Those who can do, do. Those who can’t, teach.
--Old Saying
The old adage is an insult, and it is true. No amount of truth can disguise the fact that this is the bromide of a vindictive student; yet no pedagogical sophistry can change the fact that teachers don’t do, we teach. The difference is entirely one of definitions, of course. The doing that is implied, I presume, refers to the actions of important people. The actions, it follows, that unimportant people like teachers teach their students about. Put more simply, the implication is even harder to deny: Teachers teach Shakespeare, we don’t write it.
The epistemological litigator in my mind is quick to say, Yeah, and so what? It’s not like our crabby ex-students are doing so much with their lives, either. (Whose fault is that, teacher?) Tell me about those who can do, do when you’re telling me about something you’ve done, son. Until then, let’s accept insignificance as a part of the human condition and consider that people in general don’t do much worth teaching about. At least some of us teach about it, is my litigator’s rejoinder.
His job is to take my side, of course, just like my job is to teach students about what someone else actually did. I won’t waste my breath denying it, but I will take the time to point out that not everybody can do this job of not doing (teaching). Part of this job is to be obsequious, let us remember. We are the nanny with her fingers near the infant’s throat; we must be trusted to act with our special capacity to bear insults on behalf of our expertise. It is our expertise, after all, that makes us necessary, and a necessity that flaunts its status is a sign of starvation. We are not involved, as teachers, in the luxuries of doing, the art of doing, the war of doing. We are basic—staples, paint, bullets.
In a world of luxuries, people do not want to be reminded of necessity. Because what is a necessity, if it isn’t proof that we are not self-sufficient? The pang of hunger is our reminder that we are ever-incomplete, and so it is among our chief desires to escape an empty stomach. And once we have eaten, we find that bread alone is not enough to make us whole, and that we need other things, too. And these needs are the same as the first: they cannot be ignored until they are satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until we can ignore them. The old adage about teachers is an expression of this ambivalence toward necessity.
The nanny with her hands near the infant’s throat is emblematic of all servitude. She is trapped, not because she has accepted her role as servant, but because she has accepted her nobility. She, most of all, knows the power she possesses. She can end a dynasty with the snap of her fingers. But she also knows that that is all she can do. She can build no empire of her own by destroying this one, because the master will wreck the whole world, and himself with it, before he lets a servant rule. Indeed, the master will do this for much less than infanticide. Any overt reminder of his heir’s vulnerability is enough to endanger the servant, which is world enough for most. And even when it is not, the only nobility worth noting is the one that refuses to destroy the world for its own sake. (I’m sure Nietzsche would disagree; or perhaps he would get the point.) In any event, the deadly hands of many nannies have been stayed through no fear of personal death. Just as often, I’m sure, they were given pause by the vision of a world deprived of something it needs. Or rather, the world as it is, deprived of what it is made of.
The world is made of many hierarchies, each of which bears some resemblance to servitude. Servants are the necessities of masters, and masters hate being reminded of this as much as they love the luxuries of their position. When the servant is a teacher, the master is wont to say, Those who can do, do. Those who can’t, teach. Teachers would do well to heed this as a reminder of where we came from.
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