At times, I catch myself asking who my best teacher would be. I’ve had good mentors, generally, and I can remember each of them. But a few stand out, and maybe from their number I can pick out the most outstanding.
Should I approach this through categories? Such as the best in humor or the best in kindness or, to the point, the best in instruction.
For instance, I had a teacher who gave us nothing but jokes. After his every class, we would end up with heads empty and stomachs full—with gas. And another teacher who had such compassion that he would not mind us cheating during exams. Once, during our midterms, when a book fell while a classmate was frenziedly copying from it, our professor just turned his face away. Later, however, we learned that it made no difference to him if we cheated or not, because, without checking our papers, he would randomly give half of the class a passing grade, and the other half a failing mark, and reverse the process in the finals, such that those who made it in the midterms would be wailing, and those who failed rejoicing.
I consider among my best teachers—I had several—a saintly priest who opened my eyes to the world of poetry. He gave our class a heady dose of W. B. Yeats, Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot and Gerard Manley Hopkins. Anyone who is fixed on these worthies will spend his life reading if not trying to write poems, or regretting not having done so. A line from one of Pound’s cantos has stayed with me—”The ant’s a centaur in his dragon world.” Which makes me wonder why with this fixation I didn’t think of entomology as an alternative career.
Except for the sitdown comic and the apathetic professor, all of these teachers have gained my respect.
Jesus himself recognized that if sometimes they did not lead honorable lives, the teachers, particularly in his time the teachers of the Law, took up a position of honor. He said, “The scribes and the Pharisees occupy the chair of Moses. You must therefore do what they tell you and listen to what they say; but do not be guided by what they do: since they do not practise what they preach.”
On this, St. John Chrisostom commented in a homily, “He established their authority although they were wicked men.”
How wicked were these teachers? Jesus said, “They tie up heavy burdens and lay them on men’s shoulders, but will they lift a finger to move them? Not they! Everything they do is done to attract attention, like wearing broader phylacteries and longer tassels, like wanting to take the place of honor at banquets and the front seats in the synagogues, being greeted obsequiously in the market squares and having people call them Rabbi.”
Here, according to Chrysostom, is a twofold wickedness in that these teachers required “great and extreme strictness of life, without any indulgence, from those over whom they rule, and their allowing to themselves great security.” On the contrary, the good ruler or teacher ought, “in what concerns himself, to be an unpardoning and severe judge, but in the matter of those whom he rules, to be gentle and ready to make allowances.”
Incidentally, in the Prologue to his Rule, St. Benedict expresses the humaneness of the teacher who is gentle and ready to make allowances: “We are, therefore, about to found a school of the Lord’s service, in which we hope to introduce nothing harsh or burdensome.” Nothing harsh or burdensome—that’s kindness.
Jesus told those listening to him how they could avoid making the mistake of the scribes and Pharisees—by being humble. “The greatest among you must be your servant.” And in this, one may take one’s cue from Ezra Pound, “Pull down thy vanity, / I say pull down.”
True enough, anyone who is vain, who exalts himself, will be humbled, and anyone who humbles himself will be exalted.
Still, I cannot agree with the way the disinterested professor graded us (luckily, he gave me a failing grade in the midterms), even though he might seem to have followed Jesus’ statement—the first shall be last and the last first.