The Nuns

Thanks, everyone, for your work over this cycle. I was really pleased to see your level of engagement with the Richard Rodriguez text. The posts were great and there was a lot of nice dialogue in the responding as well. We have some peers who are really excellent bloggers, and in particular, who have mastered the art of  the useful and timely hyperlink. I encourage you to read not only to complete course requirements but with an eye to improving your own public writing!

There are so many directions I could take a final post on this book. Indeed, as I wrote to many of you, I read this book as speaking to everyone, regardless of language, race or ethnicity. I see it speaking to a universal theme and doing so in an extremely artful way. We see Richard in all of his particularity, yet he shares his experiences in ways that his can become ours--allowing us to make actual connections from our lives or imagined connections to those lives we could have lived (but for whatever reason, did not). Either way, I think we leave the book more empathetic people.

So despite what I see as the universality of the book, I do want to write from a particular vein: that of the classroom teacher. Richard starts the book as a teacher--giving a guest lecture to some high school kids. We also know he most likely might have done some teaching, somewhere, on the road to getting his PhD. Yet teaching, for him, is something he seems to always observe rather than do. (Even the description of his guest lecture is very disembodied, with him, seemingly, an observer of the class as much as its leader.)

So really, for teachers, the models that Richard gives forth in the book are those nameless, faceless nuns. 

My wife grew up going to Catholic schools with nuns as grade school teachers (as did her mom and her mom’s mom). I did not. Neither do our children. Indeed, at the local Catholic schools, I do not think there are any nuns left on the staff. This is all by way of saying that the world  Richard describes is one distant from many of us--and increasingly, all of us. Therefore, I think, we need to be careful when we judge. 

But before even that, I guess I should note for you that there is a pretty long-standing research tradition looking at Catholic schools. The results of that research generally show that Catholic schools outperform public schools. One article in particular discovered that this was due to the general climate of discipline in the building--that kids didn’t generally see other kids goofing off, and when they did, they did not think such things were ok.

Yet, I think, for many of us, there was something hard to swallow about the way Richard described his early schooling experiences. The fact that the nuns would not speak any Spanish too him, even though he knew not hardly a word in English (one would think that a quick “hola” or “buenos días” would hardly put a child back in their efforts to learn English!). 

The fact that the nuns actually went into his home and told his parents to speak English at home (thereby essentially destroying the relaxed family dynamic Richard had experienced until them). 

Most shockingly, really, to me, is the fact of “the nuns” themselves. They are indeed nameless. They are, apparently, a completely coherent group. 

In my own childhood memories, by contrast, each elementary teacher has a name, a face, an emotion attached to her. They were mostly loved, but some were feared, and others, because of something they did, were somewhat hated.

And indeed, the history of the American elementary school would indicate that my own experience was by far the more common one--the one that the founders of the system envisioned. American elementary school teachers were envisioned as female caregivers. They were to teach the gentle art of responsibility and civic responsibility. In a world of ruthless capitalism, they were to be substitute mothers. They were to govern by “affectionate authority.”

I think many of us--both males and females--are still drawn to thinking of our classroom as a family. We take the injunction to act in loco parentis very seriously. We try to build relationships with our students, make them feel at ease, and hope that learning can flourish in an atmosphere of warmth and--dare I say it?--love.

Yet Richard would have us question all of that.

I read his homage to his teachers as an appreciation of their unflinching honesty. 

You want to make it in America? Speak English.

You want love and intimacy? Find it at home.

You want me to tell you are special? Well, you are currently ranked third out of thirty in this class.

I actually don’t agree with any of the sentiments expressed in the above quotes.  However, I don’t deny they are powerful realities in our society.  

At the end of the day, I think Richard’s book asks us to think about the messages we send students--both overt and implicit. Do we imply that intimacy is possible in the classroom? That we as teachers can love children as much as/in place of a parent? That there are no costs associated with getting an education? 

It is these questions which I think are one of Richard’s great gifts to classroom teachers.

Enjoy cycle three!