Before any of us have time to question just what our history teacher was doing in the harsh wilderness of our neighbors to the north or what any of this has to do with Alaska, he begins.
“It was cold that summer, even for Canada.” By now his eyes are manic. By now they are eyes that would strike fear into the hearts of mankind. But we are beyond this, we’ve seen this all before.
“It was cold and I was minding my own business. It’d been days since I’d last seen another human being; it’d been much longer since I’d been in contact with any. I’d become one with my surroundings. The forest took me in as it’s own, or at least that’s what I’d been foolish enough to believe. Boys and girls if there is anything you should take from this class it is this: we don’t rule the earth, the earth rules us.”
I make a mental note to remember this, along with all of his other bits of “Slegel wisdom” like the fact that Henry Ford was a communist, or all the deadly uses for fishing wire, if only for the fact that I find this man hilarious.
“And then from no where, from everywhere, it came at me,” he jumps a bit, looking as if his assailant may be among us. “A ball of claws and rage and fur charged me. I turned and ran, knowing fully well I was the trespasser here, that this thing coming at me was only protecting its livelihood. I climbed a tree in hopes of escaping this terror of the forest. It was no use. My assailant only followed as I scrambled up the thick trunk. I dove from the tree and was once again mirrored by what I had now decided must be the spawn of Satan.”
The fact no one batted an eye at this story, no one spoke out against such a hard pill to swallow speaks leagues not only of how used to this we are but even more so of just how intense this man really is. We’d heard stories like this before. We’d heard about the time he ran down the kids who had picked on him in a car he’d painted some ungodly shade of green. We’d heard of the little Vietnamese boy who’d attempted to slash his Achilles tendon under the rouse of a good boot shine. Slegel and peril, at least the kind we were by now convinced he created in his own mind, had become interchangeable. And so we all sat and listened without the slightest bit of protest.
“Then I saw my savior,” by now he’d worked up quite the sweat. “I dove head first into the lake. This of all things would put an end to my short life as a fugitive of nature. But then there underwater I saw my attacked face to face. The rabid wolverine had followed me right into the water. For a moment we floated face to face. I had to respect this animal; its intent and life were things of beauty. It looked into my eyes and it saw my soul. It saw the lives I’d taken. I knew this wasn’t a forgiving creature and so I had to do something I’d never wanted to do again.”
He collects himself, the insanity in his eyes slipping away. He resumes his pacing, which had halted as abruptly as his story had begun.
“What’d you do?” asks a girl in the back who for some reason needed everything spelled out for her.
“Now I hated doing this—I had to do it to a dog once, I killed it with my bare hands.” He said in a voice that was even more bizarre given that he was now calm and collected.
I asked if the dog had been a poodle.
This man, this crazy veteran, was one of the best teachers I’ve ever had. It took me a long time to realize that, to realize he was anything more then insane. But now I find myself, two years removed from his classroom and his stories, recalling everything. I remember everything, the pacing, the smell, the glazed eyes. I remember the stories, some of them almost word for word. Strangest of all I remember history, I remember abolitionist John Brown, the Boston Massacre, I remember World War I. All in from a class I’d never even cracked a book for. All because Slegel and his crazy stories burrowed there way into my head and brought American history along for the ride.
Just like Hart in The Paper Chase the way I learned, was through the teacher. Hart was obsessed with Kingsfield. He wanted to know the man, know everything there was about him. I knew Slegel. Knew the horrors he’d seen. Knew what they’d done to him, and I knew all of his stories, whether I believed them or not.
Slegel was no Kingsfield. In my opinion I believe neither is aware of any effect they themselves have on the learning process, being thoroughly devoted to more conventional ways of teaching. However this is where the similarities end. Kingsfield holds his power through knowledge and rigid tradition. Kingsfield is Harvard and Hart attempts to crack him in order to crack Harvard. Slegel on the other hand simply attains this power through his own insanity.
To be fair if Slegel is no Kingsfield, I am by no means Hart (although I definitely wouldn’t mind that hair.) Hart was a motivated student to begin with, thus his acceptance into Harvard Law School; he was used to working, used to the commitment and time needed to make the connection he made with Kingsfield. I in contrast, as can be seen when I did not want to listen to Slegel’s rant, or in that I am writing this a mere twenty minutes before class begins, am not a devoted student. But Slegel’s class was different. He mad me laugh. His stories pulled me in. They forced me to know the man and through doing so know the material.
This is not to say that insanity is what is needed to make a great teacher. I’ve had a number of great teachers who were in fact not crazy and quite a deal more crazy teachers who weren’t in any ways great. But what a teacher must have is some sort of draw. They must have a way of getting students entirely devoted to the subject matter, whether it is through there own knowledge or insanity. Somehow they must realize the extremity of the power they have and use it, as Slegel does seemingly by luck, to there full advantage.
