The Pearl of Great Price
From the Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 13:
45 Again, the kingdom of heaven is like unto a merchant man, seeking goodly pearls:
46 Who, when he had found one pearl of great price, went and sold all that he had, and bought it.
In this particular part of Matthew, Jesus is spitting metaphors for the Kingdom of Heaven—left and right, off the cuff, every one of them a banger—but it is this particular metaphor, the pearl of great price, that sticks with me when I think about my chosen profession.
I’m pretty open with my students that to this day (30 years after graduating from college) I still identify as an “English major”—with all its positive and negative stereotypical traits. An “English major” is who I am, through and through—and I try to thank God every day for giving me this identity, this propensity that is best described by those two words: “English major.”
I’m also pretty open with my students that I think that none of them should major in English[1]. I sort of made a mistake, but I’ve learned to own it—and I’m trying to keep them from doing the same thing.
Majoring in English is probably not even going to be a thing in the future, so this argument is moot—but I’ll make it anyway.
To major in English—unless you are under the impression that one day you will become a tenured professor—is not a certain path. To major in English means entering a dark tunnel from which you may or may not emerge.
Your other friends, majoring in engineering or nursing or pharmacy, will simply walk out of college into their job. Your friends who are going to become doctors and lawyers will walk right into medical or law school. You will not. You will, if you’re like me, go on a hike with your other lost liberal arts friends and nickname that hike, “the hike at the end of the world.” It will not be a good time.
Hopefully, you will make it. I gave up on the path to professorship[2] and ended up teaching English to high school students. It has been a good gig overall. I was able to marry, have children, buy a home, and generally lead a decent life.
I majored in English because I was, God help me, following my bliss or passion. I did not consider that this passion is not one that is valued by the public at large or even in demand.[3]
I did not know, back then, that all my friends would be in jobs that earned respect—and money.[4] Everyone else’s money will go up; yours will be static or—given inflation—go down. Your respect level as a teacher will fluctuate wildly based on political trends, but generally always have a downward trajectory.
My joke about teaching is that you are choosing to put your “not-money” where your mouth is.[5]
And yet . . . and yet . . . what literature—and the teacher of literature—gives you as a life meaning is not something easily discounted (by me, at least). Every day that I teach I get to talk to students about, for lack of a better phrase, the meaning of life. Every day I get to revel in “things that are true, expressed in words that are beautiful” (Dante). I am not under the consumerist spell that we are put on Earth simply to earn money or contribute to the economy[6]. Literature won’t let you think that.
Literature and its lessons have probably kept me alive with their wisdom. Wisdom, famously, cries out in the streets and is disregarded.
It is hard to make the argument today that an English class is “worth it” or worth anything but a credential. It is hard to argue for why people should read poems even though William Carlos Williams makes the argument well when he says that “It is difficult / to get the news from poems / yet men die miserably every day / for lack / of what is found there.” Ezra Pound echoes this sentiment when he claimed that poetry is “news that stays news.”
I can’t give you material arguments for why you should take a real English class[7], and my spiritual ones all sound “woo woo.” But I often think of Auden’s poem, “As I Walked Out One Evening” where the clocks chide the lover who has declared that his love will last forever:
‘O plunge your hands in water, Plunge them in up to the wrist;Stare, stare in the basin And wonder what you’ve missed.’
I can’t tell you what you’ve missed in consumerist terms—and how could you miss what you don’t know about anyway?—but I definitely believe you’ve missed something that’s not solely on offer in poetry, but of a certainty definitely found there.
So when I think back to me making the fateful decision to major in English and then to become a high school English teacher, I think of the field in which is hidden the pearl of great price.
I have paid a “great price” for what I’ve gained by being an English teacher and often it hurts me.
It hurts me in the way that the burning coal in Annie Dillard’s anecdote about the monk hurts him. The monk[8] has a vision of existence made up of horror and beauty that burns him and freezes him at the same time but that he will not let go.
I’ve taught a long time and watched my profession wither from higher ed down to my seniors and below, but I made my purchase and can’t take it back. I have to learn to love the life I’ve lived and am living. I have to recognize that I’m a dying breed and hope that I haven’t been deceived or mistaken in my life choices.
In this disregarded field of the pearl of great price, and I constantly learning what that means more and more, every day.
[1] For a long list of various reasons.
[2] For a long list of various reasons.
[3] One principal once said to me, regarding an open English teacher position, that “English teachers are a dime a dozen,” (inadvertently echoing Biff in Death of a Salesman), “I can find one easily . . . But math and science teachers—those are hard to find!” Indeed, in my state, math and science teachers are paid more than English and history teachers because of demand. This does not do much for morale.
[4] Become a teacher and you will know the joy of not being respected by ANYONE: admin, students, or parents. The only folks who will respect you and know what you do—is other teachers.
[5] My other two favorite teacher jokes come from the tv show 30 Rock: In one, CEO and wealthy man Jack Donaghy says to a teacher, “Step away, Chalkhands, she’s talking to a real man.” In the other, Tracy Morgan claims he can’t film a show because he has to do a film in Bulgaria that month and they are only paying him “10,000 teacher salaries.”
[6] Hello Gregor. Hello Willy Loman.
[7] Not a module, not an online course, not a CLEP course exam, not a credentialing . . .
[8] In the most important (non-Bible) book of my life, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek.
