1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:03,180 UNIT 2 FACING LIFE'S OBSTACLES 2 00:00:03,180 --> 00:00:05,760 PAGE 38 READING 1 3 00:00:05,760 --> 00:00:08,940 THE EDUCATION OF FRANK MCCOURT 4 00:00:08,940 --> 00:00:12,320 BY BARBARA SANDE DIMMETT FROM READER'S DIGEST 5 00:00:12,320 --> 00:00:17,820 Frank McCourt sat on a stage in New York City's Lincoln Center, 6 00:00:18,420 --> 00:00:20,660 his white hair glistening under the lights overhead. 7 00:00:21,660 --> 00:00:24,180 He was still boyish of expression at sixty-six, 8 00:00:24,600 --> 00:00:28,600 and smile lines radiated from hazel eyes bright with inquisitiveness. 9 00:00:28,600 --> 00:00:34,780 Soon, he would be addressing the 1997 graduating class of Stuyvesant High School, 10 00:00:35,140 --> 00:00:37,500 where he had taught English for eighteen years. 11 00:00:38,880 --> 00:00:41,520 He let his mind wander as he gazed out at the Great Hall. 12 00:00:42,800 --> 00:00:45,380 I've learned so much from kids like these, he thought. 13 00:00:46,040 --> 00:00:47,940 They gave me much more than I gave them. 14 00:00:49,160 --> 00:00:51,620 Yo, teach! a voice boomed. 15 00:00:52,680 --> 00:00:55,180 Frank McCourt scanned the adolescents in his classroom. 16 00:00:55,180 --> 00:00:57,800 It was the fall of 1970, 17 00:00:57,800 --> 00:01:00,880 and his first week of teaching at Seward Park High School, 18 00:01:01,340 --> 00:01:03,740 which sat in the midst of dilapidated tenement buildings 19 00:01:03,740 --> 00:01:05,860 on Manhattan's Lower East Side. 20 00:01:06,880 --> 00:01:08,800 McCourt located the speaker and nodded. 21 00:01:09,900 --> 00:01:12,560 You talk funny, the student said. Where are you from? 22 00:01:13,760 --> 00:01:15,140 Ireland, McCourt replied. 23 00:01:16,100 --> 00:01:18,900 With more than ten years of teaching experience under his belt, 24 00:01:19,300 --> 00:01:21,660 this kind of interrogation no longer surprised him. 25 00:01:21,660 --> 00:01:24,920 But one question in particular still made him squirm. 26 00:01:25,800 --> 00:01:27,760 Where'd you go to high school, someone else asked. 27 00:01:28,760 --> 00:01:32,620 If I tell them the truth, they'll feel superior to me, McCourt thought. 28 00:01:33,420 --> 00:01:34,600 They'll throw it in my face. 29 00:01:35,600 --> 00:01:39,280 Most of all, he feared an accusation he'd heard before from himself. 30 00:01:40,100 --> 00:01:42,680 You come from nothing, so you are nothing. 31 00:01:43,700 --> 00:01:46,180 But McCourt's heart whispered another possibility. 32 00:01:47,060 --> 00:01:50,620 Maybe these kids are yearning for a way of figuring out this new teacher. 33 00:01:50,620 --> 00:01:55,000 Am I willing to risk being humiliated in the classroom to find out? 34 00:01:56,180 --> 00:01:57,380 Come on, tell us. 35 00:01:57,380 --> 00:01:58,620 Where'd you go to high school? 36 00:01:59,400 --> 00:02:01,080 I never did, McCourt replied. 37 00:02:01,740 --> 00:02:02,960 Did you get thrown out? 38 00:02:04,000 --> 00:02:06,480 I was right, the teacher thought. They're curious. 39 00:02:07,540 --> 00:02:10,660 McCourt explained he'd left school after the eighth grade to take a job. 40 00:02:11,600 --> 00:02:13,620 How'd you get to be a teacher then, they asked. 41 00:02:14,600 --> 00:02:18,300 When I came to America, he began, I dreamed bigger dreams. 42 00:02:18,920 --> 00:02:20,280 I loved reading and writing, 43 00:02:20,560 --> 00:02:23,000 and teaching was the most exalted profession I could imagine. 44 00:02:23,620 --> 00:02:26,180 I was unloading signs of beef down on the docks 45 00:02:26,360 --> 00:02:27,300 when I decided... 46 00:02:27,300 --> 00:02:32,660 enough was enough. By then, I'd done a lot of reading on my own, so I persuaded New York 47 00:02:32,660 --> 00:02:38,280 University to enroll me. McCourt wasn't surprised that this story fascinated his students. 48 00:02:39,040 --> 00:02:43,100 Theirs wasn't the kind of poverty McCourt had known. They had electricity and food. 49 00:02:43,860 --> 00:02:48,360 But he recognized the telltale signs of need in some of his students' threadbare clothes 50 00:02:48,360 --> 00:02:52,320 and sensed the bitter shame and hopelessness he knew all too well. 51 00:02:52,320 --> 00:02:57,580 If recounting his own experiences would jolt these kids out of their defeatism 52 00:02:57,580 --> 00:03:00,660 so he could teach them something, that's what he would do. 53 00:03:01,620 --> 00:03:06,060 A born storyteller, McCourt drew from a repertoire of accounts about his youth. 54 00:03:06,820 --> 00:03:11,920 His students would listen, spellbound by the gritty details, drawn by something more powerful 55 00:03:11,920 --> 00:03:18,420 than curiosity. He'd look from face to face, recognizing a bit of himself in each sober gaze. 56 00:03:19,520 --> 00:03:22,300 Since humor had been the McCourt's weapon against life's 57 00:03:22,300 --> 00:03:25,240 miseries and limerick, he used it to describe those days. 58 00:03:26,060 --> 00:03:29,160 Dinner usually was bread and tea, he told the students. 59 00:03:29,840 --> 00:03:35,320 Mam used to say, we've got our balanced diet, a solid and a liquid. What more could we want? 60 00:03:36,020 --> 00:03:41,280 The students roared with laughter. He realized that his honesty was helping forge a link 61 00:03:41,280 --> 00:03:47,040 with kids who normally regarded teachers as adversaries. At the same time, the more he 62 00:03:47,040 --> 00:03:50,360 talked about his past, the better he understood how it affected him. 63 00:03:51,680 --> 00:03:52,280 While at home, he'd read a book about his past. He'd read a book about his past. He'd read a book 64 00:03:52,300 --> 00:03:58,140 about his past. He'd read a book about his past.なる 65 00:03:58,140 --> 00:04:02,460 McCourt chose the decrepit bed he and his brothers had shared. He wrote of their being 66 00:04:02,460 --> 00:04:07,020 scratched by the stiff stuffing protruding from the mattress, and of ending up jumbled 67 00:04:07,020 --> 00:04:11,980 together in the sagging center with fleas leaping all over their bodies. The professor 68 00:04:11,980 --> 00:04:15,420 gave McCourt an A and asked him to read the essay to the class. 69 00:04:16,180 --> 00:04:22,160 No, McCourt said, recoiling at the thought. But for the first time, he began to see his 70 00:04:22,160 --> 00:04:26,840 his sordid childhood, with all the miseries, betrayals, and longings that tormented him still, 71 00:04:27,320 --> 00:04:31,920 as a worthy topic. Maybe that's what I was born to put on the page, he thought. 72 00:04:33,320 --> 00:04:37,460 While teaching, McCourt wrote occasional articles for newspapers and magazines. 73 00:04:38,360 --> 00:04:44,780 But his major effort, a memoir of 150 pages that he churned out in 1966, remained unfinished. 74 00:04:45,820 --> 00:04:51,540 Now he leafed through his students' transcribed essays. They lacked polish, but somehow they 75 00:04:51,540 --> 00:04:56,700 worked in a way his writing didn't. I'm trying to teach these kids to write, he thought, 76 00:04:57,220 --> 00:05:02,960 yet I haven't found the secret myself. The bell rang in the faculty lounge at Stuyvesant High 77 00:05:02,960 --> 00:05:08,180 School in Manhattan. When McCourt began teaching at the prestigious public high school in 1972, 78 00:05:08,860 --> 00:05:14,600 he joked that he'd finally made it to paradise. Some 13,000 students sought admission each year, 79 00:05:14,980 --> 00:05:20,560 competing for approximately 700 vacancies. Part of the fun of working with these bright students 80 00:05:20,560 --> 00:05:21,520 was keeping them afloat. 81 00:05:21,540 --> 00:05:26,580 A few degrees off balance. McCourt asked at the beginning of a creative writing class, 82 00:05:27,220 --> 00:05:31,740 what did you have for dinner last night? The students stared at him as if he'd lost his wits. 83 00:05:32,640 --> 00:05:38,100 Why am I asking this? Because you need to become good observers of detail if you're going to write 84 00:05:38,100 --> 00:05:45,520 well. As answers trickled in, McCourt countered with more questions. Where did you eat? Who else 85 00:05:45,520 --> 00:05:51,220 was there? Who cleaned up afterward? Student after student revealed families' 86 00:05:51,540 --> 00:05:57,180 lives were fragmented by divorce and loneliness. We always argue at the table. We don't eat together. 87 00:05:58,380 --> 00:06:03,460 As he listened, McCourt mentally cataloged the differences and similarities between his early 88 00:06:03,460 --> 00:06:09,540 life and theirs. He began to appreciate more the companionship that enriched the meager meals his 89 00:06:09,540 --> 00:06:15,360 mother had struggled to put on the table. That night, McCourt lay awake in bed, harvesting the 90 00:06:15,360 --> 00:06:21,260 bounty of his chronic insomnia. He visualized himself standing on a street in Limerick and took 91 00:06:21,260 --> 00:06:27,680 an imaginary walkabout. He looked at shops and pubs, noting their names, and peered through their 92 00:06:27,680 --> 00:06:35,300 windows. He read street signs and recognized people walking past. Oblivious to time, he wandered the 93 00:06:35,300 --> 00:06:40,760 Limerick of his mind, collecting the details of scenery and a cast for the book that festered 94 00:06:40,760 --> 00:06:46,000 inside him. Yet, when he later picked up a notebook and tried to set down the previous 95 00:06:46,000 --> 00:06:50,720 night's travels, he stopped. McCourt knew that he was still holding back. 96 00:06:51,260 --> 00:06:56,160 Before, he had done it out of respect for his mother, who would have been mortified to see the 97 00:06:56,160 --> 00:07:03,420 darkest and most searing episodes of his childhood in print. But she had died in 1981, and with her 98 00:07:03,420 --> 00:07:09,360 had died his excuse. At least the bits and pieces that bubbled into his consciousness 99 00:07:09,360 --> 00:07:14,460 enlivened the stories he told in class. Everyone has a story to tell, he said. 100 00:07:14,900 --> 00:07:21,140 Write about what you know with conviction, from the heart. Dig deep, he urged. Find your own voice, 101 00:07:21,260 --> 00:07:22,660 and dance your own dance. 102 00:07:24,240 --> 00:07:30,480 On Fridays, the students read their compositions aloud. To draw them out, McCourt would read 103 00:07:30,480 --> 00:07:32,860 excerpts from his duffel bag full of notebooks. 104 00:07:33,580 --> 00:07:38,460 You had such an interesting childhood, Mr. McCourt, they said. Why don't you write a book? 105 00:07:39,320 --> 00:07:44,680 They threw his own words back at him. It sounds like there's more to that story. Dig deeper. 106 00:07:45,900 --> 00:07:49,860 McCourt was past fifty and painfully aware of the passage of time. 107 00:07:51,260 --> 00:07:55,620 His growing frustration at his unfinished book. He never tired of his students' work. 108 00:07:56,520 --> 00:07:59,540 These young people have been giving you lessons in courage, he thought. 109 00:08:00,140 --> 00:08:02,160 When will you dare as mightily as they? 110 00:08:03,340 --> 00:08:10,860 It was October 1994. Frank McCourt, now retired, sat down and read his book's new opening, 111 00:08:10,860 --> 00:08:14,440 which he had written a few days before and still found satisfying. 112 00:08:15,100 --> 00:08:17,300 But many blank pages lay before him. 113 00:08:18,200 --> 00:08:20,880 What if I never get it right, he wondered grimly. 114 00:08:21,260 --> 00:08:26,900 He stared at the logs glowing in the fireplace and could almost hear students' voices from 115 00:08:26,900 --> 00:08:32,380 years past, some angry, some defeated, others confused and seeking guidance. 116 00:08:33,440 --> 00:08:36,960 It's no good, Mr. McCourt. I don't have what it takes. 117 00:08:38,060 --> 00:08:43,140 Then Frank McCourt, author, heard the steadying tones of Frank McCourt, teacher. 118 00:08:44,180 --> 00:08:49,920 Of course you do. Dig deeper. Find your own voice and dance your own dance. 119 00:08:51,260 --> 00:08:53,260 He scribbled a few lines. 120 00:08:54,260 --> 00:08:57,260 I'm in a playground on Classen Avenue in Brooklyn with my brother Malachy. 121 00:08:58,260 --> 00:09:02,260 He's two. I'm three. We're on the seesaw. 122 00:09:03,260 --> 00:09:08,260 In the innocent voice of an unprotected child who could neither comprehend nor control the world around him, 123 00:09:09,260 --> 00:09:12,260 Frank McCourt told his tale of poverty and abandonment. 124 00:09:13,260 --> 00:09:18,260 In September 1996, Angela's ashes hit bookstores. 125 00:09:19,260 --> 00:09:20,260 Within weeks, McCourt received an excited call from his teacher. 126 00:09:22,260 --> 00:09:26,260 His book was getting warm reviews and selling at an unbelievable rate. 127 00:09:27,260 --> 00:09:38,260 The most surprising call came on April 7, 1997, when McCourt learned that Angela's ashes had received America's most coveted literary award, the Pulitzer Prize. 128 00:09:39,260 --> 00:09:43,260 McCourt laid his hands on the lectern, finishing his commencement address at Lincoln Center. 129 00:09:44,260 --> 00:09:48,260 Early in my teaching days, the kids asked me the meaning of a poem, he said. 130 00:09:49,260 --> 00:09:50,260 I replied, 131 00:09:50,260 --> 00:09:51,260 I don't know any more than you do. 132 00:09:52,260 --> 00:09:53,260 I have ideas. 133 00:09:53,260 --> 00:09:54,260 What are your ideas? 134 00:09:55,260 --> 00:09:57,260 I realized then that we're all in the same boat. 135 00:09:58,260 --> 00:09:59,260 What does anybody know? 136 00:10:00,260 --> 00:10:06,260 So when you go forth tonight, fellow students, for I'm still one of you, remember that you know nothing. 137 00:10:07,260 --> 00:10:10,260 Be excited that your whole life is before you for learning. 138 00:10:11,260 --> 00:10:15,260 As he gave them a crooked smile, the students leapt to their feet, waving and whistling. 139 00:10:16,260 --> 00:10:19,260 This is too much, he thought, startled by the intensity of their response. 140 00:10:20,260 --> 00:10:24,260 During months of speeches and book signings, he had received many accolades. 141 00:10:25,260 --> 00:10:28,260 But this, this left him fighting back tears. 142 00:10:29,260 --> 00:10:32,260 It's the culmination of everything coming from them. 143 00:10:33,260 --> 00:10:42,260 Their standing ovation continued long after Frank McCourt, the teacher who had learned his own lessons slowly but well, returned to his seat.