Teaching Fellows

To the Editors of the Crimson:

As the teaching fellow featured in the front page Crimson photo of January 27, taken while I was marking "Shakespeare" (Literature and Arts A-40b) bluebooks in Tommy's Lunch, I was disturbed by the Feb. 24 letter from "Harvard Parent" not only on my own behalf, but on behalf of all Harvard teaching fellows. Certainly the Harvard section system is not perfect, and neither are teaching fellows, but it is all too easy to blame the section leader, as "Harvard Parent" does, for problems which are often due to deep contradictions within the the educational establishment itself. These problems are only exacerbated, I might add, by the erroneous attitudes about education exemplified by "Harvard Parent's" own letter.

A number of responses to this letter have already pointed out some of the special burdens--financial, professional, and personal--which a graduate student suffers under, and I do not wish to belabor this point. But I would like to point out some of the subtler and more insidious implications lurking behind the outraged surface of "Harvard Parent's" diatribe I cannot, for one thing, accept the implied assumption that all marking, all writing, and indeed all thinking is possible only under strictly controlled and "professional" conditions, that should not vary according to the character and circumstances of student and instructor. While I would never do all my grading in Tommy's, and in fact do most in my office which is directly across the street from this "greasy spoon", I see nothing wrong with taking some time there for a coffee and doughnut, or with bringing my work with me. I cannot speak for "Harvard Parent," but I find the enforced isolation of any office rather forbidding at times, especially when the rows of books in front of me remind me of the thesis which I have put aside while I fulfill my teaching responsibilities. Tommy's can actually help my concentration; it may not be the clean, well-lighted place of my dreams, but on a sunny. Thursday afternoon it can be rather pleasant indeed, with its homincss, its, unique personal touches, its tireless staff and its familiar "regulars." It has the unkillable buzz of a life which no institution can eradicate, of a life which extends far beyond the classrooms of Harvard into the city itself, and is echoed too in the pages of the Riverside Shakespeare which I hold before me as I mark my exams.

Perhaps "Harvard Parent" would prefer it if Harvard were purged of certain undesirable influences, of things that might interfere with the efficient transmission of neat packets of information, of tried and true "cultural values" into the gaping brains of children. One must first, at all costs, protect our charges from the "commerce of Cambridge merchants," from the "excited talk," "loud laughter," and "disruptive groans" one so often hears in establishments like Tommy's. Really the help should keep "the clatter of dishes" behind closed doors. And the teachers? Well "Harvard Parent" concedes that "the gods and goddesses who collect full salaries must be left to their mountain-top citadels": there is no alternative but to leave the dirty work to those of us who Labour in the valley of diminutive wages. But we sweating apprentices must not reveal to our clients that there may be some loose cogs in the grand machine. Certainly our "own eccentricities" and "insecurities" must be kept well hidden, like those "dingy apartments" which the graduate student is often forced to live in After all, student kind cannot bear very much reality. Let us avoid, too, any use of first names, any "cultivated casualness" which might muddy the sheen of professionalism and authority which we should exude like high quality machine oil. And God help us all if any of we young professionals ever "take personal offense!"

Perhaps "Harvard Parent" would prefer that we all perform like professional teachers. If we were paid like professional teachers, perhaps we would. But I do not think that professional teachers are what this university needs, at least not of the type that "Harvard Parent" seems to favor. I always though a university was supposed to be a place where students choose to learn, and learn to choose. A section is the best opportunity for a student to make personal choice significant in his or her own education: it is finally the student's responsibility, not the section leader's, to make section work. We can mark, we can supervise, we can make suggestions, but when we spoonfeed our students we are cheating them. At our best we can show them the life of the mind in action, and stimulate them to use their own minds in the same way. Doug Martin   Teaching Fellow, GSAS