Most students don't like English. The first day
of class, you see it in their posture, like so many condemned people
seated in electric chairs. Or they are simply inclined hopefully in the
direction of the door, those who aren't sitting right next to it, that is,
with escape on their minds. They exchange nervous chat with classmates. I
hate this class, they say. (It hasn't even started yet.) Yeah, I really
hate this class. Ask them, however, and they will tell you English is
important. It's important to have a good vocabulary, to be able to speak
with fluency and precision. It's important to be able to write. And
they're right. It is important.
Once students relax, the nervous chat
morphs into talk, real talk, with tone, nuance, energy, and voice. Get
them talking and you see flourishes of personality, flourishes so real and
natural there is something irresistible and glamorous about them. These
are people I would like to spend fifteen weeks with. Let's talk about reading,
thinking, and writing.
Since the days of the smoke-filled halls,
the world has become more than a little bit fractured. As I write this, the US is
fighting two wars, oil is leaking into the Gulf of Mexico, General Motors
and Chrysler are struggling to regain enough market share to keep from
disappearing, and there's this recession thing that has meant jobs, jobs,
jobs are just gone, gone, gone. Many are not coming back.
So the students come. Having lost
their good jobs, many of them work two or three not-so-good jobs. And they
have families or love lives, and pastimes. And they have full loads or
almost full loads at the College, trying to get traction, trying to figure
out what they will do, how they will make a living and eventually make a
life.
With a little luck, the
classroom can be a haven, an oasis characterized by purposeful activity,
civility, generosity, and hope. With a little luck, furthermore, and with
the requisite amount of work, the classroom can be a place where
foundational skills are exercised, skills students will use to get where
they want to go, wherever that is.
I
like being part of that process, discovering the future in the present,
aiming to get there. That's why I'm still here.
