Secular Days, Sacred Moments: The America Columns of Robert Coles

December 6, 1997. It was the old story of teachers who have a lot to learn from their humble, yet knowing, students.

52  december 6, 1997 It was the old story of teachers who have a lot to learn from their humble, yet knowing, students. F or the past four years I have been meeting with teachers and principals from across the country who work in Catholic schools, mostly located in inner-city neighborhoods. Men and women, AfricanAmericanandwhiteandofHispanicbackground,laypeopleand members of one or another religious order, they are all trying exceedingly hard to make a difference in the lives of children who, often enough, are living at the very edge of things economically and psychologically. Nor are these individuals all that well paid; their salaries, almost invariably, are lower than what they’d receive if they taught in public schools. But they are devoted to their Catholic faith as well as to their vocation as teachers, to the point that they pay little attention to the clock as they go about their daily tasks. They come to Boston, twenty-five to thirty strong, as members of the Summer Institute for Spiritual Growth at Boston College—two weeks of discussions, lectures, churchgoing, more than occasional praying, trips to Boston’s plentiful cultural attractions, including a visit to Fenway Park, where the Red Sox these days are a collective shadow, alas, of their earlier selves, but where one can still have a great time.  53 I meet with the teachers for half a day twice each week. I ask them to read the stories of Tillie Olsen, collected under the title Tell Me a Riddle, and two stories by Raymond Carver, “A Small, Good Thing” and “Cathedral.”IalsosuggestthattheyreadabiographyofDorothyDay,and I’vementionedorusedothershortstoriesornovelsorpoemsfromtimeto time—moral fiction, mostly, that prompts a good deal of looking within, and that often stirs plenty of conversation. The institute fortunately has a shepherd in Mike Carrotta, of Louisville, Kentucky, who has worked with troubled youth, has been much involved in Catholic education and possesses a natural gift for bringing people together and helping them get the most out of each other. They all stay in a religious setting, and are, in no time, thoroughly relaxed—a big breather of sorts to people who are used to a busy, demanding time of it, often with no letup at all. No question, these are quite humble folk, I’ve learned—each group arrives surprised that they’ve obtained an opportunity to stop and think about things; and each group is hungry, indeed, for “advice” from us secular “experts” of one kind or another. Not that they are averse to reading stories—a number of them, after all, teach English. But they are Americans—hence an evident, strong interest in the formulations and theories of contemporary psychology and sociology. Indeed, some of them come well-armed with the latest abstract notions of various social scientists and look forward, in a college setting, to further acquaintance withtheconfidentlanguageof,say,educationalpsychologyor,inmycase, child psychiatry and psychoanalysis. In that regard, I can still hear the words spoken to me on the first day ofthefirstyear’sinstitute(byawonderfullyconscientiousandbig-hearted man who was a youth worker in a tough ghetto neighborhood): “I’m really looking forward to learning a lot here—so I’ll be able to do a better 54  job with all the kids I’m trying to reach.” He told me much about those youngsters: how hurt they are, and so how distrustful they can be, and sometimes how angry and self-destructive—a melancholy story that he seemed to carry on his shoulders constantly. Soon enough, I sensed his earnest hope that somehow our institute would make a big difference in his working life—provide him, as he put it to me, with “answers to a lot of questions.” Yet, I was there, rather, to listen and learn and offer only themodestlessonsofwell-crafted,morallyenergeticfiction—which,alas, stresses ambiguity, complexity, irony, and paradox, not exactly the staples of our secular authorities who claim to know so much about “human development” or “the behavioral aspects of classroom management” (to borrow a phrase I had recently seen in a university catalog). As I have sat with those men and women, I have marveled not only at what they are doing in their respective jobs, but at their capacity to get so very much out of the fiction that we discuss, the lectures they attend, even therecreationwehaveplannedforthem.TheycantakeashortstoryIhave taught college undergraduates or medical students or hospital residents for years and bring its meaning to a new level of intensity and poignancy for me and Mike Carrotta—and have...