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19/10/13 The American Scholar: The Seven Ages of Teaching - Paula Marantz Cohen

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The Seven Ages of Teaching

By Paula Marantz Cohen

I return again to one of my favorite Shakespeare plays, As You Like It , to offer a very loose interpretationof the famous Seven Ages of Man speech for teachers. First, recall the original speech:

All the worlds a stage, And all the men and women merely players:They have their exits and their entrances;

And one man in his time plays many parts,His acts being seven ages. As, first the infant,Mewling and puking in the nurses arms.

And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel And shining morning face, creeping like snailUnwillingly to school. And then the lover,Sighing like furnace, with a woeful balladMade to his mistress eyebrow. Then a soldier,Full of stran ge oaths and bearded like the pard,Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,Seeking the bubble reputationEven in the cannons mouth. And then the justice,In fair round belly with good capon lined,

With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,Full of wise saws and modern instances;

And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts

Into the lean and slipperd pantaloon, With spectacles on nose and pouch on side,His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wideFor his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,Turning again toward childish treble, pipes

And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,That ends this strange eventful history,Is second childishness and mere oblivion,Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

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19/10/13 The American Scholar: The Seven Ages of Teaching - Paula Marantz Cohen

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So here, if you will excuse a bit of forcing, are the Seven Ages of Teaching:

The first age. Writhing and puking are good metaphors for what infant teachers appear to do. Theirsuccesses are often serendipitous, their mistakes unsightly, if not egregious. They have not yet developeda coherent style in the classroom or a full grasp of their subject-matter.

The second age. These schoolboy teachers are new to the profession but not so new as to find things asexciting as they once did. They may have just gotten tenure and can easily fall into the dullness of routine, creeping unwillingly to school.

The third age. A more mature teacher, but one still seeking juvenile satisfactions in the classroom.Teachers in this age may engage in Internet correspondences with students that go on too long, beersafter class, and, at the worst, infatuations that result in broken marriages and sexual harassment suits.

The fourth age. This is the careerist teacher for whom teaching is a mere way station to getting aheadwhich is to say, doing the conference circuit, making it onto the administrative track, and getting out of the classroom as much as possible.

The fifth age. This magistrate teacher will pontificate in the classroom, under the assumption thatstudents will hang on every word. Such teachers tend to be male, where pomposity seems to be a morenatural appendage to middle age, but women are now entering this age too, as they gain more powerand prestige in the profession.

The sixth age. Teachers in this age no longer teach but hold onto their office space and make use of secretarial help for their correspondence with fellow sixth-age academics. Finally, of course, they succumb to full retirementto work on their memoirs or their novel: The seventh age.

Paula Marantz Cohen is a distinguished professor of English at Drexel University and the author of thenovels Jane Austen in Scarsdale or Love, Death and the SATs and the recent What Alice Knew: A Most Curious Tale of Henry James and Jack the Ripper .

More Posts from Paula Marantz Cohen:

Titles

Academic TumbleweedsTalking Television

An Exemplary Academic LifeGreater Than Our Brother Is Our Chastity

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