Brilliant Thoughts by Ashleigh Brilliant Born London, 1933. Mother Canadian. Father a British civil servant. World War II childhood spent mostly in Toronto and Washington, D.C. Berkeley PhD. in American History, 1964. Living in Santa Barbara with wife Dorothy since 1973. No children. Best-known for his illustrated epigrams, called “Pot-Shots”, now a series of 10,000. Email ashleigh@west.net or visit www.ashleighbrilliant.com
I Taught So
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ust as I learned from life at home that I never wanted to have children, so I learned from my schooling that I never wanted to be a teacher. Yet, though I stayed childless, I actually became a teacher. Why? Because, with a degree in history, it was practically the only way I could make a decent living. During my 20s and early 30s, I had eight different teaching jobs (if you count student-teaching and camp-counseling). But the only really good one was number eight, which unfortunately was too good to last. It started in 1955 when, still living in England, I learned from a friend who’d recently emigrated to the U.S. and was back on a visit, that there was a great shortage of teachers in California. He thought that, with my London B.A., I should have no difficulty getting a well-paid job. Not until I arrived in California, months later, however, did I learn that it wasn’t that simple. Yes, the jobs were plentiful, and school districts were competing to attract applicants. But a degree wasn’t enough. Also required was something called a “credential.” To get one, I had to take a number of college courses in “education,” (which I‘d never realized before was even a subject) and perform weeks of “student teaching” a kind of apprenticeship, in a real school (in my case, Upland High School, Upland, California, under the supervision of a “master teacher” named Miss Pleasant). Officially, the subject was “social studies.” I never found out exactly what that meant, but what I learned from Miss Pleasant was the importance of a “lesson plan.” Some pupils complained because I couldn’t yet type, and my test papers were written in longhand; some mocked my English accent and what seemed to them my excessive politeness. The one thing I remember teaching these kids that may have stayed with them was that all their surnames had meanings, which could often be traced back historically. Next came my summer as a counselor, just outside Los Angeles at a camp for underprivileged boys. I tried to discourage their foul language by explaining what the nasty words they used really meant. But reports of this experiment in sex education got me into trouble in my next job, teaching English at Hollywood High School, where I lasted only one semester. Then came a period as a substitute teacher, which actually included the 3 – 10 November 2016
worst and best moments of my entire teaching career. In the worst, I had so little control of the (junior high school) class that they were actually tearing up pieces of the floor, and throwing them at me. The best came when, for the first and only time, I substituted at a “junior college.” At that level, there was no discipline problem – but the subject was one I knew nothing about: logic. I would have been perfectly justified in simply assigning “private study” for the hour. But instead, I taught the class! I asked where they were in the book, read aloud a paragraph, thus teaching it to myself, then set about explaining it. I think we got through most of the chapter that way. I was there only that one time – but have always felt it was truly my finest hour.
Some pupils complained because I couldn’t yet type
Some time passed before my next job, two years as a “teaching assistant,” while myself a graduate student, at Berkeley in the early 1960s. This was an onerous grind. It included marking examination “Blue Books,” which I did in a sloppy manner, often hardly reading anything, but assigning a grade based on the amount written and giving students the grades I thought they probably expected to get. Next came a summer session job, teaching sociology, at Delta College in Stockton, California, a place where summer was so miserably hot that, when I finally had a choice between three “permanent” jobs, I chose the one with the most temperate climate, which happened to be at a “community college” in the small town of Bend, Oregon. There, my teaching took a back seat to a “Free Speech” controversy, which I deliberately stirred up and which led to my barely lasting the school year. Finally, in 1965-67, came that ideal position – as assistant professor of history on board a “floating university,” sailing twice on 3-1/2-month semester voyages around the world. That was the pinnacle of my teaching career, but also the end. After all, from the pinnacle, where is there to go? •MJ
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