A Real Prince

Every so often I give an assignment I later regret.

Two weeks ago, after my history class read a little of Machiavelli’s The Prince, I asked them to apply what they had learned to a real life situation they knew well. They were to assess one of their teachers as a “prince”—changing his or her name, of course—and to ask the bigger questions, “Did following or violating Machiavelli’s edicts contribute to this teacher/prince’s effectiveness as a classroom leader? Was Machiavelli right?”

The overwhelming majority of the essays described teachers who would rather be feared than loved, who moved students with force instead of trust, who sought to give the impression of virtue but enforced values they did not themselves follow…and who—almost without exception—were great teachers.

I’m sorry I asked.

Sorry, not just because I am NOT one of those my-way-or-highway teachers but because I can’t help taking my students’ perspective seriously. They know—perhaps better than any graduate student in education—what works.

Some of the essays described teachers who gave detentions for every tardy. Some describe which teachers received late or make-up work first (because other teachers would forgive you everything). Some talked about harrowing encounters with teachers who forced them to do more work than they thought possible or teachers who, in situations where they might be expected to bend, didn’t.

Don’t misunderstand me, my students did not say they liked these teachers, but they did find them effective. These princes of academia didn’t care about being liked—and the end truly justified the means.

Me, I like to be liked. Oh, I understand my kindness has to have an edge and that, as Machiavelli pointed out, too much mercy is in the long run no mercy at all. My tests and assignments are challenging, and I read student work closely. Yet I’ve always thought curiosity a better motivator than compulsion and believed a little forgiveness a sign of faith in a student, a confidence in his or her character. Though I’ve been burnt plenty of times, most students—it seems to me—fulfill the promise you ascribe to them. I try not to trick them or scare them into good work. I try to model an intrinsic interest in learning instead. I want to elicit the labor only loving a task calls forth.

Those essays, however, made me feel like the hole in the fence they’ll always climb through.

By the seventh or eighth essay, I was looking for rationalizations. I told myself they’d remember my lessons longer because they wanted to remember them…and not just to pass the next impossible and terrifying test. I told myself that anything they did to appease me was probably not something they did for themselves and—as their desire to learn is the real object of their education—that’s as it should be. I told myself I had to live the codes of fairness and tolerance I ask them to live by and couldn’t ask them to be more perfect than I could ever be.

And I came close to believing I wasn’t rationalizing at all.

Then I picked up another essay. It concluded with the observation that students recognized the advantage in convincing teachers they liked their subjects. Doing so usually meant relaxed attention to homework and less work in general. The best teachers, the essay said, know few students really love school and don’t trust brown-nosing. They make their students do the work.

I winced—am I living a self-serving fiction transparent to everyone but me? You know the movie cliché…a room of people in oddly-angled too-close close-ups pointing and laughing.

For a couple of days after returning the essays, I stared warily into students’ faces searching for insincerity and listened for laughter that was a little too loud or long. And for a couple of days, I imagined I saw and heard what I was looking for.

Then a student I haven’t taught for a couple of years stopped by to see me. He’d just read a book on his own, and friends told him I’d just taught it. He wanted to talk, to hear what I thought, and, after thirty minutes of questions and digressions, he said “Thanks,” and left.

And that was enough of an antidote. I picked up another set of essays to look for new discoveries. I won’t forget my Prince assignment for a while. Machiavelli could be right about princes, and teachers. Yet, as long as I can’t know for sure, I guess I will have to go on living as if he’s wrong.