Ben and Me_ From Temperance to Humility - Cameron Gunn [94]
Great Teachers, Bad Students
As anyone who made it through college or even just high school knows, there is simply no way to overstate the importance of a good teacher. A good one can make a dull subject palatable and a subject of interest a thing of wonder. A bad one can turn a student off a particular subject or learning in general.
I remember my first college English course. I had been a successful student of English in high school, but after my first Introductory English exam, on which I received a grade of B−, I was concerned that my success had been illusory. Determined to understand how I dropped from the lofty marks of high school English to a rather pedestrian B−, I visited the professor in his office. He looked a little like Doctor Octopus from Spider Man, if Doctor Octopus were dressed in a wool sports coat with accompanying turtleneck and spoke like Anthony Hopkins in Remains of the Day (that movie wouldn’t come out for a decade or so, but that’s how I remember him).
I explained that I was not disputing my mark, just seeking some explanation. “It’s not that I’m saying I didn’t deserve the B−,” I explained, “it’s just a bit of a surprise. I was an A student in English in high school.”
He looked at the paper, peered up at me as if he had never seen a creature like me before, and asked, “And what high school did you attend?”
“Miramichi Valley,” I replied.
Letting his eyes drift back to his work and handing me back my exam dismissively, he said, “Well, that explains it, doesn’t it?”
I never enjoyed another English class.
On the other hand, I also had some good teachers—some very good ones. Mark Milner, a professor of military history, made his lectures come to life. When he spoke about sailors manning the watch on a Corvette plying the North Atlantic during World War II, I could almost feel the cold saltwater stinging my face. Talks on Renaissance art from Gary Waite made me want to visit Italy—or paint a naked woman (well, Gary’s lessons were a nice justification).
What does all this have to do with Ben Franklin? Well, Franklin’s precept for Humility, as we know, suggests imitating Jesus and Socrates. I’d already had my brief run-in with the Big Fellow, so I thought, despite Chris’s warning against imitation, that it was time to give ol’ Socrates a try.
The problem was that I didn’t know the first thing about Socrates. I had a vague memory of him from a single classics course. I also ran into him in philosophy until I dropped the course. Another encounter with a bad teacher and so endeth Cameron the philosopher.
Classics was better. And again, thank the teacher.
Dr. James Murray, my classics professor, was still at my alma mater. He was, by the time of the week of Humility, the Dean of Arts, and since that classics course twenty years ago, our paths had not crossed. Still, if he straightened me out on Socrates once, then surely he could do it again. Despite being in charge of a faculty of thousands of students, he took my call. The best teachers are the ones who want to teach.
“When did you say I taught you?” Dr. Murray asked when I’d explained my dilemma.
“About twenty years ago. It was a first-year classics course.”
“I’ve had a lot of students since then,” he said. “Anyway, how is it that I can help?”
After giving him an idea of Benjamin Franklin’s course of virtues and his precept for Humility in particular, I asked, “Why would Franklin want us to imitate Socrates?”
“You know,” he said, “almost everything we know about Socrates comes not from him but from his students. Plato in particular in his Dialogues gives us the fullest account of Socrates. What we do know is that Socrates considered himself a teacher, but not in the sense that he was imparting knowledge. He viewed his role as something like a midwife.”
Dr. Murray directed me to The Theaetetus, one of Plato’s Dialogues , in which Socrates speaks of his role as a teacher. That was where he, through Plato, described his function as akin to being a midwife. Like a midwife, he could see when a student was having trouble