[This listening/reading was given to two classes in a course called PRB. It produced the best student writing in six years of teaching English in the Czech Republic. I should have done something like this much, much earlier. But what did I know? I was trying to deliver the best content I could consistent with the syllabi and norms I knew about and sensed where I taught. Sometimes it is just best to follow your gut.]
PRB, a course abbreviation. Probable Reality--Bearable? Possible Realities Bothersome? I am not sure.
Today is my last day of teaching. I think forever. And next week, Monday, is my daughter\'s birthday. May 30. I think in honor of these occasions, my last classes today should somehow be remarkable, or I should fess up and disclose why PRB, or what the real PRB is.
Honesty, truthfulness, integrity, thoughtfulness, vulnerability, humanity, responsibility, meaning. Ideals and therefore values. Bothersome in that in this environment, this schooling--not education--they are irrelevant, and therefore, I am. Possible reality one. But my last chances today can be to live these values, and let students know at least in part why they, at least some, have had such a difficult time with me! I hope in living these values today, I can bear it.
First, let me thank you for inviting me this week to your party to mark the end of term. By the time I realized, it was past the time to show up, I was on my way to bed. I noted the invitation with care and significance when it was given to me, but my own vulnerability always prevents me from joining groups of treasured young people. So my forgetfulness was really a conscious decision not to participate. Truth.
In 1991, Tara, my daughter died. Informal groups, perhaps especially with young people, are impossible for me to bear. The sadness is overwhelming, and since my near-death almost a year after hers, experiencing strong emotions . . . well, I cannot allow it. Not yet. Maybe never again. With her death, I die a little each day. It is not something you want to show or share with other people.
So now you have my excuse for my not joining you plus my apology. I am truly sorry I did not and cannot participate. And I thank you for past invitations.
What has this got to do with our last class, and school, and English, and your education? A lot, I think. Just start with what you now know. Our classes have not been really about the important stuff. Should school be about important stuff, truth, vulnerability, meaning? In short, it should. And this dissonance has brought me to this point, that I no longer want to try to teach. It doesn\'t work. But more importantly, it is not, at least in this environment, this school, this country and culture, with and by me, now and here about important stuff. And I believe it should be.
PRB has been my last compromise. I merely check to see if you are sitting there and have handed in your assignments. If these things, you get credit for the course.
School. It is a place where you show up and produce a few things and get some kind of sanction that something changed you. But the only changes I see in the different students and years of study is that you can cope better and better with the system. Learning, and God forbid, getting educated are beyond probability, beyond even possibility. This is the reality I see, and I may be wrong. Reality may be, probably is, different. But we have to go on what we believe we know.
Education is a good thing. I believe in it. I believe in learning to enrich your life. I do not believe in school to make you rich. I am wrong, at least a minority voice, in this belief. It is bothersome to me that schools have sold out to practical realities. But that is as it is, and you will do well to take advantage of what school has to offer you.
Education is a bad thing. Having had a ton of it, formal and informal (in school and outside of school), I believe this. The wonderful textures and colors and nuances and insights now possible for me make for possible and probable realities impossible otherwise for me to experience. So, I hope that you can get an education here.
These richer dimensions, however, will make for dissonances so great as to separate you out from others; and if you need others like you, or those with whom you can communicate and feel something akin, well, forget it. Education will make you more alone, more alienated, more different. Place this together with your other losses and sadnesses and you have it sometimes unbearable.
You have two subjects you focus on here. English and something else. English, for the most part, is a skill to acquire so you can get along better using the current world language. Practical reality--making a living--has placed my language into prominence, because everybody else wants but doesn\'t need a lot of what the dominant cultures and countries (i.e., English speaking) have. So, you are not really just getting English but a whole range of cultural bits and pieces. But the language by itself is useful, I admit. Continue to go after it; it will serve you well.
Your second subject, let\'s call it the substantive one--not just a skill to acquire to get along in the world--must be teaching you something about, well, school or education. In my case, my language has allowed me to find the sense and nonsense of things. It has also allowed me to enjoy the best of life, and I include in that our brief association here at this university. My schooling and education have given me the qualitative difference. I am blessed, and cursed, with what I can know and do.
What does the other subject you study teach you, let\'s say, about school? Civics. What does civics say about the schooling you are experiencing? Information systems. What does this subject have to say about what school is? Any dissonances? Any joys?
Again, your second subject is really English. Your primary subject is not this practical thing called a language. It is what you study in your own language, or what you use English to know more about. What you are devoting your time to, other than English and what is in English, must help you by giving you information and knowledge about the world. Maybe it even helps you understand it through that lens.
What do you know now or understand about your university experience when you let mathematics, physics, chemistry, civics, psychology, Czech history and literature, etc., talk to you and make sense or nonsense for you?
What is all this now about? PRB, probabilities, Kevin\'s daughter, this question. Just that.
If this class, just for this day, is about what is important to you and what you believe in and what you are spending your time doing, wouldn\'t it be a pretty good idea to say, or find out, what good all your time and maybe effort is producing?
Education is for life. Will your or other lives be better in some way because of what you are studying here? Let\'s try to begin to answer that important question.
Here is my answer for me. This is my last day of teaching. I have found it has become more than bothersome. It is unbearable. The realities I see for you and for me here are not the best. And if I can make a change for the better, for me and for you, I need to get out of the way of your education, or at least your schooling. Doing teaching the way the students and culture expect of me here is too great a force for me to guide to what I believe are better, more important outcomes.
It is kind of like this. Students need not witness nor experience the effects of my frustration, my irrelevant values, my realities . . . my botheredness. It is not in your best interests. And I am happy for the decision, and happy for you. I have confidence in you that you will do best with what you choose to do. Maybe it is like the parent who lets his child go, and lets her experience the wonder of her possibilities and her realities wherever she is.
I will miss you, miss you more than you can possibly know.
After you try to answer your question about your primary subject and give me something I can touch and read to remember you by, that will be the end of class today.
May 27, 2005
