John Masey Wright, “The Dunce”
Tuesday
I’m having a problem with two Tom Wayman poems I’ve encountered recently, perhaps because I am feeling anxious about returning to teaching after a semester’s sabbatical. I am bothered that I at first responded positively to the poems before realizing what was wrong with them.
Both poems denigrate students, which in my mind in a capital offense for a teacher. As I wrote last week, in “Did I Miss Anything” Wayman imagines sarcastic replies to a student apologizing (or not) for missing a class. I found the poem self-indulgent and a bit smug, even while I recognized my own urge to respond sarcastically when students ask me this very question.
In “Students” Wayman chastises students for not fully appreciating what he has to teach them. In his defense, he doesn’t entirely endorse the “Wayman” in the poem, gently mocking him as an aging man who resorts to desperate measures to communicate the urgency of his course. (“Wayman” tells his students to “adopt the Kung Fu Theory of Education, learning as self-defense.”)
There’s even a hint that he himself may have once, as a student, ascribed to the “Vaccination Theory of Education.” (At least he recognizes it from his youth.) Nevertheless, he still comes across as a heroic defender of higher learning, struggling vainly to fend off the barbarians at the gates.
I’ve written that campus lit (novels such as Groves of Academe and Straight Man) must be comic because it’s hard to create tragedy or melodrama out of a job that pays a good salary to teach creative writing. After all, many writers of the past had to flatter patrons if they didn’t want to starve in a garret. Wayman is definitely funny and he may even grudgingly admire students for the “wisdom” in their response.
Ultimately, however, I think he just gives us caricatures. Judge for yourself whether you agree:
Students
By Tom Wayman
The freshman class-list printouts
showed birthdates so recent
Wayman was sure the computer was in error.
One young man, however, was curious
about Wayman’s mention near the start of term
of his old college newspaper:
“You were an editor when?
Wow, that’s the year I was born.”
The wisdom of the students
hadn’t altered, though.
Wayman observed many clung to
The Vaccination Theory of Education
he remembered: once you have had a subject
you are immune
and never have to consider it again.
Other students continue to endorse
The Dipstick Theory of Education:
as with a car engine, where as long as the oil level
is above the add line
there is no need to put in more oil,
so if you receive a pass or higher
why put any more into learning?
At the front of the room, Wayman sweated
to reveal his alternative.
“Adopt The Kung Fu Theory of Education,”
he begged.
“Learning as self-defense. The more you understand
about what’s occurring around you
the better prepared you are to deal with difficulties.”
The students remained skeptical.
A young woman was a pioneer
of The Easy Listening Theory of Learning:
spending her hours in class
with her tape recorder earphones on,
silently enjoying a pleasanter world.
“Don’t worry, I can hear you,”
she reassured Wayman
when after some days he was moved to inquire.
Finally, at term’s end
Wayman inscribed after each now-familiar name on the list
the traditional single letter.
And whatever pedagogical approach
he or the students espouse,
Wayman knew this notation would be pored over
with more intensity
than anything else Wayman taught.
Am I wrong in picking up bruised feelings in this poem? Or that Wayman blames students while absolving himself? In any event, I think he is selling students short.
In my experience at a small liberal arts college, most students will rise to the occasion if the teacher approaches the subject matter imaginatively and with passion. Perhaps they have some preconceptions about some of the subjects (as I did with math), but their defensiveness arises mostly out of fear that they won’t be able to handle the material.
Once they realize that the course speaks to things they care about and that they themselves have contributions to make, most shift out of their indifference. Sure, grades will be important—after all, everyone around them is insisting on their importance, and sometimes scholarship money depends on maintaining a B average–but the grade is not what they will look back at years later.
I hope I don’t come across as humorless. After all, Wayman’s Vaccination, Dipstick, and Easy Listening Theories of Learning are caricatures that one regularly finds in great campus lit.
I’d be more forgiving if Wayman raked himself over the coals as well as the students. However, unlike the best satirists (Swift foremost amongst them), Wayman punches down, mocking those he has power over. As with “Did I Miss Anything,” he is using his poem to vent his frustrations, not explore why students behave as they do.
If Wayman were truly “moved to inquire” what his students were thinking, he’d discover complex and multifaceted human beings. He might even find himself able to move beyond the Kung Fu Theory of Education.
