20150315.0822

I missed Ultimate Pi Day. I do not miss that today is the Ides of March. Prospective dictators for life, beware.

In a Pythonesque turn, I just read Danielle Steel's Prodigal Son--not from any great desire to read the book or books by the author, mind, but because I was paid to write a review, analysis, and summary of it. Such is the freelance work I most often do. Among the many comments made amid the over-extended exposition in the novel is one that ostensibly marks a turning point in the early life of the protagonist. (He--and it is, of course, a he--is not the most sympathetic character, really, being a Wall Street investment banker leading up to the 2008 crash. He is, in fact, part of the problem.) Interestingly enough, the turn comes as the result of actions by a high school teacher and an English professor. Despite the many, many problems in the novel, therefore, I have to concede that there is some reason for reading it (aside from the paycheck for me); the book quietly reaffirms the value of involved, engaged classroom instruction.

Not all media do, of course. A brief survey of public "debate" reveals great unease about teaching as a profession, frequent assertions of Shaw's adage about teaching, and outright hatred and anger (such as I have discussed before, if some years back). A more concrete discussion, and one more targeted at the professoriate in English, can be found in Timothy L. Carens's September 2010 College English article, "Serpents in the Garden: English Professors in Contemporary Film and Television." In it, Carens points out that the dominant portrayal of the English professor is as a predatory, exploitative figure, using the position to secure sexual favors from students until they surpass his (and, again, it is almost always a "he" who is the professor) critical abilities. In few if any cases are teachers noted for the advocacy they do for their students--unless it is by teachers themselves, who are then roundly decried by others in the "debate" as betraying their biases.

Steel does not follow suit in Prodigal Son. In the first chapter of the text,* amid a lengthy explication of the protagonist's personal history, the comments are made that a single high school teacher wrote a glowing recommendation for him to get into college and that an English professor made available both tutoring and the testing that identified a learning difference (thus offering an explanation for earlier academic troubles, themselves an impetus for behavioral difficulties). Clearly implied is that the combination of the two enabled the protagonist to enter into the financial field where he had, over twenty years, made much money for himself and his clients. While the argument can be made that, by enabling a character who has to be regarded as an active component in predatory financial practices that contributed to worldwide economic crisis and workforce dislocation, the teacher and professor under discussion are themselves complicit in the world's problems, the counterargument could be advanced that the protagonist himself suffers financial dislocation (and familial as a result) and so appropriately atones for his sins. The counterargument could also be made that tutors cannot be held to account for the actions their pupils take after the tutelage is done.

A stronger argument could be made, though, that by assigning to the protagonist--with whom the novel works to develop readerly sympathy and at least partially succeeds by the end--the benefit of the teacher and the professor, Prodigal Son tacitly validates the experience of the classroom. It reiterates the positive influence that one or two engaged instructors can have in the lives of students--even amid systems that do not always or even often conduce to instructor engagement. And because it does so in a mass market production likely to have substantial reach--the Amazon.com page for the novel offers glowing statistics for its purchase and readership--it is likely to spread that message to many, perhaps serving in some small way as a corrective to the prevailing disdain for the profession of teaching. I partake of it yet, as I have made obvious, and I will take any help I can get.

*I suppose I ought to note that the copy of the text I read for work is an electronic one, so pagination is unstable and thus inappropriate for citation.