Frank McCourt spent 30 years laboring in New York schools, teaching English to what he calls "the most explosive human beings in the country" -- teenagers.
Even now, he sounds a bit exhausted by the experience.
"Canny teachers learn how to save themselves," says McCourt, who will make an appearance this evening at the Drue Heinz Lectures. "That's a major activity every day -- not teaching, but saving your ass."
McCourt himself might have saved his best work for after his teaching career. In 1996, at the age of 66, he published "Angela's Ashes," which won a Pulitzer Prize for Biography. A memoir of his poverty-stricken childhood in the United States and Ireland, he followed that with another memoir, "'Tis." "Teacher Man," published in November, 2005, is the third book in a remarkable, improbable writing career. But if McCourt is one of the most respected and, at least in literary circles, recognized writers in the world, he is circumspect about his fame.
"I don't think about it because I've been too busy," he says, noting that he spent five years working on "Teacher Man."
What heartened him is how his work has shined a light on the vocation of teaching, how it's much more than nine months of work with three months of paid vacation. "Teacher Man" recounts tales of supersized classrooms, of students who were stealthy plagiarists and those who were stubbornly inattentive.
Today, McCourt thinks, it's even worse, with teachers vying for attention with cell phones and iPods.
"People say, 'Oh, is that how it is?' " he says. "Not that I think it engenders any sympathy or understanding of a teacher's life. A little, maybe."
McCourt thinks one of the problems with the educational system is how teachers are trained. Too often, he says, newly minted teachers emerge with diplomas in hand, but no clue about the reality of their vocation.
At least, that's how he felt when he started teaching in the 1960s.
"It took me 15 years before I became slightly competent," McCourt says. "Because I was taught by people who didn't have that much experience in high schools themselves -- professors with great theories about education and the history of education and thought going back to Plato, that kind of stuff. What good are they?"
Instead of the current methodology, McCourt espouses using retired teachers as educators and trainers.
"They'd love to do it," he says, allowing that the current system does not permit any change.
"First of all, they could use the money," he says of retired teachers. "Secondly, they have the experience, practical experience, to help with young teachers in the classroom. And they'd be more sympathetic than anybody else, any of the academics in the colleges."
McCourt also believes that the educational experience provided by public schools is handicapped by larger class sizes. But he'd rather see a student attend a public school than any private institution.
"I think there's more of America in the public schools," he says, "and there's more privilege in private schools, maybe an unreal world, a privileged world or academic, which isn't always practical. You're exposed to more the public schools. Maybe some of it is negative, damaging, But you could live in a cocoon of privileged private schools, if you want to."
Additional Information:
Frank McCourt
What: Drue Heinz LecturesWhen: 7:30 p.m. today
Admission: $18
Where: Carnegie Music Hall, Oakland
Details: 412-622-8866.
