Frank Calloway, Teacher (1967; #2 of 5)
Frank Gets Real With His Students, and Gets Fired for It
Frank only lasted three years as head football coach at Fort Bragg High. Certain influential members of the community had heard about the kinds of things he had been telling the players and did not want him poisoning their children’s minds with his twaddle, which basically promoted integrity, character, respect, and fair play above all else. These pillars of the community felt that Coach Calloway should be teaching the boys to win at all costs. After all, how would they get ahead in the world if they didn’t snarl and growl and rip and tear—“it’s a dog-eat-dog world out there!” they underscored.
Calloway wasn’t dismissed because the team was unsuccessful, as far as wins and championships went; in fact, they had done quite well in that regard during the three years he coached the team. Frank wasn’t let go because he didn’t reach his players; he was let go because he did. A few of the more powerful parents and boosters decided that they didn’t want their children adopting his attitude about sportsmanship and being proud of themselves even when they lost.
The loss of the job was disappointing to Frank, but he wasted no time mourning or fuming about it. He had been through far worse things, and didn’t want to miss out on the next chapter of his life brooding in the dark, looking longingly backward.
Frank’s dismissal took place the Monday following the team’s final game of the 1960 season, so he didn’t have a chance to give the team a locker-room “farewell” address. He followed his own advice and left with his head held high, though. The decision-makers had offered Frank the chance to change his message and remain as coach, realizing he got the victories they wanted more often than not, but he refused to continue on under that stipulation. He would not allow others to dictate his philosophy and be merely a puppet coach, hanging onto his job at any cost.
So, after three years as a P.E. instructor and the varsity football team’s head coach, Frank applied for and was hired as the new Social Studies teacher there at Fort Bragg High. The contingent who had forced him from his sideline generalship didn’t care as much about what he might teach in the classroom, nor did they have much influence on those who made those types of personnel decisions, anyway.
Although quite conventional in dress and appearance, Frank had his own ideas about teaching. Rather than cram his students full of facts, he liked to discuss topics with them, leading them using the Socratic method, debating with them, having them debate among themselves, but always steering the discussions back to common ground when they threatened to devolve into ad hominem attacks, emotional tirades, or simple tug-of-wars with no give or take on either side possible.
Frank also, rather than dealing in the abstract with his charges, invited tradesmen and professional people to his class to describe to the students their work, to answer questions about their job and its everyday reality as well as its advantages and disadvantages (its “high points and low points,” he called it), and to arrange time away from class for students who wanted to observe the carrying out of these trades and professions in person. In that way, Frank thought, his students would be better prepared to make an informed choice as to where they wanted to “direct their blows” as far as their future employment went. Frank knew from empirical observation that too many people simply “fell into” jobs which they didn’t necessarily like and for which they may not be particularly suited. Or perhaps they chose a profession they thought they would enjoy but which turned out being far different in actuality from what they had imagined. Frank felt that hands-on experience was far better than theoretical knowledge, and that’s what he made available to his students.
The students loved Frank’s way of doing things, and other teachers felt pressured to adopt his methodology. Some of them did experiment with somewhat watered-down versions of Frank’s modus operandi, but never felt quite comfortable getting away from their accustomed modes of teaching. What got Frank into trouble, though, was what he advised his students regarding whether or not to attend college.
Whereas the majority of the parents, and the school itself, urged most students to continue their formal education after graduation from high school, Frank told his students that college wasn’t for everyone; that it wasn’t necessary for many, and could even be a waste of time and money—all depending on what they wanted to do and who they wanted to be—job- or career-wise, that is.
During one discussion with a group of seniors about their future plans and goals, which occurred towards the end of the school year in 1967, Frank told them that for some professions—such as doctors and lawyers and engineers of various stripes—it was indeed imperative that they attend universities and earn a degree or two. For others, though, he explained that it could take them years to “break even” after the lost years spent in college—he reasoned that the whole time they were being taught things they either didn’t need to know or which they could easily learn on their own through reading, they could be gaining experience in their trade of choice. Instead of having four years of wages, they would have four years of amassed debt. It would take years—decades, in some cases—to see the investment of time and money in college pay off.
Frank even went so far as to tell his class, “Ask yourself: Why do I want to go to college? In general, if you mainly just want to party—be honest with yourself!—go ahead and go to college; but if you want to learn something, what’s wrong with the library?”
He went on to explain that in this way (if their area of interest didn’t require a college degree to pursue), they could avail themselves of the best teachers, rather than a “grab bag” of instructors at whichever “center of higher learning” they happened to choose or be accepted to. He explained his reasoning by explaining that the books they could read were written by the best teachers. To have those same teachers in a classroom setting, they would need a private Lear Jet to take them from Yale to Harvard to Purdue to Cornell to Columbia, etc. each day—to hear the best professor of this, then the best professor of that—you get the picture. Frank emphasized that they could avail themselves of the best of the best by reading books those preeminent professors wrote on their areas of expertise.
In a nutshell, Frank’s message to his students was: Do what you really want to do. Don’t chase after money or prestige. You will be a lot happier and be more of a benefit to others if you do what you like, because people are usually best at what they like, and are thus the most useful to society by doing that. Most people are good at what they like and they like what they’re good at. Nothing is taught in college that’s not available in books. There is no secret information that is only available from hearing a professor verbalize it. Reading deeply and widely—while being selective about the quality of what you read—can make you just as educated, if not more so, than those with fancily-engraved thick paper that basically just attests that they attended class more often than not and did some work.
As the Vietnam war was raging, and the draft was on, the male students especially were anxious about the possibility of experiencing that event “up close and personal.” Frank neither encouraged nor discouraged joining the military. But he counseled them not to use college as an excuse, as a “way out” to avoid the draft, or moving to Canada as a way to escape involvement. “Only if you would do that, anyway,” Frank said. “Don’t go to college or Canada just to avoid being conscripted. Be honest. Stand up and face the music. Do your duty or follow your conscience, but don’t flake out.”
As a result of Frank’s “extravagant theories,” as some termed them, he was again fired from his job, after just a few years. The high school did not appreciate, in particular, that Frank was advising some of the students against college (that’s how they viewed it, anyway). The reason for their antipathy towards his viewpoint on the subject was that they felt the more of their graduates went on to college, the better it made the school look. The statement which brought the most heat down on Frank was when he told the students—which was, of course, spread around—to consider why colleges and universities wanted them to attend their institutions, the implication being—and strongly implied—that money was involved. One of Frank’s favorite sayings was, “Follow the money trail.” Those institutions of higher learning were, after all, businesses, not charitable organizations; they’re in it to make money the same as any other business, Frank told his students.
Again, Frank was not against college for everyone. What he was saying was that it may or may not be for you, depending on what you want to do—the type of job you want or the profession you want to take up or the branch of knowledge you want to follow. He proved he was no college-scorner by returning to Stanford himself, after he was “released” from employment at Fort Bragg High. Frank did this in order to get a law degree; his thinking was that as a lawyer he could promote social justice without having to answer to sports boosters or parents or school boards.
Frank Calloway, Football Coach (1957; #1)
Frank Calloway, Lawyer (1977; #3):