Dispatches from the Trenches
At the Altar of Choice
I am not angry at those who have more money and possessions than I have. For most of my life, I have striven to produce quality work as a writer, musician, and artist, but I’ve also worked as a teacher in order to have a home, send my children to college, and to bear the economic yoke of being an adult in my society. Along the path, I have also discovered that I very much enjoy teaching, and I believe that for much of my career, I’ve been an effective educator. I have arrived at this place in my life mostly through my own choices.
I am well aware that for many other people in the U.S. and abroad, such is not the case, but by and large, most of us make thousands of personal choices over the years that ultimately define what we become. The Determinists, the nihilists, and the fatalists may hash it out any way they like, but that is my considered position. I certainly was not born with a knack for decision-making; yet I believe in Natural Law, and thus adhere to the theory that we possess an innate sense of right and wrong. Still, I would also say that my ability to act upon choices had to be nurtured over time by my parents, older siblings, teachers, and so on. Sometimes that nurturing involved tightly limited, closely monitored choices. And in school, oftentimes and in certain situations, there were no choices at all.
I contend that students today have far too much choice. “Which of these books would you like to read, Cheswick? This one with the pretty cover? This one with all the words in it? Or perhaps one that you’ve already read before?” Suffice it to say that when it comes to books, most students don’t have the experience to choose those that will really contribute to their literacy. Only a knowledgeable and well-read adult can guide them in this.
The same applies to other kinds of choices, too. I have never forgotten a story told by a school superintendent in the district where I was teaching several years ago. He described a high-school boy who would come to him every spring for four years, “broken in spirit” because he could never make the school’s baseball team. “He just loved baseball. He had chosen the game because it was his passion.” It was clear to me that baseball had not chosen him, however, and I wanted to ask, “Why didn’t he just try out for the cross-country team? Baseball is hard, after all.” But the superintendent had worked himself into such a tear-streaked state of empathy that I couldn’t bring myself to do it.
Having lots of choices in school - a “menu,” as one educational guru has put it - is, in fact, sometimes counterproductive. Students are addled by the various dishes placed before them, and unfortunately the healthy eater (to extend the metaphor) should have only one dessert.
I realize that there is a fine line between limiting choices and suppressing creativity. As a young person, I was greatly interested in art and had a powerful imagination, but I had no discipline. I did not know what sort of art I wanted to make. I asked myself, “Do I want to paint? If so, shall I work in oils, watercolors, or acrylics? All of these? What about drawing? Pencils? Inks? Charcoal? Am I a realist or an abstractionist? What about pastels? Then again, sculpture seems like a satisfying medium. Clay? Metal? Wood? Play-doh?” Eventually I was lucky enough to have a couple of mentors who perceived my strengths and my limitations, and they helped me to make specific, limited choices so that I might find some success. Of course, when my ambitions shifted to writing, the old wrestling match was renewed: Fiction? Nonfiction? Poetry? Drama?
I’ll go further and say that for these reasons, the teacher needs to be more than simply an education major who keeps up with the latest theories on differentiated learning and classroom management. The teacher must be an expert in his or her subject area. For example, an English teacher ought to be the most well-read person on campus, bar none, from the Epic of Gilgamesh to Harold Bloom and beyond, and at the very least, he ought to be able to write the same clear and lively prose he expects of his students. Only then can the teacher become a guide as trustworthy as Beatrice when the traveler enters the many spheres, both dark and celestial, of choice.