class because, as everyone knows, those kids don’t want to learn anything.

I motivate this class by telling them about my aunt’s husband, who was gassed in World War I and when he came home the only job he could find was shoveling coal, coke and slack at the Limerick Gas Works. The class laughs and the chairman smiles slightly, a good sign.

It isn’t enough to teach the poem. You are to “elicit and evoke,” involve your students in the material. Excite them. That is the word from the Board of Education. You are to ask pivotal questions to encourage participation. A good teacher should launch enough pivotal questions to keep the class hopping for forty-five minutes.

A few kids talk about war and their family members who survived World War II and Korea. They say it wasn’t fair the way some came home with no faces and no legs. Losing an arm wasn’t that bad because you always had another. Losing two arms was a real pain because someone had to feed you. Losing a face was something else. You only had one and when that was gone, that was it, baby. One girl with a lovely figure and wearing a lacy pink blouse said her sister was married to a guy who was wounded at Pyongyang and he had no arms at all, not even stubs where you could stick on the false arms. So her sister had to feed him and shave him and do everything and all he ever wanted was sex. Sex, sex, sex, that’s all he ever wanted, and her sister was getting all worn out.

The chairman in the back of the room says, Helen, in a warning voice, and she says to the whole class, Well, it’s true. How would you like to have someone you have to give a bath to and feed and then go to bed with three times a day. Some of the boys snicker but stop when Helen says, I’m sorry. I get so sad over my sister and Roger because she said she can’t go on. She’d leave him but he’d have to go to the veterans’ hospital. He said if that ever happened he’d kill himself. She turns around to speak to the chairman in the back of the room. I’m sorry over what I said about sex but that’s what happened and I didn’t mean to be disrespectful.

I admired Helen so much for her maturity and courage and her lovely breasts I could hardly go on with the lesson. I thought I wouldn’t mind being an amputee myself if I had her near me all day, swabbing me, drying me, giving me the daily massage. Of course, teachers were not supposed to think like that but what are you to do when you’re twenty-seven and someone like Helen is sitting there in front of you bringing up topics like sex and looking the way she did?

One boy will not let go. He says Helen’s sister shouldn’t worry about her brother-in-law committing suicide because that would be impossible when you didn’t have arms. If you didn’t have arms you didn’t have a way of dying.

Two boys say you shouldn’t have to face life without a face or legs when you’re only twenty-two. Oh, sure, you could always get false legs, but you could never get a false face and who would ever go out with you? That’d be the end and you’d never have children or anything. Your own mother wouldn’t want to look at you and all your food would have to come through a straw. It was very sad knowing you’d never want to look in the bathroom mirror anymore for fear of what you might see or what you might not see, a face gone. Imagine how hard it was for the poor mom when she had to decide to throw out her son’s razor and shaving cream knowing he’d never use them again. Never ever again. She could never actually go into his room and say, Son, you’re never gonna use these shaving things anymore and a lotta stuff is piling up here so I’m gonna throw them out. Can you imagine how he’d feel, sitting there with no face, and his own mother telling him, in a way, it was all over? You’d only do that to someone you didn’t like and it was hard to think a mother wouldn’t like her son even if he had no face. No matter what condition you’re in your mother is supposed to like you and stand behind you. If she doesn’t, where are you and what’s the use of living at all?

Some boys in the class wish they had their own war so they could go over there and get even. One boy says, Oh, bullshit, you can never get even, and they boo him and shout him down. His name is Richard and they say it’s well known around the school what a Communist he is. The chairman makes notes, probably on how I’ve lost control of the class by allowing more than one voice in the room. I feel desperate. I raise my voice, Anyone here ever see a movie about German soldiers called All Quiet on the Western Front ? No, they never saw it and why should they pay money to see movies about Germans after what they did to us? Goddam krauts.

How many of you are Italian? Half the class.

Does this mean you’d never see an Italian movie after they fought against America in the war?

No, it has nothing to do with war. They just don’t want to watch those movies with all those dumb subtitles that move so fast you can never catch up with the story and when there is snow in the movie and the subtitles are white how the hell are you supposed to read anything? A lot of these Italian movies come with snow and dogs taking a leak against a wall, and they’re depressing anyhow with people standing in streets waiting for something to happen.

The Board of Education ruled that a lesson must have a summary that pulls everything together and leads to a homework assignment or reinforcement or some kind of outcome, but I forget, and when the bell rings there’s an argument going on between two boys, one defending John Wayne, the other saying he was a big phony who never went to war. I try to pull everything together in one grand summary but the discussion dribbles away. I tell them, Thank you, but no one is listening and the chairman scratches his forehead and makes notes.

I walked toward the subway, berating myself. What was the use? Teacher, my arse. I should have stayed in the army with the dogs. I’d be better off on the docks and the warehouses, lifting, hauling, cursing, eating hero sandwiches, drinking beer, chasing waterfront floozies. At least I’d be with my own kind, my own class of people, not getting above meself, acushla. I should have listened to the priests and the respectable people in Ireland who told us beware of vanity, accept our lot, there’s a bed in heaven for the meek of heart, the humble of soul.

Mr. McCourt, Mr. McCourt, wait up.

That was the chairman calling from a half block away. Wait up. I walked back toward him. He had a kind face. I thought he was there to console me with a Too bad, young man.

He was out of breath. Look, I’m not supposed to even talk to you but I just want to say you’ll be getting your exam results in a few weeks. You have the makings of a fine teacher. I mean, for Christ’s sakes, you actually knew Sassoon and Owen. I mean, half the people walking in here can’t tell the difference between Emerson and Mickey Spillane. So, when you get your results and you’re looking for a job, just call me. OK?

Oh, yes, sure, yes, I will. Thanks.