Becoming Historical

by William C. Fischer

In 1990 I was teaching an undergraduate course in late 19th-century American literature, a course I had taught so frequently - indeed, from almost the time I had arrived at UB back in 1967 - that I was pretty much at ease with it and with the students it attracted.

One morning during office hours a young man from the class showed up to talk about a paper I had just assigned. I had always felt a certain confidence in my relationships with students, felt comfortable with them, identified with them, had tacitly assumed a shared cultural - even personal - quality of experience with them. This student seemed to be no exception.

As he made himself comfortable in the chair across from me, he said, "Before we talk about the assignment, I just want to tell you that your course came highly recommended." Simply assuming that a good friend of his and recent student of mine had spoken well of me, I asked easily, "By whom?" "By my father," was the unexpected response. My complacency vanished in one fell swoop.

A startling and amusing rebuke it was - what I would call one of those "marker" events in my life as a teacher. From then on it was clear that my students saw me in historical perspective, and that I too would now have to acknowledge the distance between us.