The Infallible Professor
As we start a new year, I thought I would share a quick story about an experience I had while a student in college decades ago, an experience I am certain many of your sons and daughters encounter in their classrooms as well.
More than 50 years ago while attending a university in the South – as an active duty member of the armed forces – I encountered a rather single minded professor in a sociology class who – in his own words – “Did not want to hear any student’s thoughts or opinions.” Needless to say – having grown up in Chicago – I violated his edict and was ejected from his class when I questioned some rather obvious misinformation he was putting out about large cities – obvious at least to anyone who had the opportunity to live in these cities. There were about twenty young men and women in the class all from rural areas of the state and it was clear that none of them had yet – except for perhaps a vacation – traveled outside the state or came from a large city he was referring to.
Later in the afternoon, I went to his office to discuss why he had ejected me from his class. He was still quite openly angry with me and quite adamant about me accepting a “C” with the added stipulation that I was not to return to his class. I reminded him that I had earned an “A” in his class at that point. He would not budge from his position, so I left his office. That evening I wrote the following poem and had it published in the school newspaper several days later.
The Infallible Professor
“With my professor I must agree.
Not he with me, but me with he!
How then am I to learn what’s true
And pass on to you the knowledge
Of mankind – when my thoughts are
thoughts of a professor’s mind?”
The day after it was published, the professor contacted me and after a sometimes heated discussion, we both agreed upon some ground rules. He would allow me to return to class with the grade I had earned to that point. And I would not be penalized again for questioning anything he brought up in class. While we tangled in class a bit over other items he brought up – he never again lost his temper. And I passed his class with my earned grade of an “A”!
What had angered me most at that time was that my question was brought up in a respectful way. I gave several actual existing locations in the city of Chicago that made his statement of fact untrue – that all large cities were not identical in their physical layouts. Rather than asking me to explain in detail what I had just stated was fact – contradicting his premise – he immediately took on the aura of a dictator and attempted to shut me down by loudly and angrily shouting at me to “shut up” and loudly and angrily shouting that this was his classroom and if he wanted my opinion he would have asked for it.
I wanted to tell him that it was my money paying him to teach us — not to dictate to us. I wanted to tell him that we lived in a free democracy and that all ideas are open for meaningful and polite discussion. I wanted to remind him that is what my uncles and cousins — and my father — had fought and died for during two World Wars. But somehow I also realized that this was not the time or place for that discussion and I quietly picked up my notes and book and left his room.
I realize that his persona lives on in some college professor that your son or daughter may encounter. And I thought the poem I wrote more than half a century ago (change “he” to “she” if necessary) may be used again by any student if it brings the same peace of mind to that young student that it brought to me that night.
I promise to get back to mathematics next month.