Sometimes, at parties, when I tell strangers I’ve taught English for 50 years, I detect a grimace or even a look of hatred, followed by a comment such as, “That was never my favorite subject.”
Let’s face it. English teachers are like dentists. It’s easy to see why dentists are loathed, what with their root canals and teeth extractions. But why pick on English teachers?
There are two reasons: grammar and interpretation. People like to think they have an untroubled relationship with the English language and, when they speak English, they do.
But when they write it, in order to translate written English into sentences that can be “heard” by the reader, they must add all those stop and pause signs, such as periods, semicolons, commas, and dashes. This is difficult, and so people who think they have an untroubled relationship with English learn that they have a troubled one. They tend to resent this knowledge.
And then there’s interpretation. I have two Texas cousins, both of them accountants, who once asked me if “all the symbols English teachers say they find are really there.” I had to defend my profession, so I answered, “Yes, every one of them.”
I know it’s hard when an English teacher has a conversation about Hemingway’s Old Man and the Sea and insists that the book is about the symbolism of identity between the catcher and the caught. The listener probably thinks it’s just about an old guy who went fishing.
But I’ve been teaching English for so long that you are welcome to stop by any time for a tooth filling.
I’m Tom McBride, comma, and that’s my perspective. Period.
