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In 1969, Mark Edmundson was a typical high school senior in working-class Medford, Massachusetts. He loved football, disdained schoolwork, and seemed headed for a factory job in his hometown--until a maverick philosophy teacher turned his life around. When Frank Lears, a small, nervous man wearing a moth-eaten suit, arrived at Medford fresh from Harvard University, his students pegged him as an easy target. Lears was unfazed by their spitballs and classroom antics. He shook things up, trading tired textbooks for Kesey and Camus, and provoking his class with questions about authority, conformity, civil rights, and the Vietnam War. He rearranged seats and joined in a ferocious snowball fight with Edmundson and his football crew. Lears's impassioned attempts to get these kids to think for themselves provided Mark Edmundson with exactly the push he needed to break away from the lockstep life of Medford High. Written with verve and candor, Teacher is Edmundson's heartfelt tribute to the man who changed the course of his life.… (more)
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TEACHER is also an inside look at the blue-collar working-class Massachusetts town of Medford - or "Me'ford" as the natives called it - where the author grew up, as well as the complex relationship he had with his father. There are stories of high school friends, football, sexual fantasizing, racial tensions, and pop culture influences. But Edmundson's narrative focuses primarily on the small, effeminate, Harvard-educated Franklin Lears, a teacher who emphasized critical thinking and individuality vs. the herd mentality. He used the Socratic method and brought in guest speakers (from the SDS) and used contemporary books like THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MALCOLM X and ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST. Edmundson devoured these and other books and began a quest for knowledge that would lead him to college, grad school at Yale and a professorship at the University of Virginia.
He attributes all of this to a strange little man who taught for only one year, but made all the difference. Lears showed him books. Edmundson began reading. Here's what he says now about the importance of books -
"... through books one is incarnated many times ... Those aghast at having only one life on earth are drawn inexorably to books, and in them find the deep and true illusion of living not just their own too short life but of inhabiting many existences, many modes of being, and so of cheating fate a little."
Edmundson succeeds admirably in his intent of showing the importance of just one good teacher, but in tracing that teacher's influence on his own life he also shows how important books are. In one of the chapters here Edmundson relates how Lears combined his Socratic method with examining the lyrics of pop music. He called the chapter "Socrates Rocks." The same part of the book illustrates his own magical awakening to the world of books. He could just as easily have called the chapter "Books Rock."
A fascinating read, well-written, reavealing and honest. Highly recommended.