Toxic
Teachers
by Tina
Blue
THIS essay is written
as an act of solidarity with an 18 year old girl who no longer
exists, though the woman she became is alive and well and writing
terrific articles.
I WANT to thank
Felice P, whose article "The Typewriter" inspired this essay
by reminding me that I had not yet written on one of my major concerns
about the role of teachers and the impact a teacher can have on a
student.
FIRST of all, I have
to say that Felice is a wonderful writer. "The Typewriter" is
interesting and well written, as is everything she posts.
BUT it's also
wrong--dead wrong.
OH, there's nothing
at all "wrong" with the autobiographical story she tells or
with her skilled handling of its details. What's wrong is the conclusion
she draws from the experience.
HER article describes
a famous author (she omits his name) whom she took a writing class from
when she was an eighteen-year-old college student, the only freshman in
an advanced writing class in some college in New York. Though she did
not know it at the time she was ducking the typewriter, this author was
famous on campus for his little shtick of throwing a typewriter past the
head of some student he had selected, according to who knows what
criteria.
FELICE'S story begins
with her ducking the flying typewriter and thinking, as it crashed into
the wall behind her, that her professor must be a raving lunatic. We
soon learn that he singled her out not just for his little type-writer
toss, but also for special verbal abuse during each class period. I
quote from Felice's story:
I was naïve and new
to the university environment, away from home for the first time in my
life, and, for my age, I was very young and emotionally immature. So I
interpreted this dramatization as, "This crazed man hates my
writing so much, he wants to kill me."
I don't remember
writing much in his class. I agonized and walked a lot and rode my bike
endlessly and agonized some more, but when he assigned things, I usually
went to class with nothing to submit. I had talent, but I didn't have a
spark in his class. I wanted to hide in a corner in a fetal position. I
wanted it all to go away.
"LITTLE Miss
Prima Donna Freshman didn't write again? I thought you were going to be
a great writer," he'd taunt. "What a waste of a seat! Other
people would have given anything to sit in here and listen to my words
of wisdom. Why are you wasting your time and mine?"
I never answered him.
I didn't know the
answer.
BUT I never missed a
class. I hung onto his words. But I couldn't write for him. The few
things I wrote, he ripped apart. They deserved it. They were awful.
"AH, so Little
Miss Prima Donna Freshman lowered herself and wrote something this
time," he said. "Let's see what she has to share." Then
line by line, he'd destroy it.
AND he'd destroy me.
EVENTUALLY I
submitted nothing. I couldn't handle the criticism. Had I taken this
class six months later, a year later, perhaps the outcome would have
been different. But you can't undo your life and rewrite it.
EVENTUALLY she gave
up writing--for twenty-five years!--and didn't start again until she had
what she refers to in her article as a "near-death
experience."
YET her story ends
with her claim that she thinks his teaching inspired her writing.
SO what do you think?
She's wrong--right?
continued on Tina Blue's website, Teacher,
Teacher
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