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The Death of the Centaur
by Dan Simmons
Introduction
I was a teacher for eighteen years. Not a college professor ... not even a high school
English teacher ... "just" an elementary teacher. Over the years I taught third grade,
fourth grade, and sixth grade, spent a year as a "resource teacher," (sort of a
lifeguard for kids in dan-ger of going under because of learning problems) and ended
my career in education by spending four years creating, coordinating, and teaching
very advanced pro-grams for "gifted and talented" (i.e., smart and able) stu-dents in
a district with seven thousand elementary-aged children.
I mention all this as background to the next story.
Teaching is a profession which is not quite a profes-sion. As recently as twenty-five
years ago, teachers bal-anced their low pay with whatever satisfaction they could
find in the jobтАФand there is plenty for a good teacherтАФand by enjoying a certain
indefinable sense of status in the eyes of the community.
Some years ago when I was a sixth grade teacher, I stepped outside one winter
evening to see the Colorado skies ablaze with a disturbing light. It was the aurora
borealis, of course, in what may well be the most dramatic display I'll ever see from
these latitudes.
As I stood watching this incredible light show, a young student of mine and her
mother came down the street and asked what was going on. I explained about the
aurora.
"Oh," said the mother. "I thought maybe it was the end of the world like it predicts
in Revelation, but Jesse said you'd know if it was something else."
I think of that moment occasionally.
It used to be that teachers wereтАФif not exactly the sages of societyтАФat least
respected as minor but necessary intellectual components in the community. Now,
when parents go in to a parent/teacher conference, the odds are great that the parents
are better educated than the teacher. Even if they're not, they almost certainly make
signifi-cantly more money than the teacher.
Of course it's not just the low pay that is driving good people out of teaching; it's
not even the combination of low pay, contempt from the community, contempt from
school and district administrators who see master teach-ers as a liability (they would
rather have beginning teach-ers whose tabulas are perfectly rasa and ready to be
programmed with whatever new district fads the admin-istration is pushing), and the
fact that many children to-day are not pleasant to be around. Perhaps it's all this plus
the reality that teaching is no longer a place for peo-ple with imagination. Creative
people need not apply. Most don't.
The point of all this is that just at the time when we most desperately need quality
teachers, just when our in-tellectual survival now demands men and women in the
classroom who teach so well and make our children think so well that we'll have no
choice but to pay that teacher the ultimate teacher's complimentтАФcondemnation to
death by hemlock or crucifixion; just at the time now when families and all the other
traditional institutions are abdicating their responsibilities in everything from teach-ing
ethics to basic hygiene, abandoning the effort it takes to turn young savages into
citizens; surrendering and handing these duties to schools ... that happens to be the
time when the schools lack the small but critical mass of brilliant, creative, and
dedicated people who've always made the system work.
To compensate, teachers hang signs in their faculty lounges. The signs say things
likeтАФ"A teacher's influence touches eternity."