We had a fireplace where we boiled water for tea and we ate bread.
They couldn’t believe we had no electricity and wanted to know how we kept food refrigerated. The one who asked about pigs in the kitchen said everyone has a refrigerator till another boy told him he was wrong, that his mother grew up in Sicily and didn’t have a refrigerator and if the pigs-in-the-kitchen boy didn’t believe him they’d meet in a dark alley after school and only one of them would come out. Some girls in the class told them cool it and one said she felt so sorry for me growing up like that if she could go back in time she’d take me home and let me take a nice bath as long as I liked and then I could eat everything in the refrigerator, everything. The girls nodded and the boys were quiet and I was glad the bell rang so that I could escape to the teachers’ toilet with my strange emotions.
I am learning the art of the high school students’ delaying tactics, how they seize on any occasion to avoid the work of the day. They flatter and cajole and hold their hands over their hearts declaring they are desperate to hear all about Ireland and the Irish, they would have asked days ago but they delayed till St. Patrick’s Day knowing I’d want to celebrate my heritage and religion and everything and would I tell them about Irish music and is it true Ireland is green all the time and the girls have those cute little upturned noses and the men drink drink drink, is it true, Mr. McCourt?
There are muttered threats and promises around the room. I ain’t stayin’ in school today. I’m goin’ to the parade in the city. All the Catlic schools have the day off. I’m Catlic. Why shun’t I have the day off? Fuck this. End of this period you’ll see my ass on the ferry. You comin’, Joey?
Nah. My mother would kill me. I’m not Irish.
So what? I’m not Irish neither.
Irish only want Irish in that parade.
Bullshit. They got Negroes in the parade an’ if they got Negroes why should I be sittin’ here an’ I’m Italian Catlic?
They won’t like it.
I don’t care. Irish wouldn’t even be here ’cept Columbus discovered this country an’ he was Italian.
My uncle said he was Jewish.
Oh, kiss my ass, Joey.
There’s a ripple of excitement in the room and calls for Fight, fight, hit him, Joey, hit him, because a fight is another way of passing the time and keeping the teacher from the lesson.
It is time for teacher intervention, All right, all right, open your notebooks, and there are cries of pain, Notebooks, notebooks, Mr. McCourt, why you doin’ this to us? An’ we don’t want no Your World an’ You on Paddy’s Day. My mother’s mother was Irish an’ we should have respect. Why can’t you tell us about school in Ireland, why?
All right.
I’m a new teacher and I’ve lost the first battle and it’s all the fault of St. Patrick. I tell this class and all my classes the rest of the day about school in Ireland, about the masters with their sticks, straps, canes, how we had to memorize everything and recite, how the masters would kill us if we ever tried to fight in their classrooms, how we were not allowed to ask questions nor have discussions, how we left school at fourteen and became messenger boys or unemployed.
I tell them about Ireland because I have no choice. My students have seized the day and there’s nothing I can do about it. I could threaten them with Your World and You and Silas Marner and satisfy myself that I was in control, that I was teaching, but I know there would be a flurry of requests for passes for the toilets, the nurse, the guidance counselor, and, Can I have the pass to call my aunt who’s dying of cancer in Manhattan? If I insisted on hewing to the curriculum today I’d be talking to myself and my instincts tell me one group of experienced students in an American classroom can break one inexperienced teacher.
How about high school, Mr. McCourt?
I didn’t go.
Sebastian says, Yeah, it shows. And I promise myself, I’ll get you later, you little bastard.
They tell him, Shut up, Sebastian.
Mr. McCourt, didn’t they have no high school in Ireland?
They had dozens of high schools but kids from my school weren’t encouraged to go.
Man, I’d like to live in a country where you didn’t have to go to high school.
In the teachers’ cafeteria there are two schools of thought. The old-timers tell me, You’re young, you’re new but don’t let these damn kids ride all over you. Let ’em know who’s boss in the classroom and remember, you are the boss. Control is the big thing in teaching. No control and you can’t teach. You have the power to pass and fail and they know goddam well if they fail there’s no place for them in this society. They’ll be sweeping the streets and washing the dishes and it’ll be their own fault, the little bastards. Just don’t take shit. You’re the boss, the man with the red pen.
Most of the old-timers survived the Second World War. They won’t talk about it except to hint at bad times at Monte Cassino, the Battle of the Bulge, Japanese prisoner of war camps, riding a tank into a German town and searching for your mother’s family. You see all this and you’re not gonna take shit from these kids. You fought so they could sit on their asses in school every day and get the school lunch they whine about all the time and that’s more than your own father and mother ever had.
Younger teachers are not so sure. They’ve taken courses in Educational Psychology and the Philosophy of Education, they’ve read John Dewey, and they tell me these children are human beings and we have to meet their felt needs.
I don’t know what a felt need is and I don’t ask for fear of exposing my ignorance. The younger teachers shake their heads over the older ones. They tell me the war is over, these children are not the enemy. They are our children, for God’s sakes.
An older teacher says, Felt needs, my ass. Jump from a plane into a field full of Krauts and you’ll know what a felt need is. And John Dewey can kiss my ass, too. Just like the rest of these goddam college professors bullshittin’ about teaching in high schools and they wouldn’t know a high school kid if he walked up and pissed on their leg.
Stanley Garber says, That’s right. Every day we put on our armor and go into battle. Everyone laughs because Stanley has the easiest job in the school, speech teacher, no paperwork, no books, and what the hell would he know about going into battle? He sits behind his desk and asks his small classes what they’d like to talk about today and all he has to do is correct their pronunciation. He tells me it’s really too late to help them by the time they get to high school. This is not My Fair Lady and he’s not Professor Henry Higgins. On days when he’s not in the mood or they don’t want to talk he tells them get lost and he comes to the cafeteria to discuss the terrible state of American education.
Mr. Sorola smiles at Stanley through his cigarette smoke. So, Mr. Garber, he says, how does it feel to be retired?
Stanley smiles back. You should know, Mr. Sorola. You’ve been retired for years.
We’d all like to laugh but you never know with principals.
When I tell my students bring their books to class they claim, Miss Mudd never gave us no books. Economic Citizenship classes say, We don’t know nothin’ about Your World and You, and English classes say they never saw Giants in the Earth or Silas Marner. The chairman of the Academic Department says, Of course they got books and when they got them they had to fill out book receipts. Look in Miss Mudd’s desk, excuse me, your desk, and you’ll find them.
There are no book receipts in the desk. There are travel brochures, crossword puzzle books, an assortment of forms, directives, letters Miss Mudd wrote and never sent, a few letters to her from former students, a life of Bach in German, a life of Balzac in French, and there are innocent looks around the room when I say, Didn’t Miss Mudd hand out books and didn’t you fill in book receipts? They look at one another and shake their heads. Did you get a book? I don’t remember getting a book. Miss Mudd, she never did nothin’.