The father wanted his son out of my class.
“Since he’s been in your class, he’s grown degenerate. He doesn’t do his homework, doesn’t listen to any of us — me or his sisters. He’s even less studious than before. I ask him about that dossier you gave him — what are you studying, and he can’t tell me a thing. He’s gotten worse this year, with your class. You’re not strict with them. Just now, when I came in, the boys were fooling around — punching each other, out of their seats.” I couldn’t deny it. “And sometimes, when he’s supposed to be in your class, I get calls from him. Four, five calls. What is he learning if he’s on the phone? And I don’t let my son out on the streets, then he comes to your class and hangs with boys who are a bad influence. I just happened to be driving past the other day and there they were — smoking. My son. Smoking.”
This was news to me, and sad sad news at that.
“I can afford to feed him and clothe him, but a pack of cigarettes — two packs a day — I can’ t do it. You see, I’m a smoker myself. I smoke. I can’t have him smoking, too.”
And I thought he was concerned about the boy’s lungs.
“I just wanted to let you know that I’ll be taking my son out of your class.”
“If you really believe that your son is attending my class for the wrong reasons and that it has a decidedly negative effect on him, then I, too, think you should withdraw him.” Then, in what must have been an echo of my parents, “If education doesn’t make us more mannered, then what’s the use?”
Without taking book or pencil, the student trotted after his father.
I came back into the class feeling betrayed.
The subtle texting, the cluelessness about homework, the horseplay– I knew about those. I had been permissive to a fault. Bas hada kom ‘uttadkheen kom. But that’s a pile and smoking’s another pile.
I confronted them.
“You guys,” I didn’t know who I was talking to, so I addressed all the boys. “I know the pressure you’re under. I go to the University, and every guy who thinks he’s anybody smokes. [Except for the religious crowd, I should add.] Smoking is so prevalent, so casual, so sophisticated — wallahi (by God) the idea crossed my mind.” They laughed. “You might think that smoking is part of becoming a man, growing up, but you shrink in my estimation when you choose to smoke, because it’s self-destructive.”
“It’s killing yourself slowly,” one of the boys offered.
“Exactly. Imagine putting your face on a car’s tailpipe and breathing in. That’s more-or-less what you’re doing. It causes skin cancer, blackens your lungs. Why would you do that to yourself?”
“But, Miss, you’re telling us all this and over there [in the US], they drink.”
“And there’s drinking here, too. What others do doesn’t concern us.”
“And there [in the US], they do heroin.” The boys shrugged their shoulders as if I was being hypocritical.
My reply here was a throwback to Anthony Quinn’s role as Omar al-Mukhtar: “They are not our role models. If they do wrong, must we also? I’m not telling you this because I want to point out your faults as a society or as individuals. I’m only concerned for your welfare.”
By this time, one boy was almost flattened on his desk and a couple others had slid in their seats.
I know that advising prudence and healthfulness is teacherly and motherly and that, at 14 and 15, teachers and mothers are not the hippest role models on the block.
Even so, I am a teacher, not a saint. In the name of leniency, I’ve been tolerating a lot of tomfoolery and that, in turn, has made it harder for the serious to stay focused.
There are a few kids, besides, who’ve been treating the class as a game. I’ll buy their analogy. This is a new playing season. We’re short on time for practice and we’re up against formidable teams. So, this semester there’ll be tryouts and, sadly, not everyone will make the cut.
