Teacher Man: A Memoir Read Free

from kindergarten to today. So, teachers come, teachers go, all kinds, old, young, tough, kind. Kids watch, scrutinize, judge. They know body language, tone of voice, demeanor in general. It’s not as if they sit around in toilets or cafeterias discussing these things. They just absorb it over eleven years, pass it on to coming generations. Watch out for Miss Boyd, they’ll say. Homework, man, homework, and she corrects it. Corrects it. She ain’t married so she’s got nothing else to do. Always try to get married teachers with kids. They don’t have time for sitting around with papers and books. If Miss Boyd got laid regular she wouldn’t give so much homework. She sits there at home with her cat listening to classical music, correcting our homework, bothering us. Not like some teachers. They give you a pile of homework, check it off, never even look at it. You could copy a page of the Bible and they’d write at the top, “Very nice.” Not Miss Boyd. She’s on to you right off. Excuse me, Charlie. Did you write this yourself? And you have to admit, no, you didn’t and now you’re up shit creek, man.
    It’s a mistake to arrive early, gives you too much time to think of what you’re facing. Where did I get the nerve to think I could handle American teenagers? Ignorance. That’s where I got the nerve. It is the Eisenhower era and newspapers report the great unhappiness of American adolescents. These are the “Lost Children of the Lost Children of the Lost Generation.” Movies, musicals, books tell us of their unhappiness:
Rebel Without a Cause, The Blackboard Jungle, West Side Story, The Catcher in the Rye.
They make despairing speeches. Life is meaningless. All adults are phonies. What’s the use of living at all? They have nothing to look forward to, not even a war of their own where they can kill natives in distant places and march up ticker-tape Broadway with medals and limps for the girls to admire. No use complaining to their fathers, who just fought a war, or their mothers, who waited while the fathers fought. Fathers say, Oh, shaddup. Don’t bodder me. I got a pounda shrapnel up my ass an’ I don’t have time for you bitchin’ an’ moanin’ wid your belly full an’ your closet stuffed with clothes. F’Christ’s sakes, when I was your age I was out woikin’ in a junkyard before I went on the docks so I could send your sorry ass to school. Go squeeze your goddam pimples an’ lemme read my paper.
    There’s so much teen unhappiness they form gangs and fight other gangs, not rumbles like the ones you see in movies with star-crossed romances and dramatic music in the background, but mean fights where they grunt and curse one another, where Italians, Blacks, Irish, Puerto Ricans attack with knives, chains, baseball bats in Central Park and Prospect Park and stain the grass with their blood, which is always red no matter where it came from. Then if there’s a killing there’s public outrage and accusations that if the schools and teachers were doing their jobs these terrible things wouldn’t happen. There are patriots who say, If these kids have the time and energy to be fighting one another why can’t we just ship them overseas to fight the goddam Communists and settle that problem for once and for all?
    Vocational schools were seen by many as dumping grounds for students ill-equipped for academic high schools. That was snobbery. It didn’t matter to the public that thousands of young people wanted to be auto mechanics, beauticians, machinists, electricians, plumbers, carpenters. They didn’t want to be bothered with the Reformation, the War of 1812 , Walt Whitman, art appreciation, the sex life of the fruit fly.
    But, man, if we have to do it we’ll do it. We’ll sit in those classes that have nothing to do with our lives. We’ll work in our shops where we learn about the real world and we’ll try to be nice to the teachers and get outa here in four years. Whew!
    Here they are. The door