The Credential and the Book
The old schoolmaster was once a familiar figure: learned, literate, and capable of bringing great books to life. Today, credentials abound, but the schoolmaster has all but vanished.
by Jeffrey Burghauser (July 2026)
.
.
When I returned home to New Jersey after my freshman year of college (the year was 1999) my father asked if I could do him a favor. One of his patients was a public high school English teacher in Newark. Since few of her students had even considered higher education—college was like Mars to them: purely theoretical—, she wondered if I might visit one morning, hang out with them, answer questions, and perhaps (in so doing) give them a better sense of what’s possible. Since I was an English major, and since her students allegedly loved poetry, we would have something to talk about.
On the appointed morning, I made the short drive. Parking restrictions were so byzantine that I needed to paddock my Toyota pretty far away, which was fine; the weather was lovely.
In I went, passed through the metal detector without incident, and met my father’s patient. She seemed genial enough. Something was slightly…off, though; she seemed just a little too excited. We entered a broad corridor branching off the lobby at a right angle. A large, hand-made banner was suspended from hooks in the wall. It read:
Welcome to our School
Mr. Burghauser!!!
Okay, I reasoned; a bit much, but nice.
I soon found myself in a huge classroom—actually, three average classrooms that had been combined by retracting some hinged wall-panels. There were at least a hundred students waiting on folding chairs.
“The Faculty is running a little late. They’ll be sitting right there,” said my hostess, indicating a row of sturdier chairs. “They’ve been looking forward to your talk all week.”
As the teachers (men, all) entered, each shook my hand as if I were an esteemed neurosurgeon, thanked me for making the time, and took his seat. This was the Archetypal Nightmare, served up without any ceremony, ladled from the Jungian stockpot of shared primeval dread. I half-expected to look down, and find myself naked.
“When my doctor told me that his son was a distinguished poet,” said my hostess, “I knew I had to have you visit. I’m so glad this worked out—so glad.”
The assembly was called to order while the student audio-visual club hurriedly finished setting up its equipment. Before my father’s patient began her introduction of me, she whispered in my ear:
“Oh, by the way, after your talk, you’ll be judging the annual poetry contest. It shouldn’t take much time. You’ll pick the top three, we’ll get some official photos of you awarding the trophies—oh, and my Eleventh Grade Honors class made something they’ll want to present to you. They’re very sweet.”
No doubt.
She began to introduce me. Paying attention would have supplied at least a few of the coordinates within which I could B.S. But I wasn’t paying attention; my full mental resources (such as they were) had been mobilized in the scramble for a means of escape.
But there was no way. I couldn’t claim an illness. And I couldn’t run; the building was so labyrinthine, I’d never find the door. And if, by some miracle, I had found the door, I’d have to pass beneath the scrutiny of the school’s resident policeman. And if I were able, not only to find the door, but exit the building, my car was parked a quarter mile away.
And, since this was a nightmare come to life (…Vladimir Nabokov speaks of a nightmare’s “insolent logic”), I suppose that it was inevitable that it had started to rain—heavy, warm curtains of urban downpour.
I had done some public speaking in high school, but always with careful preparation, and always on trivial themes. Now, here I was, expected (within moments) to extemporize on a complex technical subject. I had one year of college-level reading under my belt. I’d never published. I’d never written anything competent. I’d never had an original idea…hell, I’d barely had an unoriginal idea.
“…and with that, please give a warm round of applause to Jeffrey Burghauser.”
I still cannot recall a single word of my presentation that morning, but I soldiered through. I’ve done very few things that were so unpleasant. During the drive home, my mind was a muddle of rage and shame, occupied by the (more than theoretical) question as to which wrestling move was most serviceable if one’s objective was to throttle one’s dad.
***
Had this happened in 2026, it wouldn’t have been nearly so awful. The most profound change in American education since 1999 has nothing to do with digital technology. Rather, it’s that today’s teachers are ignorant of their subject. With apologies to King Solomon, there are some new things under heaven: history teachers who don’t know history, math teachers who don’t know math, and English teachers who aren’t serious readers.
My classroom debacle would, in 2026, have been much softened by the fact that the teachers in attendance would be entirely too dim to notice that I had no bloody idea what I was talking about. It would be like speaking bad French in the presence of someone who, himself ignorant of French, would, after hearing those telltale front rounded vowels and uvular rs, proclaim: “Sounds fluent enough to me.” I would have been able to drone on like a sickroom humidifier.
If we were to look at American education afresh, what would we see? What would be the apparent function of our teacher-training programs and regulatory agencies? A bit of abductive reasoning might lead us to infer that the entire system is designed to exclude any would-be teacher so unfortunate as to find himself in possession of actual wisdom and knowledge. If you’ve had the ways of God justified for you by Milton, or if you’ve seen Gerard Manley Hopkins push language beyond its presumed limits, or if A.E. Housman has taught you about the sadness laced through all sublunary things, or if you’ve laughed at those figures of pointless authority drawn with such withering precision by Kingsley Amis, P.G. Wodehouse, Evelyn Waugh, and Oscar Wilde, or if a reflection on Shakespeare’s genius has enabled you (as per the Symposium) to ascend that Platonic ladder to the Throne of God Himself…how likely is it that you would be able to tolerate the total, bewildering, fiendish, almost otherworldly mindlessness involved in getting (and then keeping) State licensure?[∗]
***
Until the eighteenth century, writers were dependent upon aristocratic patronage. In the generations since, teaching has traditionally been among those professions pursued by writers. Thankfully, teaching wasn’t that bad. Some of W.H. Auden’s most momentous experiences occurred during his time as a schoolmaster. Samuel Johnson taught; among his pupils was classical actor David Garrick. Poet Countee Cullen was a middle school English teacher; among his pupils was James Baldwin. Robert Creeley (whose centenary is being celebrated this year) boasted that, at some point or another, he’d managed to teach nearly every grade from kindergarten through grad school.
The idea of a classroom with Auden, Johnson, Cullen or Creeley standing at the front … how can one imagine such a thing nowadays? Can one imagine Robert Creeley (as he was, say, in 1950—scruffy, one-eyed, nicotine-stained, dressed like a bandolero), applying to teach third grade? Can one imagine Dr. Johnson being quizzed by some sulky bureaucrat on his local school district’s commitment to establishing “restorative communities,” emphasizing “positive, healthy and respectful relationships that value equitable, inclusive and collaborative approaches”? My own local district informs me, with a level of agrammatical gracelessness that can only come from a half-century of Affirmative Action hiring, that “Restorative Practices includes repairing relational harm and shifts the focus from ‘blaming’ and ‘shaming’ to addressing the root cause(s) and repairing / restoring relationship(s) to reduce exclusionary practices.” There’s a great deal of text on the website. We should be protected from all of it, just as federal law protects us from asbestos exposure.
A description of an old-fashioned teacher is, nowadays, like a description of a blacksmith: we’re all vaguely familiar with the type—without ever having encountered a living specimen of it. Snow-Bound: A Winter Idyll (1866), a long poem by John Greenleaf Whittier, recalls a childhood experience of being snowed-in in a rural cabin. He offers a character sketch of each of the people thrown together in their temporary captivity. One is a teacher. “Happy the snow-locked homes wherein / He tuned his merry violin,” the narrator remarks, “Or played the athlete in the barn, / Or held the good dame’s winding yarn, / Or mirth-provoking versions told / Of classic legends rare and old, / Wherein the scenes of Greece and Rome / Had all the commonplace of home[.]”
This is nearly the definition of a good teacher. He knows his stuff (even the “rare” and “old” bits), and can translate it into a narrative idiom that his pupils can not only understand, but even find “mirth-provoking.” And, as if that weren’t enough, he’s also affably egalitarian, refusing to remain aloof from those common activities (fiddle-playing, farm work, helping a lady with her knitting) that lesser men might regard as beneath them.
The story continues: “A careless boy that night he seemed; / But at his desk he had the look / And air of one who wisely schemed, / And hostage from the future took / In trainéd thought and lore of book. / Large-brained, clear-eyed,—of such as he / Shall Freedom’s young apostles be[.]”
I was once bullied into attending the commencement ceremony for a local university’s teacher-training division. “Large-brained” and “clear-eyed” are not among the epithets that come most readily to mind when beholding these newly-minted educators—all overly made-up women in high heels they’re clearly unused to wearing, wobbling self-consciously across the stage, their unisize nylon gowns fluttering cheaply in the springtime breeze like plastic bags on a Nigerian beach. Teacher training programs don’t produce “Freedom’s young apostles”; they’ll be lucky to produce someone who can define “apostle.”
In his biography of Benito Mussolini, R.J.B. Bosworth writes that, as a qualified teacher, the future strongman was entitled to call himself “Professor”—an entitlement of which he amply availed himself, even when alone with his wife. Being a teacher was a prestigious gig; the chronically insecure Benito was keen to advertise it.
Let there be no misunderstanding: all things being equal, I wouldn’t have been especially comforted by the news that my sons were being taught by Mussolini. But all things are decidedly not equal, and, as between an ignoramus and a young man with some serious reading under his belt, I imagine I’d opt for the latter, even if the latter happened to be Benito Mussolini. I’d rather have Mussolini than someone who is certain that “Mussolini” is a type of Calabrian noodle.[†]
Unappetizing characters can occasionally (if incidentally) illuminate things. Such are the folks whose lives are chronicled in Andrew Jarecki’s documentary Capturing the Friedmans (2003), which follows a Long Island teacher and his trainwreck of a family as they navigate a series of sex-abuse allegations. On more than one occasion, the teacher’s wife, Elaine, is eager to reassure the interviewer that Great Neck (their little town) was full of “affluent,” “educated” people—like doctors, lawyers,…and teachers. She was proud to keep such company.
Nowadays, to say that a particular neighborhood is teeming with teachers is hardly a recommendation. The serious esteem in which erudition and lectern-charisma were once held has long given way to a cloying sentimentality that prompts audience applause when a standup comedian asks someone in the front row about her work, and learns that she’s a teacher. It’s similar with librarians. Although public libraries now are a weird combination of homeless shelter, computer lab, and socialist reeducation camp, some diluted version of the old prestige still clings to those overseeing them. We regard librarians (as an abstract category) with natural sympathy—a feeling that cannot easily withstand contact with an actual librarian: likely a purple-haired tugboat of a woman who believes that Charlie Kirk “had it coming”, that Shakespeare’s greatness is up for debate, that any firearm more sophisticated than a smoothbore flintlock musket should be banned, that Churchill was nastier than Caligula, and that a young schoolboy should be able to have his shvantz hacked off by a medical professional if that’s what he really, really wants.
I object to mutilating confused kids. This objection is rooted in ideas. You, dear Reader, might want to explore them—to trace them upstream to the Enlightenment, and then to squint speculatively into the not-too-distant future, when grown men will identify as clouds, and then attempt to marry their toaster ovens. It’s interesting stuff, if complicated. You might need some help understanding it.
If so, just don’t ask a teacher.
_________________________
[∗] As I write, an article from the New York Post’s Caitlin McCormack was sent my way. The headline: “Florida teacher allegedly kissed freshman boy for 6 minutes straight in classroom.” The best bit: “One of Wright’s stunned neighbors told Local 10 that the teacher, who holds a PhD, was ‘too educated’ for the crimes he allegedly committed.” The neighbor had it wrong. The real shock isn’t that an educated guy can also be a pederast; rather, it’s that an educated guy can also be a teacher.
[†] As it happens, before World War Two, Mussolini served as Honorary President of the International Mark Twain Society. He even contributed a moderately readable essay for one of their newsletters. Although the details remain foggy, he seems to have donated a few a few hundred dollars toward the erection of a Twain statue in St. Louis.
.
Table of Contents
Jeffrey Burghauser is a teacher in Columbus, Ohio. He was educated at SUNY-Buffalo and the University of Leeds. He currently studies the five-string banjo with a focus on pre-WWII picking styles. A former artist-in-residence at the Arad Arts Project (Israel), his poems have appeared (or are forthcoming) in Appalachian Journal, Fearsome Critters, Iceview, Lehrhaus, and New English Review. Jeffrey’s book-length collections are available on Amazon, and his website is www.jeffreyburghauser.com.