Teacher: The One Who Made the Difference [Paperback]

Mark Edmundson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 9, 2003

In 1969, Mark Edmundson was a typical high school senior in working-class Medford, Massachusetts. He loved football, disdained schoolwork, and seemed headed for a factory job in his hometown—until a maverick philosophy teacher turned his life around.

When Frank Lears, a small, nervous man wearing a moth-eaten suit, arrived at Medford fresh from Harvard University, his students pegged him as an easy target. Lears was unfazed by their spitballs and classroom antics. He shook things up, trading tired textbooks for Kesey and Camus, and provoking his class with questions about authority, conformity, civil rights, and the Vietnam War. He rearranged seats and joined in a ferocious snowball fight with Edmundson and his football crew. Lears’s impassioned attempts to get these kids to think for themselves provided Mark Edmundson with exactly the push he needed to break away from the lockstep life of Medford High. Written with verve and candor, Teacher is Edmundson’s heartfelt tribute to the man who changed the course of his life.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Like Dead Poet's Society, this memoir tells of an extraordinary individual who touched his students' souls and steered at least one of them Edmundson toward the life of the mind. Its setting, however, is not a New England prep school but a tough working-class Boston high school in the 1960s. Frank Lears, the young iconoclast from Cambridge, dropped into Medford High as if from outer space (On the first day of class, we saw a short, slight man, with olive skin... wearing a skinny tie and a moth-eaten legacy suit with a large paper clip fastened to the left lapel). He proceeded to plumb the depths of the jocks and greasers with depth, endurance, humor and wisdom (when Lears listened... it felt as though... you were being fed something, something very good and sustaining). The full cast of the '60s is here: SDS, race relations, Freud, sex and God. Edmundson's perspective, however, is not from the center of the swirl of politics and psychedelics, but from a boy on the brink of uncertain manhood. Lears seemed to me the spirit of the sixties... as much as the spirit of Socrates, says Edmundson, who is now a literary and cultural critic and professor of English at the University of Virginia. Free in himself, he tried as hard as he could to make others free. If the prose is at times larger than its subject, it deftly captures the spirit of the times. The carefully crafted vignettes can't help taking readers back to their own ordinary origins and cause them to reflect upon those teachable moments that made a difference in their own lives.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Although he is now a university professor and literary scholar (Literature Against Theory, Plato to Derrida: A Defense of Poetry), in 1969 Edmundson was a football-obsessed underachiever with a bleak future. That's when he and some rowdy classmates signed up for Frank Lears's high school philosophy course. The rumpled new teacher looked like an easy target for their sophomoric pranks, but he managed to persevere with some unconventional teaching methods that turned several of the slackers into thoughtful students. Lears made a big impression on the author when he rearranged seating, replaced the dry textbook with interesting reading materials (particularly Ken Kesey's One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest), played phonograph records, posed provocative questions, and listened intently to the responses. There's little pedagogical wisdom to be gained from this now, but it was innovative and effective in Medford, MA, 30-plus years ago. Edmundson has a remarkable memory for details and emotions from his youth, and his descriptions of Lears's reactions to classroom situations are fascinating. This memoir could have benefited from more of those reactions and less of the author's nonscholastic conflicts, which detract from his academic transformation. Nonetheless, this often moving autobiography is a worthwhile read. For large academic and public libraries. Will Hepfer, SUNY at Buffalo Libs.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Vintage (September 9, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0375708545
• ISBN-13: 978-0375708541
• Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 0.6 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (42 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #93,766 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #56 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > Professionals & Academics > Educators

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars How Reading Can Change Your Life, August 21, 2002

By 

Michael Pollan (Berkeley, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Teacher: The One Who Made the Difference (Hardcover)

Mark Edmundson's chronicle
of a year in the life of Medford High is, first and foremost, a
compulsively good read, by turns moving and hilarious, unsentimental yet ultimately uplifting. Teacher is bracing from first page to last. Yet Edmundson manages not only to delight but also--deftly, brilliantly--to instruct. Teacher taught me more about education--its purposes, its practices, its rewards--that anything I've ever read on the subject. What
makes a great teacher? What are books for? How can reading change your life? By the end of this wonderful book, you know.

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Life is not defined by who you were in high school, August 7, 2002

By 

Beth Fuller (Medford, MA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Teacher: The One Who Made the Difference (Hardcover)

This book is about Mark Edmundson's senior year at Medford High School, and the teacher who broke that year - and that life - apart. The personalities of fellow students, teachers, administrators, coaches - names changed to protect the innocent! - will be recognizeable to anyone who might have passed through senior year, circa 1970, anywhere, though the particular teacher was one we weren't all as fortunate to have had. This book chronicles that slow realizing when a student begins to understand that you can become your own teacher and you can reach beyond the expectations others may have determined for you. 'Teacher' would make an excellent all-school read, a even better all-faculty read. I loved it, and have passed it along to many friends.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "Student" is more apt title, December 5, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Teacher: The One Who Made the Difference (Hardcover)

"Student" is a more apt title for this book, and that is not meant to be a criticism. The teacher, Franklin Lears (probably not his real name), is in the background, and the student, Edmundson, is in the foreground. Thus, the book mirrors what Lears did some 30 odd years ago: Lears is the catalyst, the cajoler (a reticient one), the 'teacher' who holds up a mirror and asks you to critically examine yourself and your beliefs. Edmundson submitted (and submits) himself to this examination; and, without explicitly saying so, Edmundson invites the reader to do the same (he does this, I think, by writing as sincerely, honestly, and frankly as he possibly can about his own self-examination).

This book is about a lot of things, including Edmundson and Lears. It is biography/memoir, philosophy, popular culture(Edmundson beautifully interprets Johnny Carson, the Beatles, Elvis, and others), history, pedagogy. It's also filled with great writing; Edmundson is an elegant prose stylist.

Unfortunately, book stores don't know what to do with this book (at least not yet). At my local "Bricks & Mortar" their only copy was tucked away in the education section. That's a pity because the book deserves a wider audience. Maybe word of mouth will spread the message. (Perhaps Edmundson has an academic's disdain for self-promotion; to my knowledge, he hasn't popped up in the usual places for authors with new books.) I would especially recommend this book to teenagers. I would do so, however, in the Lears' "You might like this" manner. There's no faster way to make a teenager hate a book than require them to read it. (Are you listening, Teacher?)