Why Teach?
Deep Dives
Explore related topics with these Wikipedia articles, rewritten for enjoyable reading:
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Samuel Richardson
12 min read
The article mentions the Samuel Richardson Award, which the book was entered for. Understanding who Samuel Richardson was—an 18th-century English novelist who pioneered the epistolary novel form with works like Pamela and Clarissa—provides context for what kind of literary tradition this award honors.
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Dead Poets Society
12 min read
The article explicitly references 'Dead Poets Society fantasies' as a cultural touchstone for idealistic teaching. Understanding this 1989 film's plot, themes, and cultural impact illuminates the romantic notion of inspirational teaching that the protagonist struggles against.
During my twenties, my friends would circle constantly circle around the same topic. They would ask, “Should I go for a career that earns money? Or a career that helps people?”
I personally had chosen a career that neither earns money nor helps people (writing fiction), so I couldn’t empathize, but I still had many, many conversations with various friends on this subject. It was probably the defining drama for my slice of the Millennial generation.
But I’ve never seen an examination of this topic in literature. That’s why I was so drawn to Peter Shull’s Why Teach? when I first came across a review in Isaac Kolding’s blog.1 I immediately bought the book, as I often do after reading a review. Usually that’s where it ends—the book sits on my kindle, and I never actually read it. But recently I remembered this book and decided to actually open it.
I spent the next three hours reading the book from cover to cover, very transported and impressed.
The reason people don’t write books about this kind of conflict—what should I do with my life?—is that it’s very difficult to dramatize. There’s a risk that you’ll end up with a lot of rumination and not enough suspense. Because ultimately, how can this kind of conflict get resolved? When it comes to choosing a career path, you just have to pick something. And whatever you pick—that’s what ends up defining you.
But Peter Shull makes a number of smart decisions that are designed to ramp up the tension in the book. The novel is about a young man, in his mid-twenties, who is employed as an English teacher at a school in his hometown in Kansas. The protagonist, William, loves literature, but does not love teaching—something he makes clear at the beginning of the book:
The truth of the matter was that I never planned to teach, never wanted to be a teacher. Not that I hadn’t liked school, or been good at it. I had; I was. But the profession never held an allure for me as it does for some. Not once did I ever look at one of my own teachers and think Yes. That. I would like to do what he (or more likely she) does for a living. To the contrary, if someone had told me when I was a 17- or 18-year-old that I would
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