Themes for English B: A Professor's Education in and Out of Class

In poet and professor Scrimgeour's collection of essays, he considers his role as teacher-advocate at Salem State College in Massachusetts, a place where the disadvantaged students ""know they are losing by a lot before the game even begins, and they shrug, as if to say, 'What am I supposed to do, cry?'"" In deliberate, graceful language, Scrimgeour contrasts his privileged but uncomfortable Ivy League education with the choices facing his students, incorporating his personal life-he moves to Salem with a wife and a young son-and his scholarly work on Harlem Renaissance writer Langston Hughes to great effect. Scrimgeour is clear-eyed, probing and eloquent in his considerations of class, race, security, bravery and other qualities he and his students do and do not confront through education, and in his quest to understand his students-why, for example, the best ones often stop coming to class once he praises their work. The latter third of the book is less polished and more haphazard; a discussion of a modern dance piece lacks immediacy, and his discussion of his evolving basketball skills might prove too self-absorbed to hold readers' interest. Aside from these faults, this portrait of a teacher, a school and an education system all struggling to progress-and to find meaning in the progression-is insightful and entertaining.