The Whale Belly

Teaching was a heartbreaking experience for me. I remember my own schooling as an overall negative experience, with all of my learning coming from stolen moments with a hidden book while the adults droned on about things I would later learn were largely misinformed or incomplete. And so when I got the urge to become a teacher it was because I knew what power there was in being able to pursue one’s own passions, and I was excited to foster a space of free thinking and enthusiastic learning.

I was hit hard with reality, though. Not only was the school system and its empowered functionaries hostile to any attempt to veer from the standard practice of control and surveillance of its young students, but the students themselves were hostile to anything that attempted to lure them away from their comfortable place of generalized contempt, apathy, and passive victimhood. The roles and habits of thought and action were firmly intact, and I found it futile not only to incite rebellion, but even to try and coax a taste of it, as if I were a fraught parent holding a piece of broccoli covered in cheese in front of a resolutely picky eater in his high chair.

After seven years I just stopped teaching. I didn’t say “I quit!,” but when summer came around I just didn’t get around to signing a new contract for the following year or looking for any new jobs. It just seemed pointless to me. I had spent years studying and articulating a theory of teaching and learning that had no bearing in the formal schooling environment, whether it was in K-12 schools or in undergraduate and graduate levels of education, which have become more and more extensions of the “hurdling” approach of the compulsory education system toward degrees and certifications to signal obedience to employers rather than anything to do with humanist notions of freethinking, freedom, and empowered democracy. I was out of work and feeling both imprisoned and protective by my superfluity. I leaned into it, with the spirit of Montaigne, though with a shed in a backyard instead of a tower in the country, and dedicated myself to writing and study.

And so far I think I made the right choice, even though I have no idea how or if I will be able to make an impact with writing, let alone a paycheck. It’s strange how I used to think I was a capable writer, but now that I’m not writing to show a professor how smart I am — which usually means aping their ideas — I’m struggling to find my own path. I had to clear away the bad habits of school writing, and when I did I realized that I was only a novice writer at best. For a long time I despaired at this and believed I wasn’t intelligent or talented enough to be a writer. But then I also have moments of clarity when I realize how exciting it is to be at the beginning of a journey of learning, even while nearing forty. It’s stupid to deny the desire for greatness, but it has to be a distant second to the love of learning.