Teaching in perspective.

Rarely do I find myself with nothing to do, but recently one Friday night I simply had nothing to do--at least nothing I really wanted to do. Sitting next to the 'phone, I began to wonder whom I could call, just to chat and get caught up. The first friend I called was asleep in front of the TV, another was out, another line was busy, etc. Who could I call? I wondered.

Right before me, written in my phone directory, was the number of a former student whom I had tried to call two weeks earlier. I had kept in touch with him over the years after he had graduated, and I thought of him recently after reading about Kimveer Gill, who had killed a young girl while on a shooting rampage in Montreal. My former student--when I'd first met him at least--was in some ways like him: angry, hateful, lonely, and living each day with a death wish. I recall how excited he was on the day of the Columbine massacre back in 1999, and in the middle of the semester that year, he had attempted suicide, breaking almost every bone in his body in the process, yet somehow surviving the fall.

He ended up in my philosophy class, and it soon became evident that he was not quite as rooted in the here and now of reality as most students his age. I do not believe he appropriated much of the curriculum, even though he loved to talk about life, death, God, good and evil, etc, and I knew from the start that in his case, it was not about curriculum and learning objectives as it was about establishing some kind of rapport with him.

We spoke often on the phone after he graduated, and we would even meet for lunch on occasion. At one point he appeared to be much more humane than when I had first spoken to him. Nevertheless, life was still very difficult for him, every day was a struggle to find meaning, and I would often wonder what he was going to do with his life, painfully aware, as I was, that marriage was not a realistic possibility and that his dreams were nothing less than unrealistic.

But there I was by the phone last Friday night thinking that it had been over a year since I had heard from him last. So I called, and a man answered, one who could barely articulate a proper sentence on account of having had far too much to drink.

"May I speak to Andrew," I asked.

"Who?" replied the man.

"Andrew. May I speak to Andrew?"

"Andrew? He's dead!" said the voice, probably too drunk to stand on his feet.

"What? What do you mean he's dead?"

"He's dead! He was killed last year in an accident."

"What kind of accident?"

"Who is this?" he asked.

"I am a former teacher of his," I said, and was forced to say again.

It turned out that just over a year earlier a drunk driver had hit his car, sending it into oncoming traffic, which led to a collision that killed him instantly.

I certainly felt a variety of emotions that weekend, including sadness, anger towards the driver, fear of the many reckless drivers currently allowed to drive, as well as despair of the justice system, but underlying them all was a sense of peace, as well as a sense of awe at the mystery of divine providence and the mercy of God. Although the event was tragic, caused by the irresponsibility and thoughtlessness of a morally delayed adult who would only serve a year in jail for his crime which killed two people, it was also an instance of the mercy of God who took my former student at a time when he was beginning to make morally good choices in his life, before he could slide back into darkness.

But this tragedy also confirmed for me something I have known for a while, but need to be reminded of occasionally, namely the primary and most important aspect of being a high school teacher. Consider that nothing happens outside the order of divine providence, not even freely chosen actions. Nothing catches God unawares; His knowledge is eternal and simultaneously possessed, not temporal. God knows eternally that this young teenager would only live for a few years after graduating, and so looking back, what was our purpose with him? Why was he there? What was he doing in math, history, or English? We know what our employer expects of us with respect to our students, but what did God expect from us with regard to this boy whose life, He knows, will be relatively short-lived?

The answer should be obvious. Teaching is secondarily about the curriculum, and primarily about Him. And this is true for every student, because every one of them will have a final hour, whether that turns out to be five, twenty, or seventy years after graduation, and everything temporal (such as math, history, and geography) exists for the sake of what is eternal.

I love the curriculum content of the philosophy course and I am convinced of its utter importance for young people, but few of them will take to it like I did, and many of them will forget a large portion of it. And I always hope that most of them will come away with an intellectual habitus that will enable them to think more critically. And perhaps this is generally the case with all other subjects.

But more important than all this is that they come away knowing that they are loved by God. This cannot happen unless we love them. A high school teacher has to be one who finds young people captivating, loveable, and good, and able to see in students what they cannot as yet see in themselves, but might learn to see through their teacher's eyes.

If a student leaves a Catholic school without knowing that he is loved by God, because he refused the love offered him through his teachers and administrators, then he has failed, regardless of what his report card might look like. But if students are not closed to divine grace yet come away from our schools without a sense that they are loved by God and that they are good not by virtue of their accomplishments or academic excellence, but because they belong to God and are destined to return to Him, then we have failed; and it is a failure for which we will have the terrifying and onerous task of having to render an account before God--terrifying because the period of mercy will have passed forever (Rm. 14, 11-12; 2 Co 5, 10; Heb. 9, 28; Jas. 2, 13).

But if they come away knowing that they are loved, then we will have done what it was our primary duty to do and will have become what we have been called to be, namely channels of the divine mercy, and mercy will be our inheritance.

Doug McManaman teaches the philosophy of religion at Father Michael McGivney Catholic Academy in Markham, Ontario.