writing

“It Was Already Dead”

John Merrow Uncategorized , , , ,

In December 2023 The New York Times filed suit against Artificial Intelligence for allegedly using its stories without attribution. Now The Times has upped the ante, accusing A.I. of first degree murder for the senseless killing of student writing.

“Not so,” replied A.I. (which is defending itself without benefit of counsel). “We are innocent. Student writing was stone cold, deader than a doornail, when we arrived on the scene.”  A.I. went on to say, “We have a rock-solid unbreakable alibi: we weren’t even around when the crime took place!”

Turns out, that’s true.

In its front page story, “How A.I. Killed Student Writing (And Revived It),” The Times makes sweeping generalizations based on what 400 (out of 5.5 million) college and school teachers volunteered.  Granted, most of these 5.5 million teachers aren’t teaching writing, but relying on self-selected sources seems dubious, especially for the front page.  What we learn is that a few creative and dedicated teachers, frustrated by their students’ reliance on A.I., are having the kids write in class, on paper, with pens or pencils. 

More than a year ago the Wall Street Journal reported the same story, based largely on the dramatic rise in the sale of ‘blue books’ on college campuses: “Sales of blue books this school year were up more than 30% at Texas A&M University and nearly 50% at the University of Florida. The improbable growth was even more impressive at the University of California, Berkeley. Over the past two academic years, blue-book sales at the Cal Student Store were up 80%” 

Both reports hang on the same premise: Student writing is dead, and A.I. is the killer.  I think that’s flat out false. Most education systems stopped trying to teach writing when Artificial Intelligence was still the stuff of science fiction.   Playing up to politicians, many education bureaucrats and administrators (who generally don’t trust teachers) decided the way to ‘raise standards’ was to require students to write more papers and read more books and plays (or excerpts!).  Any suggestion that writing one outstanding paper would be better than six or a dozen so-so papers fell on deaf ears.  Quantity triumphed over quality, almost never a good outcome….

And because writing skills can’t be tested by a machine, why bother trying to teach them?  Moreover, since we don’t trust teachers, it would be foolish to rely on their evaluation of their students’ writing skills.

The murder weapon? Machine-scored multiple choice tests.

The killers? Test-score obsessed politicians and education bureaucrats.

Did they have accomplices? Maybe we need to look in the mirror.

Happily, lots of teachers have not given up. A Google search turns up a treasure trove of ideas for improving student writing, starting in the elementary years.  Writing thank you notes, keeping a journal, and so on.  Here’s one you might want to share with teachers in your world.

It’s not semantics to assert that the goal is to develop writers, not “teach writing.”  That’s an important distinction.

So what can teachers who want to develop writers do?  First of all, take a deep breath because we’ve been through this before. Back when the internet emerged, some students figured out that they could download papers and submit them as their own.  Next came profit-making companies offering papers written to order.  While bureaucrats thought they could win that struggle by spending millions on technology to scan papers and (supposedly) detect plagiarism, thoughtful teachers triumphed by 1) reducing the number of papers assigned, and 2) working with individual students as they developed their ideas and wrote drafts. It’s harder to cheat if the teacher is overseeing the process and kids are writing about something they genuinely care about.  

What’s called for now is emulating what my high school English teacher, Mr. William Sullivan, did nearly 70 years ago. 

Two or three times every week he would tell us to clear our desks of everything except for a single sheet of paper and a pencil.  What followed was what he called a “2-8-2,” meaning that we had two minutes to think–no writing allowed–followed by eight minutes to write, and then two more minutes to read what we had written and correct any errors. He would put our writing assignment on the blackboard.  

Sometimes we would have to include a certain sentence, such as “I wish I had missed that train.”  Or “I still wish I hadn’t missed that flight.” 

Even today I can remember one particular assignment: “Turn out the light; I don’t want to go home in the dark,” which Mr. Sullivan said were the dying words of William Sydney Porter. Of course, he challenged us to explain the contradiction.  

(Fun fact: Some forty or fifty years later I discovered that Porter, whom we know as O. Henry, actually did not contradict himself.  His dying words were “Turn up the lights. I don’t want to go home in the dark.”  Apparently Mr. Sullivan changed his words to create that challenging paradox.)

Although I went to Taft, a private school in Connecticut with small classes and privileged students, Mr. Sullivan’s approach can work at all levels. I know this to be true because I taught working-class kids in a public high school, first generation African American college students in an HBCU, and young men serving sentences in a federal prison.

I used Mr. Sullivan’s “2-8-2” all the time, and I believe the experience started many of my students down the path to becoming thoughtful writers. 

Frequent in-class writing worked then, and it should work in the age of Artificial Intelligence, CHATgpt, Bard, and whatever other ‘advances’ are in our future.  

However, policymakers and administrators have to behave sensibly and understand that ‘less is more.’ That means smaller classes, fewer students per teacher, and heightened trust in teachers.  Those shouldn’t be a bridge too far, if we truly want our young people to be thoughtful and capable citizens.

You may stop here if you wish.  What follows is the story of my own dabbling in A.I., printed in my blog in April 2023, more than three years ago.

If you’re at all like me, you’re curious about Artificial Intelligence and new applications like ChatGPT and Bard.  The brilliant Thomas Friedman of the New York Times says the world will never be the same again, but my interest is narrower: If students can simply ask Bard or ChatGPT to write their papers for them, how can teachers prevent this from happening?

So, naturally, I turned to Bard, which told me (within seconds) that, while it can help students generate ideas, do research, improve their writing, and learn about different writing genres, it’s not supposed to be a substitute for original research and writing.  Then it warned me to “Monitor students’ use of Bard to make sure that they are not plagiarizing or engaging in other forms of academic misconduct.”

Yeah, right. If I’m teaching English in a public high school, I probably have between 100 and 125 students!  There aren’t enough hours in the day….

Second question: Can Bard help identify cheaters and plagiarists?  Within seconds, I received an answer: 

“There are a few things you can look for to tell the difference between original writing and prose provided by Bard.

  • Original writing is typically more creative and original than prose provided by Bard. Bard is trained on a massive dataset of text, so it can be very good at generating text that is grammatically correct and factually accurate. However, it is not always able to generate text that is creative or original.
  • Original writing is typically more personal and engaging than prose provided by Bard. Bard is a machine learning model, so it does not have the same level of understanding of human emotions and experiences as a human writer. As a result, its writing can  be dry and impersonal.
  • Original writing is typically more nuanced and complex than prose provided by Bard. Bard is a large language model, but it is still under development. As a result, it can sometimes struggle to understand the nuances of human language. This can lead to writing that is simplistic or even nonsensical.
  • Ask yourself if the writing sounds like it was written by a human. Bard-generated text can sometimes sound robotic or unnatural. Original writing should sound like it was written by a human.

To put this the test, I gave Bard the following task:

Please write a short memoir of no more than 200 words about my childhood.  I am one of six children, the second oldest and the first-born son. We grew up on a small farm with chickens, a few cows, a few pigs, and one goat. I’m now 81. 

Within seconds, Bard spit out this:

“I was born in 1942, the second oldest of six children. We grew up on a small farm in the Midwest. My father worked hard to provide for our family, and my mother took care of the house and the children. We didn’t have much money, but we were happy.

I loved growing up on the farm. I spent my days playing with my siblings, helping my father with the chores, and exploring the woods behind our house. We had chickens, a few cows, a few pigs, and one goat. I loved taking care of the animals, and I learned a lot about hard work and responsibility.

I also learned a lot about nature on the farm. I spent hours watching the birds and the animals, and I learned to identify all the different plants. I loved being surrounded by nature, and it helped me to appreciate the beauty of the world.

I had a wonderful childhood on the farm. It was a time of innocence and discovery, and I will always cherish those memories.

Now that I am 81 years old, I still look back on my childhood with fondness. I am grateful for the opportunities I had, and I am proud of the person I have become. I know that my experiences on the farm helped to shape me into the man I am today.

Boring, and also wrong, and so I responded: This is inaccurate. I was born in 1941, and our farm was in Connecticut. Worse, however, it does not capture either the small pleasures of collecting the eggs every morning or learning to milk cows; nor does it capture the deep pain of watching a pig or steer that I raised being slaughtered.  Please rewrite.

In just a few seconds, Bard responded by adding a few paragraphs, highlighted below to make it easier for you to read:  “Sure, here is a more accurate and detailed memoir:

I was born in 1941, the second oldest of six children. We grew up on a small farm in Connecticut. My father worked hard to provide for our family, and my mother took care of the house and the children. We didn’t have much money, but we were happy.

I loved growing up on the farm. I spent my days playing with my siblings, helping my father with the chores, and exploring the woods behind our house. We had chickens, a few cows, a few pigs, and one goat. I loved taking care of the animals, and I learned a lot about hard work and responsibility.

I also learned a lot about nature on the farm. I spent hours watching the birds and the animals, and I learned to identify all the different plants. I loved being surrounded by nature, and it helped me to appreciate the beauty of the world.

One of my favorite things to do was collect the eggs every morning. I would wake up early and go to the chicken coop, where I would find a dozen or so eggs waiting for me. I would carefully collect the eggs and put them in a basket, then bring them back to the house. My mother would use the eggs to make breakfast, and I would always get to eat one of the freshest eggs in the world.

Another thing I loved to do was milk the cows. I would go to the barn in the evening and bring the cows into the milking parlor. I would sit on a stool and milk each cow in turn, collecting the milk in a bucket. The milk would then be used to make butter, cheese, and ice cream.

Of course, there were also some challenges growing up on a farm. One of the hardest things was watching the animals being slaughtered. I knew that it was necessary to eat meat, but I still felt bad for the animals. I would often cry when I saw them being killed.

Overall, though, I had a wonderful childhood on the farm. It was a time of innocence and discovery, and I will always cherish those memories. I am grateful for the opportunities I had, and I am proud of the person I have become. I know that my experiences on the farm helped to shape me into the man I am today.

OK, but even with this information, the machine’s writing remains pedestrian and without emotion.  Human writers would know not to begin with their birthday, for one thing and would instead lead with a sentence designed to keep the reader’s interest: “70 years later, at age 81, I can still hear the terrified squealing of the hog as it was strung up by its hind feet to be slaughtered….”

My conclusion: Don’t run from A.I.  But do not create conditions that make it easy for students to use it to avoid work.  “Expect and respect” are the key words: Expect more from students, and respect them by giving them challenging tasks.  

Trump, King George, and the Failure of Recognition

John Merrow Uncategorized , , , ,

My Dartmouth classmate, the distinguished actor Steve Macht, recently shared this thoughtful analysis with his classmates. After reading it, I asked Steve if he would allow me to share it more widely, and he gladly agreed. If you post your reactions on my Substack page or at Themerrowreport.com, Steve will see them.

Trump, King George, and the Failure of Recognition

The comparison between Donald Trump and King George III becomes more illuminating when viewed not politically, but dramatically—through the lens of Aristotle.

In true tragedy, as Aristotle teaches, a man errs (hamartia), comes to recognize that error (anagnorisis), and undergoes reversal (peripeteia). The movement is inward. Responsibility is discovered, not deflected. From that recognition comes pity—because we see ourselves in the man—and fear, because we recognize how easily we might follow the same path.

But when recognition does not occur—when error is never owned, never examined, never internalized—tragedy collapses into melodrama.

And melodrama requires a villain.

King George III, as he lives in the American imagination (fairly or not), became such a figure. In the Declaration of Independence, he is not portrayed as a man capable of self-reflection, but as a fixed force—unyielding, deaf to petition, certain of his own rightness. Whether or not the historical George possessed that rigidity in full, dramatically he functions as the antagonist: a figure against whom others must act, because he will not act upon himself.

This is precisely where critics place Donald Trump.

Trump’s public pattern—over years—is not merely one of error. All leaders err. It is the absence of acknowledged error that defines the pattern. Mistakes are reframed as victories. Contradictions are dismissed or ignored. Blame is displaced outward—onto opponents, institutions, and circumstance. There is motion, but no inward turn.

In Aristotelian terms, there is no anagnorisis.

Without recognition, there can be no true reversal—only escalation. Each challenge becomes an external attack to be defeated, rather than an internal signal to be understood. The dramatic structure shifts: instead of a shared human struggle toward understanding, we are given opposing forces locked in conflict.

That is melodrama.

And in melodrama, the villain is not necessarily evil in his own mind. Quite the opposite: he often believes himself justified, even heroic. But dramatically, he is defined by one essential trait—he does not change. He cannot recognize himself as the source of the conflict. Therefore, the conflict must always be someone else’s doing.

This is why the analogy to “Mad King George” persists—not as a clinical judgment, but as a dramatic one. It names a fear: what happens when power is joined not simply to error, but to the inability to recognize error?

My Aristotelian framework makes the distinction exact:

· In tragedy:

I did this. I see it. I must change.

· In melodrama:

They did this. I must defeat them.

Trump, in this reading, is not tragic. He does not move toward recognition. Therefore he cannot generate pity—only opposition. The emotional field splits: those aligned with him feel embattled and justified; those opposed feel threatened and resistant. Fear and anger replace fear and pity.

That is the signature of melodrama.

And it is why the comparison to King George, though historically imperfect, carries dramatic truth. It is not about monarchy versus democracy. It is about a deeper question:

Can a leader recognize himself?

If not, then the drama cannot resolve through understanding. It can only be resolved through struggle.

Steve Macht

The Teacher Transfer Portal Is Now Open (not)

John Merrow Uncategorized , , , , ,

All five starters on this year’s University of Michigan’s NCAA champion men’s basketball team played for other colleges last year.  You heard that right: all five wore different uniforms just a year ago.  When that season ended, they entered the NCAA’s  “Transfer Portal,” which allows college athletes to sell their services to the highest bidder.  Those five took Michigan’s money and donned the Maize and Blue. 

Now, if colleges are willing to pay millions to men and women who can dunk, dribble, and make 3-point shots, just imagine how much our best public school teachers are going to be offered, when they enter the Teacher Transfer Portal!  

The mind boggles…..

Blanche DeForest, Shelley B. Percy, Newton Isaacs, Porter Kohl, and Rochelle Carson are five of the highly sought after teachers entering this year’s Teacher Transfer Portal.

Blanche DeForest now teaches at MLK High School in New York City, where she works with physically challenged students, using music and movement to build her students’ confidence.  

A native of New Orleans , Ms DeForest, 43, has been teaching in the Big Apple for a dozen years and has enlisted the help of several of New York City’s professional athletic teams to work with her students.  That would seem to narrow Blanche’s choices, because she wants to be in a city with at least one pro team.  “I have always relied on the kindness of the Rangers,” Ms. DeForest says.  

At least five wealthy school districts are bidding for the services of Shelley B. Percy, who teaches creative writing at East Side High School in Camden, New Jersey. A 19-year veteran, Mr. Percy forms his students into small teams, which then compete in poetry slams here and abroad. 

One distinction: unlike most young rappers, Mr. Percy’s students rap in iambic pentameter. Eschewing curse words and vulgarity, these young poets embrace ABAB rhyme schemes and extended metaphors. 

School districts on both coasts hope to sign Newton Isaacs, who teaches science at Collingwood High School in Cleveland, Ohio. Every semester Mr. Isaacs forms his juniors into 3-person teams and challenges them to solve a complex problem. For example, this spring his juniors were tasked with designing (using CAD) a toy for 2- and 3-year-olds, one that would develop their motor skills but not so small that they could swallow it nor too large for them to handle comfortably. They also had to design a marketing campaign to reach young parents.  

Hundreds of his former students maintain that his class taught them marketable skills like teamwork and persistence, while also boosting their self-esteem.

Wherever he ends up, next fall Newton Isaacs will be earning more than $3M.

Middle school music teacher Porter Kohl is also expected to sign for well north of $3M. Every year her fifth grade students in her inner city Los Angeles public school write, score, and stage an original opera. They start from scratch, coming up with a story idea in September.  By October they’re well into writing a libretto, with a clear story arc but also with twists and turns.  Composing the score comes next, which also entails some students trying to master the musical instruments.  Costuming, set design, set construction, rehearsals–they’re all part of the year-long project, which culminates in live performances (which will be videotaped and uploaded to her class’s YouTube channel).

Ms. Kohl notes that, while reversing her name suggests a musical inheritance, her true heritage goes back to her great grandfather, who worked in the coal mines in eastern Europe.  “He was a Coal Porter,” she says, although her sly smile makes it difficult to figure out whether she’s kidding or not.  

Rochelle Carson, a middle school science teacher in Brooklyn, TX, is also highly sought after in this year’s Teacher Transfer Portal. Three years ago she mounted a GoFundMe campaign to raise money to buy two air quality monitors, one permanent and one portable. The permanent machine is installed on the school rooftop, while her students transport the portable monitor from place to place during the day.  Her students monitor the readings over time and then attempt to interpret the differences.  

Two years ago Ms. Carson took a giant step with her students, reaching out to 20 other towns in the United States also named ‘Brooklyn.’  She struck a chord, and this year students from middle schools in almost all the other Brooklyns around the USA are sharing air quality data, allowing them to compare and contrast air quality in most of the continental United States.

Who’s bidding for their services?  The richest public school districts, where the median income exceeds $250,000. The list includes Greenwich (CT), Monte Sereno (CA), Scarsdale (NY), Short Hills (NJ), Bunker Hill Village (TX), Belle Meade (TN), Atherton (CA), Chevy Chase (MD), and Palm Beach (FL).  And when the dust finally settles, these classroom teachers will be earning perhaps as much as $5M per year, not chump change in a country where the median teacher’s salary is $63,000.

Why don’t wealthy school districts simply encourage their teachers to copy these clearly successful teaching techniques in their own classrooms, instead of bidding for the teachers who originated them? I directed my question to Hardwick Cheever IV,  the School Board President in Greenwich, Ct.  “Why do you raid these districts and pay inflated salaries?” I asked.  “Couldn’t you just use all that money to pay all of your teachers higher salaries? That would spread the wealth around” 

“That’s not how we roll here in America,” he replied, indignantly. “If buying talent is good enough for the University of Michigan’s basketball team, then it’s good enough for us. Besides, what you call ‘spreading the wealth’ would be socialism in my book.”

I pressed him.  “Do you feel guilty taking these incredibly talented teachers away from their districts? Many of them are teaching low income or disadvantaged children.” 

“Son, as God is my witness, I have nothing against poor people,” he replied. “But it would be unChristian if we did not do everything in our power to take care of our own. That’s the American way. Get used to it.”


The Teacher Transfer Portal closes April 30th.

“Mr. President, I have a Question…” (and a book you should read)

John Merrow Uncategorized , , ,

In his State of the Union address, President Donald Trump boasted about his actions to lower prescription drug prices. “I’m also ending the wildly inflated cost of prescription drugs.  Other presidents tried to do it, but they never could…. I got it done. Under my just-enacted ‘Most Favored Nation‘ agreements, Americans, who have for decades paid by far the highest prices of any nation anywhere in the world for prescription drugs, will now pay the lowest price anywhere in the world.”

The result of this program, Mr. Trump said, “is price differences of 300%, 400%, 500%, 600% and more, all available right now at a new website called TrumpRx.gov.” 

He’s made this absurd (and mathematically impossible) claim before. In May he said that  the “most favored nation” policy is going to reduce the price of prescription drugs by 1,000% or more. Here’s what he said in late August: “We have something coming up, favored nations, where I’m going to be reducing drug prices by 1,400 to 1,500%.” More recently:  “We’re gonna be reducing drug prices down to a level that nobody – not by 20%, 30% – by like 1,000%. Because, you know, we’re paying sometimes 10 times more than other nations, and we’re not doing it anymore.”  And a few days later: “We have something else called ‘favored nations,’ where I’m going to be reducing drug prices by 1,000% – by 900, 600, 500, 1,200%.”

Two days after the State of the Union speech, I had the opportunity to ask him about these remarkable (and mathematically impossible) price reductions. The occasion was a ‘gaggle,’ kind of an unofficial, impromptu press conference that occurs when Mr. Trump stops to chat with the press while he’s walking to his helicopter or to a meeting.  We all raise our hands and wave them, trying to catch his attention.  He likes gaggles because he can walk away at any time.

Here’s what happened:

“Mr. President, Mr. President, Mr. President,” I called out, waving my hand wildly. 

“Ok, you,” he said, pointing at me.  “You, the tall guy with the white hair. Aren’t you kind of old to be racing around with all these young reporters?”

ME: Trying to keep up, sir.  I want to ask you about your program to reduce prescription drugs.

TRUMP: It’s great.  And you’re gonna benefit.  You and other seniors.  600%, 700%.   What drugs do  you need?  Viagra, I’ll bet.

ME:  Sir, here’s my question: Suppose someone weighed 200 pounds and lost 10% of his weight.”

TRUMP: 200 pounds?  I’d take that in a heartbeat.  If he lost 10%, that’s 20 pounds, so he’d weigh 180.

ME: What if he lost 50% of his weight?

TRUMP: Then he’d weigh only 100 pounds.  What’s the point here? What’s that have to do with drug prices?

ME: And if he lost 100% of his weight?  What would he weigh?  

TRUMP: (stares angrily and shakes his head)

ME: And could he lose 200% or 300% of his weight?

TRUMP: You know what, you’re a pain in the ass. A troublemaker.  Who do you report for?  That’s it. I’m outa here.

That exchange did not happen.  I made all that up, of course, but isn’t it curious that not one reporter seems to have questioned Trump about his shoddy math, his mathematical illiteracy? This is a man who drove a half dozen casinos into bankruptcy, after all.

Unfortunately, mathematical illiteracy is not restricted to the current president of the United States.  Most schools do a lousy job of teaching most of our kids math.  Basically our children are taught and tested on math they will never use, which means we do not teach them what they need to know to survive and prosper and enjoy.  Instead of learning how to estimate and to judge probabilities, the difference between correlation and causation, and the paradox of the everpresent ‘Prisoner’s Dilemma,” children learn that they “can’t do math” and-worse yet–to hate math.  

Obviously, it’s tragic and dangerous when the President of the United States is mathematically illiterate, but in fact millions of adults get scammed out of billions of dollars because they don’t understand how numbers work.  They get misled by politicians and hucksters, with disastrous consequences all around.

(Here’s a personal example.  Someone in my own family, in his declining years, was persuaded to sign an expensive and unbreakable 25-year contract to rent solar panels on his home in Florida.  I’ll bet you have your own stories to tell.)

There is a way forward.  We can demand that our schools rethink how they teach mathematics.  And now there’s a terrific road map,  a wonderful new book, “Aftermath.”  In addition to the clever title, it has a subtitle that tells what awaits you:  “The Life-Changing Math That Schools Won’t Teach You.”  (Its official publication date is March 24, but you can pre-order at your local bookstore, B&N and Amazon.)

“Aftermath” is highly readable, clever and entertaining, but also immensely informative.  The author, Ted Dintersmith, is someone my wife and I have known for a dozen or so years.  Joan met Ted through his support of the African Leadership Academy, whose Board she served on; I met him through his support of High Tech High, the wonderful school in San Diego started by an American hero, Larry Rosenstock.  

I’m by no means the only fan of “Aftermath.”. Steve Levitt, the co-author of ‘Freakonomics,’ has this to say: “In the age of AI and data, we badly need to rethink the way we teach math in U.S. schools. Ted Dintersmith has joyfully illustrated how we can pull the subject out of irrelevance in the eyes of our students–a must read for teachers and parents alike.” 

Scratch that: I hope you will buy five or six copies of  “Aftermath” and put them in the hands of your local school board members.

It’s Never Too Late to Say “Thank You”

John Merrow Uncategorized , , , ,

When you finish reading this paragraph, I hope you will close your eyes and think about the teachers who made you a better person or helped shape the future direction of your life.  Picture in your mind’s eye your old classrooms and what happened there.  What did those teachers do to make you feel smart, special, safe, or valued? Did they believe in you when you were doubting yourself?  Or refuse to let you do substandard work? 

I did this exercise when writing an earlier draft of this essay, and I promise you it’s a rewarding experience.  

Please do it now.

OK, now I have a question: Have you thanked those teachers, either in person, in a letter, or on the telephone?  I ask because thanking your special teachers personally will mean more to them than you can begin to imagine. It will lift their spirits, rejuvenate them, and give them a renewed sense that what they spent their lives doing did matter.  

If it’s too late to make a personal connection because they have shuffled off this mortal coil, then you might consider writing an appreciation and sharing it with friends and family members.  Submit it to your local newspaper, or post it on Facebook or a blog.  Just get the word out there, because that will inspire others to express their own gratitude.

I want to share a story about a former student who called me, out of the blue, a few months ago.  His call could not have come at a better time, because 2025 has not been a particularly good year for me: Brain cancer killed my youngest brother this Spring, a handful of family members whom I dearly love are struggling with significant health issues, Joan and I have lost some good friends to death and dementia, and our country seems to be sinking deeper and deeper in crude bigotry and crypto-fascism.

One day this June I was riding my bike in a hilly part of western Massachusetts when my phone rang.  I normally don’t answer the phone when I’m biking, and I’m pretty sure that I would have ignored the call if I had been coasting down a hill. However, I was approaching a very steep hill that I dreaded climbing, and so I jumped at the chance to take a break.

Hello, I said, tentatively.  “Is this John Merrow,” a man asked?  Who’s calling, I asked suspiciously.  “My name is Paul (redacted). Mr. Merrow was my high school English teacher 60 years ago, and I’m trying to reach him, so I can say ‘Thank you.’”

After I admitted to being John Merrow, we talked for about 15 minutes.  He told me that I had set him on a track to become an avid reader. How, I asked?

“One time your assignment was to analyze some poetry,” Paul told me, “And, because I was kind of a wise-ass, I wrote a careful analysis of the lyrics of a popular folk song, Pete Seeger’s “Where Have All the Flowers Gone.”  I expected you to get angry because I hadn’t done the assignment, but you went out of your way to praise me.  I think you even read it aloud to the class.”

And Paul, until then a self-described indifferent student, became a voracious reader. He told me that during his four years of college he read the complete works of Dosevesky, Hesse,  Steinbeck, Salinger, Orwell, Tolstoy and Nietzsche.

“Want to know how I ended up in your class,” he asked?  

Before I share that story, you need to know about the high school where I taught for two years, 1964-65 and 1965-66.  Like most large high schools back then, Schreiber High in Port Washington, NY, was rigidly tracked, levels One through Five.  As an untrained rookie teacher, I wasn’t allowed anywhere near the One and Two level students, who were, in truth, the students the people in power cared most about.  Their parents were probably professionals with multiple degrees, and so these privileged kids were on track to attend prestigious colleges. 

Most of the Threes had a shot at college, while the Fours were headed straight to work or the military, and the small number of Fives, many with severe handicapping conditions, were basically being warehoused.

At Schreiber, I taught five classes–125 students –of 10th, 11th, or 12th grade English, mostly Threes and maybe one or two classes of Fours.  

By the way, I cannot imagine a better gig than teaching Threes and Fours. Those young people, who felt the opposite of entitled, responded eagerly to any and all positive attention, including challenges.  

Teaching Threes and Fours had other benefits: As long as my kids read a couple of Shakespeare’s plays and weren’t disruptive,  administrators paid no attention to what we did in my classroom. It wasn’t that they trusted me; they really didn’t care.

**That meant we could put MacBeth and Lady MacBeth on trial for first degree murder, with students (in every role) ‘testifying under oath.’  And so we did that. 

**That meant I could invite the kids to set the poems we were reading to music, which they did.  I still remember a trio/quartet performing Edna St Vincent Millay’s “Renascence.” 

**That meant I could encourage my students to “elevate the quality of the bathroom graffiti” by erasing the scatological slurs and replacing them with lines from TS Eliot, John Donne, Robert Frost, and others–and we did that too.

**That meant I could create a stand-alone unit of anti-war poetry–during the growing  VietNam war protest movement–to introduce my students to Wilfred Owen, Stephen Spender, Rupert Brooke, and Siegfried Sassoon. 

**That meant I could challenge my kids to write and stage their own play, which they did. You can read about it here.

Back to Paul’s story: Apparently he was a Four when he got called into the Guidance Councillor’s office. “My father came with me, and when the Councillor said that I should either drop down to level Five or transfer to trade school and become an electrician or a plumber, my Dad erupted.  ‘Bullshit!,’ he shouted, as he slammed his fist on her desk.  ‘My son is going to college! I want him in college level classes!’ 

“And that’s how I ended up in your class,” he concluded.

He told me that he graduated from college with 3 majors: History, Political Science, and Sociology.  “I’m pretty sure I was the only student carrying three majors.”  After college Paul worked for Xerox for a few years before starting his own financial advising company.

Paul’s story about his Dad proves another point: Thanking our teachers is necessary but not sufficient.  For more on parents, please read Billy Collins’ superb poem, “The Lanyard.”  

Have you thanked other teachers, I wanted to know?  “Yes, my sixth grade teacher,” he replied. “I called him years ago and thanked him. This was about a year before he passed away.”

The list of teachers who changed my life for the better includes Catherine Peterson, the First Grade teacher who taught me and most of my siblings to read–and to love reading; two high school English teachers, William Sullivan and Roland McKinley; a writing teacher at Dartmouth, Alexander Laing; an English professor at Indiana University, Donald Gray; and David K. Cohen, my doctoral thesis advisor at Harvard.  I thanked the first and last in person and another, Professor Gray, by letter, but I never had the opportunity to tell the others how much they meant to me. 

By the way, Saying “Thank You” feels really good.  It’s satisfying to close a door left open from your past.  Try it!

I don’t think I will ever forget how being thanked by a former student made me feel. My spirits were lifted, and my troubles disappeared. Of course, Paul’s phone call couldn’t bring back my brother Jim or help my ailing family members recover, but hearing from Paul—60+ years after I taught him—made me feel that I had made a difference. There’s no better feeling.

Teaching has always been–often literally–a thankless job, but it doesn’t have to, and shouldn’t, be that way. So, please, express your gratitude.

Higher Education in the Crosshairs/at a Crossroad

John Merrow Uncategorized , , , ,

Let me begin with an assertion that may upset some readers: Most American colleges and universities are glorified vocational institutions whose primary purpose is to prepare people for the work force. Most students understand this and go about ‘building a resumé’ that will earn them a good job.  This is, I think, a devil’s bargain for the vast majority of students.

It’s the rare college student who focuses on the challenge of ‘building a self,’ even though jobs come and go, and one’s inner self is your only sure companion for the rest of their lives.  And while some professors push their students toward personal discovery and intellectual growth, the primary drivers of higher education are jobs and careers: ”Learn to Earn.”

It has always been thus: Harvard, the country’s oldest college, was established in 1636 to train ministers, and Yale was founded in 1701 to serve the same purpose.  

That said, I think that colleges have an obligation to guide their students in directions that are likely to lead to gainful employment, and perhaps to “lives of significance” as well.  Teach ‘the Principles of Management,’ not ‘Stagecoach Maintenance.’   But also expand your students’ horizons and encourage their dreams.  

Universities cannot accurately predict the future or the future job market, and that can have awful consequences for their students.  I encountered this in 1969 when I was teaching English at Virginia State College, in Petersburg, Virginia.  Virginia State (now a university) was and is an HBCU, serving mostly first generation African American students, many of them from challenging economic circumstances.  A Virginia State education and diploma offered a huge opportunity, the chance to join the middle class.

Remember now, 1969 was the dawn of the computer age. You’ve seen photos of large main-frame computers and the armies of key punch operators who punched, collated and then fed cards into the machines. But even then savvy people knew change was coming.  It didn’t take long: The first personal computer was introduced in 1971, and three years later, 1974, the Altair-8800 became commercially available.

I was shocked to discover that some VSC officials were steering students into a major that essentially taught them to be key punch operators, and I learned that that particular major was the college’s most popular. Students were being told that good jobs would await them upon graduation, and they believed it.

Fast forward to 2025, and something similar is happening. While nobody is being taught how to key-punch, thousands of students majored in computer science and other math-related fields because they were told that good jobs would be theirs for the taking. Now they are discovering that to be false. 

The New York Times dug into this recently.  

“Growing up near Silicon Valley, Manasi Mishra remembers seeing tech executives on social media urging students to study computer programming.  

“The rhetoric was, if you just learned to code, work hard and get a computer science degree, you can get six figures for your starting salary,” Ms. Mishra, now 21, recalls hearing as she grew up in San Ramon, Calif.

Those golden industry promises helped spur Ms. Mishra to code her first website in elementary school, take advanced computing in high school and major in computer science in college. But after a year of hunting for tech jobs and internships, Ms. Mishra graduated from Purdue University in May without an offer.”

Many others are in her situation; they have degrees and debts, but no job.

How widespread is over-vocationalization, if such a word exists?  In a casual conversation a few weeks ago, a friend told me that his grandniece was majoring in “Golf Course Management” at one of the country’s best programs and that her course work included a summer internship at a nearby golf course.  “Do many colleges offer that major,” I asked?  Yes, he said, dozens do.

He’s right. A casual Google search turns up a surprising number that offer a major in Golf Course Management, Golf Tournament Management, and/or Turf Grass Management.  On the list: Penn State, Ohio State, the University of Nebraska, Florida State, the University of Colorado, the University of Maryland-Eastern Shore, New Mexico State, Western Kentucky University, Coastal Carolina University, Mississippi State University, Kansas State University, the University of Nevada at Las Vegas, and (her school) Eastern Kentucky University. 

A few more institutions, such as Michigan State University, offer a “certificate” after 4 semesters and 54 credits.  Sixteen of these programs are certified by the PGA, professional golf’s governing body. 

Internships are a crucial part of the training; one university insists on an 16-month internship, meaning that students are working away from their university for nearly a year and a half, while presumably paying tuition!

While running a golf course can pay more than $100,000 a year, are there job openings awaiting the 600-800 or so men and women who graduate each year?  The US has about 16,000 golf courses, but 75% of them are public courses, under management by a political entity.   There’s probably not a huge turnover in the public or private arena, which suggests that the vocational training that these men and women have paid for (and will continue to pay for) may not lead to jobs in the field they have immersed themselves in.

What do they do now? Are they prepared to switch careers, from one that didn’t want them to something else?  Has specialization done them wrong?

Colleges and universities have larger and more public problems than what I am describing: President Trump has them in his crosshairs, the supply of 18-year-olds is about to drop dramatically, and, on average, one college closes every week.  

However, I believe what you’ve just read gets at the root of the issue.  Higher education has embraced ‘learn and earn’ as its Golden Rule, with disastrous consequences, including isolation and polarization.  How many of those young people who majored in Golf Tournament Management also  took courses in philosophy or classical music, or computer science for that matter?  How many of those math and computer science majors branched out?  

American Higher Education is failing its students by allowing and encouraging specialization, instead of providing and requiring a broad curriculum, an experience that ‘builds a self,’ to again use Jacques Barzun’s memorable phrase.  

He’s worth quoting at length on the value of a broad liberal arts education.  Professor Barzun begins by asking why one should tackle the classics.

The answer is simple: in order to live in a wider world. Wider than what?  Wider than the one that comes through the routine of our material lives and through the paper and the factual magazines—Psychology Today, House and Garden, Sports Illustrated; wider also than friends’ and neighbors’ plans and gossip; wider especially than one’s business or profession. For nothing is more narrowing than one’s own shop, and it grows ever more so as one bends the mind and energies to succeed. This is particularly true today, when each profession has become a cluster of specialties continually subdividing. A lawyer is not a jurist, he is a tax lawyer, or a dab at trusts and estates. The work itself is a struggle with a mass of jargon, conventions, and numbers that have no meaning outside the specialty. The whole modern world moves among systems and abstractions superimposed on reality, a vast make-believe, though its results are real enough in one’s life if one does not know and follow these ever-shifting rules of the game. 

And then he addresses the consequences of living in the silo of one’s speciality:

The need for a body of common knowledge and common reference does not disappear when a society is pluralistic. On the contrary, it grows more necessary, so that people of different origins and occupations may quickly find familiar ground and, as we say, speak a common language. It not only saves time and embarrassment, but it also ensures a kind of mutual confidence and goodwill. One is not addressing a stone wall, but a responsive creature whose mind is filled with the same images, memories, and vocabulary as oneself. Otherwise, with the unstoppable march of specialization, the individual mind is doomed to solitude and the individual heart to drying up. The mechanical devices that supposedly bring us together—television and the press, the telephone and the computer network—do so on a level and in a manner that are anything but nourishing to the spirit. 

The message to students should be crystal clear: do not put yourself into a pigeonhole by specializing. Instead, take courses across the curriculum. Find out who the most interesting professors are and enroll in their classes.  Stretch, because you might discover parts of yourself that you didn’t know existed.   

And, remember, that job that you think you want, that job may not even exist three or four years from now.  Or less, as AI picks up speed.  Before you’re through, you may end up having a dozen or more jobs, and two or three careers.  

The way to prepare for change and uncertainty is to embrace them.

W.B. YEATS, MEET W.H. AUDEN and MATTHEW ARNOLD

John Merrow Uncategorized , , , ,

Prior to the November election, I invoked the poetry of W.B. Yeats, asking his question, 

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

We know the answer, because more than 77 million Americans voted for the narcissist grifter Donald Trump, a convicted felon, and that rough beast became President of the United States today.

Since the November election, I’ve been drawn to the poetry of Matthew Arnold and W. H. Auden, specifically “Dover Beach” and “September 1, 1939.”  Both have, I believe, important messages for us on this dark day, January 20, 2025.

In Arnold’s poem, two lovers are standing on Dover Beach, or perhaps on the cliffs overlooking it.  The narrator begins 

The sea is calm tonight.

The tide is full, the moon lies fair

Upon the straits;

But he (or she) is a pessimist, aware not so much of the apparent serenity of the sea but of an ‘eternal note of sadness’ that it brings with it, a note that many others, including Sophocles on the Aegean, have heard, seen and felt over the centuries.  The narrator concludes with a plea:

Ah, love, let us be true

To one another! for the world, which seems

To lie before us like a land of dreams,

So various, so beautiful, so new,

Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,

Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;

And we are here as on a darkling plain

Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,

Where ignorant armies clash by night.

Could there be a more perfect description of our country today: a darkling plain, confusing alarms of struggle and flight, and ignorant armies clashing by night?  

“Dover Beach” is a poem I have loved from the day I first read it; however, by some trick of the brain I always think of it as having been written before one of our World Wars.  Not so, Arnold (1822-1888) was thoroughly Victorian in time and temperament, and he is bemoaning what he perceived as a loss of religious faith.  

My error aside, the message matters: we must be true to one another today and for the next four years.  And we cannot define ‘another’ to mean just our close friends and family, because we need to reach out and find common cause with everyone who believes in the rule of law, and in fair play.

“September 1, 1939” is definitely an anti-war poem, a plea for love and compassion in a darkening world that is strikingly relevant today.  Auden (1907-1973) was a master of language, and I urge you to read his poem aloud. A few lines: 

Exiled Thucydides knew

All that a speech can say

About Democracy,

And what dictators do,

The elderly rubbish they talk

To an apathetic grave;

The ‘elderly rubbish’ that dictators talk, doesn’t that perfectly describe Trump’s Inaugural Address?

And my favorite stanza of Auden’s poem (with emphasis added!):

All I have is a voice

To undo the folded lie,

The romantic lie in the brain

Of the sensual man-in-the-street

And the lie of Authority

Whose buildings grope the sky:

There is no such thing as the State

And no one exists alone;

Hunger allows no choice

To the citizen or the police;

We must love one another or die.

Each of us does have a voice, and we must use those voices to undo the folded lies.  And because no one exists alone, we must love one another or die.  

Thank you for your attention.