Back to School: Teacher instilled a love for books that overtook hate
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After taking a literature course my freshman year at Bethel Park High School, I swore I would never take another lit class or read another book as long as I lived.
My older brother had given me a list of both suggested teachers and teachers not to take. The teacher for this class was high on his "don't take" list, but as a freshman I was assigned to classes, not picking them.
The teacher was a bitter, unhappy woman who saw it as her goal in life to make everyone join her in her misery by torturing us with Thomas Hardy. I've had a copy of "The Mayor of Casterbridge" on my bookshelf for years, planning to reread it some day and see if it's really as awful as she made it.
She made reading seem like marching in lead boots through mud while being beaten by an angry mob. Although I have moved that book many times, it never makes it to the top of my to-read stack because I fear being made as ill as I was by my first experience with it.
Now, I know what you are thinking -- this column was supposed to be a paean for teachers, not a pillory. I include that opening to establish for you, dear reader, just how much I loathed books when I was reintroduced to them by a wonderful teacher my senior year at Bethel.
I use the word "wonderful" in its almost forgotten original sense -- full of wonder. James Caskey was full of wonder, for the world and for the word -- the written word that made magic worlds come alive. He saw books not as quicksand to be stuck in but as magical wings to transport the reader.
I volunteer as an election official in San Diego, and my assigned polling place is in the library/multi-purpose room of an elementary school. On the wall is a mural that makes me think of Mr. Caskey: it is a book, which through a series of drawings evolves into a bird taking flight, the open pages becoming wings.
We were required to take two reading courses at Bethel. I saved my second lit class for the final semester of my senior year There was that hope that a hurricane or earthquake or fire or a change in curriculum would spare me a fate worse than any of those -- having to read another book.
First Published September 23, 2011 12:00 am
