One of the pleasures of teaching is that it allows you to see books you know well through the eyes of a first-time reader. We all know the pleasures of re-reading books we love, but this is different. Rather than simply reliving that first reading experience, you have to come back to the book with a kind of double perception: you read as a teacher, which means approaching the book through your knowledge and your history of talking about it in the classroom, while still allowing your students their experience of discovering its secrets for the first time.
The best comparison I can draw is to parenting. You have to allow your child to discover things you already know, without giving in to the temptation to impose your knowledge on that process of discovery. Like Prospero, when his daughter expresses her amazement at the wonders before her (“O brave new world, that hath such people in it!”), it’s tempting to point out that what she sees is the old world made new by her innocence. (“’Tis new to thee,” Prospero says bitterly.) And there are times when that’s exactly what’s needed: we leaven their innocence with our hard-won knowledge. But as every parent learns, the lesson doesn’t stick until you stand back and let your child earn her own hard-won knowledge. As teachers, what we say is less important than what our students experience, and often the wisest strategy we can adopt is to allow them to stumble upon what we’re tempted to scatter in their paths.
I’ve been thinking about that idea this week for two reasons: First, the world does seem new, just for a moment. I can’t help feeling, as I read all the commentary on what the next four years might hold, that it’s important for those of us who have lived through a few political seasons of hope not to give in to the temptation of thinking that we’ve read this book before. Some people might claim that they know how the story ends ??? I’m reminded here of the Tory Party billboards that I saw around England before the election that brought Tony Blair to power, which showed a pair of looming, red eyes and the words “It will all end in tears!” — but that’s just the illusion that we can read the past as prophecy. There are two kinds of hubris in politics: the first is to believe that everything has changed, and the old rules no longer apply. But the second is to believe that nothing has changed, and you can predict what will come just by spinning the record backwards. Sorry, kids, but you have to live it.
And the second reason? Because here’s proof that as a teacher or a writer, I can never live up to what a child does naturally. Just press play.