HeyBearcat: Lou Pressman
Pride
I remember certainly saying to our daughter when she was growing up that we were proud of her because she’s a great kid and for willing to stretch herself in various ways and try new things. She’s grown into a really fine person. But, every parent knows when we say “we’re really proud of you” how limited our contribution is. It’s real and it’s substantial and from the point of view of the child, and each of us has been a child of somebody. The parents contributions may feel huge and it is huge. But parents sometimes exaggerate their control over shaping their children: “My child was puddy in my hands! Gosh I took that worthless slugger that she was and I taught her and I shaped her like clay into the fine work of intellectual art that she is.” Nonsense! No one of us has that kind of control or power over others. I don’t mean it’s wrong for people to use the word pride. I get a little uneasy when I use it.
Pride can invite for a person an exaggerated sense of his or her own self-sufficiency. Especially when talking about one’s accomplishments, raising one’s hand like a champion: “I did this” “I’m responsible for this” “this is my doing”. I don’t think we ever accomplish those things ourselves. So often much of it is the fruit of people and hands other than our own, who supported us and helped us. I just think that our lives are so interlocked and interconnected that how much anything good we do depends on others. We are held up by all kinds of people who have affected us, who have helped us, who have influenced us in ways big and small. Some of whom we may remember for the rest of our lives. Some of whom you’ll forget and may not even remember what they did. None of us simply stands on our own. I would, coming out of my own religious perspective, talk about grace. Others might simply talk about the role of good luck. Good fortune that all those people have and have been part of our lives.
Learning to care about learning
I had a great fourth grade teacher, Mrs. Rowe. I had gone from second grade to fourth grade, skipping third grade, and at this public school I went to, you got both letter grades, As, Bs, and then you got number grades for citizenship and behavior, one being the best and four being eugh. My first fourth grade report card I think I got almost all A’s, and definitely all fours. And it was because I was rude, and full of myself, and maybe because I was insecure by virtue of being a year younger than the other kids, I was jumping into discussions, “I know the answer!” And she slapped me down – not with physical force. Mrs. Rowe was really great because she cared about my learning, but also cared about me becoming a good learner. A person who would learn and help contribute to the learning of the others, rather than getting in the way of their learning. I kind of went into school as a bratty first grader, sort of moving through school, kind of figuring: so here’s a chance I get to show how right my ideas are. I like learning new things, and then I incorporate them into my thinking but, with the default assumption, I’m right, after all these are my ideas. Really could I be wrong? And those teachers blew that way of thinking all the way through, progressively, blowing up that way of thinking. Teaching the value of reading and listening generously. ‘wait a minute, I will learn so much more, and learning is so much more interesting if I begin with the presupposition that I’m here to listen and mine.” I’m here to mine the contributions and perspectives of my fellow students. It’s good to begin with the assumption that, subject to correction, that there may be something worth learning here. Because it means that you don’t shut yourself off from opportunities to be enriched and instructed by others, just because their ideas may be framed in a way that’s initially confusing, or it’s only confusing if you, or in my case I, don’t have enough background to understand it.
Maybe one reason why I’m a teacher is because I have just had lots of ways to experience powerfully what good committed teachers, who took me seriously as a conversation partner, I don’t mean that they took me as simply as an equal you know, my Spanish was not equal to my Spanish teacher, my work in philosophy wasn’t. For me it mattered hugely, that there were these really smart interesting compassionate adults who were interested in taking my ideas, my perspective, seriously. Sometimes in taking it seriously enough, that they were quite willing to criticize my ideas. In other words, it wasn’t that “oh they made me feel so good because they always told my ideas were so good”. Sometimes my ideas were terrible. And if they really thought that, they would, with some gentleness, say that. But that’s a way of respecting a student, Sometimes intellectually heated and lively, but always good humored and respectful. But, my thinking was being challenged. Although I disagree with the thinker in many ways, it makes me appreciate Mill’s idea that in some sense we’re not really fully entitled to hold to our convictions unless we are willing to give a fair and full hearing to the most thoughtful challenges to them. And I had terrific teachers who challenged my thinking.
Reflection on The Hotchkiss School
Sitting in my study, in the apartment that looked out on the stairwell, I was meeting a whole bunch of different kids that day, students from the dorm, students from classes, and our daughter who was at that point probably four, kept appearing at the door, in the open doorway to the apartment, she would open the door and call: “dad, daddy”. And I would say “Emily I’m sorry I can’t talk to you now, I’m meeting with a student, later, I promise I will talk to you later”. And then somebody else would come in, and an hour and a half later, she appeared at the door again and with a very wounded expression on her face. I asked her: “Emily what is it?” Then she said something like this, and this was a four year-old, “I should have known better to ask you, you always have time for them”. Then she turned on her heel and then walked out. The “them” was the students. And I think I failed to say thank you enough to my wife and my child for their patience in putting up with the demands.
I wish I more often said thank you. I hope and I think I would usually thank students.. But for example, to thanks staff, in just ordinary day life, and now I count a number of folks on the staff as real friends. I wish I could have been even more vocal about my gratitude. To students, to my colleagues, to members of the staff, to my wife and to my daughter.