Remembering the Old Lions

“What are the author’s views on this matter, Mr. Benton,” asked the professor. Twenty faces suddenly turned in my direction, hoping I would fail, waiting for their chance.

“Um ... I don’t recall,” I said, repressing a stutter.

“A gentleman does not lie, Mr. Benton. You ‘don’t recall,’ or you do not know?”

“I do not know, sir.”

“Now let us hear from a scholar who has done the required reading.”

I still get mildly nervous remembering that class and the old lion of a professor who taught it. But I worked harder for him than I have ever done since. For some reason, I desperately wanted his admiration, even though he probably never gave me a second thought after I left his class.

For readers of a certain age, this sketch immediately suggests Professor Charles Kingfield, portrayed by John Houseman in the 1973 film The Paper Chase: “You enter law school with a skull full of mush, and you leave thinking like a lawyer!”

Sometimes I wish I could begin my classes like that. I wish my students wanted my approval so much that they always came to class prepared -- no, overprepared, and on the edge of their seats waiting to be asked a question about the reading.

I suspect that will never be, for the culture that produced the old lions is dead and is not likely to be revived.

Who were these “old lions,” and where did they come from?

They were almost always men (though there were a few pioneering women), and, by my time, in the late ‘80s to early ‘90s, they were at least 60 years old. They all wore similar clothes: dark suits, often with a vest, almost certainly custom tailored and designed to last for decades. They had a preference for bow ties, or ordinary ties with old-school, prep patterns.

Some of them were like Elaine’s father, on the TV show Seinfeld, played by the gruff, intimidating Laurence Tierney: “If we try to leave he’ll bonk our heads together like Moe” from the Three Stooges. In real life, I think of Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., or George Will. Though Will is not of the old lions’ generation, he is an obvious disciple of their personal style.

In my memory, what distinguished the personal style of old lions most was their shoes: highly polished, black wingtips that looked like they weighed 5 pounds each. I imagined the shoes were all made by the same cobbler to whom the professors were referred after earning tenure.

Once, in my present position, when I dressed in a suit for a meeting with an administrator, one of my colleagues remarked, sarcastically, “Wow, you look like such a professor,” meaning, “you look like a member of the evil establishment (I bet you voted for Bush and drive a Hummer).”

I look at myself today, an assistant professor, dressed in cords and a sweater -- basically the same style clothes I wore when I was 20 -- and think how much authority professors have lost since the 1960s, when younger faculty members began to dress like their students, and students began to abandon civilized clothing altogether. I look at my students: some barefoot, others wearing hats and dressed in clothes they could easily have slept in, and I think how the college classroom has become an adjunct of the dorm bedchamber. Sometimes, when I begin classes, I get the impression that the students resent my interrupting their conversations. Few of them take notes, and I unconsciously make an effort to be more entertaining.

I can’t help thinking that, for all their gruff aloofness, the old lions were extraordinarily effective teachers from whom I can, belatedly, learn a lot (though I doubt I can put many of their strategies into practice).

Among the old lions, I think there was a genuine respect for students that is very different from the egalitarianism feigned by many teachers today. The old lions expected students to draw a hard line between their personal and professional lives.

There were no excuses. They did not care if you were having emotional difficulties; civilization had to go on, with or without you. They were adults, and they expected their students to grow up. They were not hampered by the fear of giving offense or hurting students’ feelings; they believed there were correct answers to questions. They did not believe in unearned self-esteem. They would not congratulate you for simply meeting expectations.

They sometimes gave unreasonable assignments: Read two novels and write a 10-page paper by next week. And you did it because you longed for their respect and feared their contempt. You knew where you stood (and it was never permanently very high). The average grade in their classes was C instead of A-. They were not interested in being students’ counselors, confessors, or friends. They were not afraid of being called “authoritarian”; they were authorities. They were indifferent to love, but they commanded respect. And institutions once gave them the power to command it.

I feel like a grown-up child when I compare myself with the old lions, but I have to remember that I am the product of a radically altered culture. Today’s tenure process, particularly the requirement that one get high scores on student evaluations, makes it extraordinarily hard to demand as much from students and to use the fear of disapproval as a motivation. It’s hard to deny there is a direct correlation between high scores on student evaluations, grade inflation, and the relaxation of standards.

From the perspective of more than a decade, I can see how much I learned from the old lions, but, if they had been required to hand out student evaluations, my younger self would have punished them with the lowest possible scores. I doubt that I would have taken any of their courses, had they not been required. And I would have unwittingly sacrificed the benefits of rigorous introductory courses in my discipline.

What would the old lions have thought of Web sites like RateMyProfessors.com, which ask students to evaluate their teachers on the basis of easiness, helpfulness, and “hotness”?

The rise of the consumer model of education, rather than the older notion of preparation for citizenship and leadership, has stripped faculty members of the robes of authority, even exposing them to the sexual gaze of their students. (How far are we from the Calendar of “Hot Profs” fund raiser?) Whatever the old lions were, they were never “sexy” unless, like Henry Kissinger, one regards power as the ultimate aphrodisiac.

If the old lions benefited from being male and “white,” they were also frequently first-generation Americans, working class, Jewish, or Catholic. Many of them had served in the military during World War II or Korea, and, with the help of the G.I. Bill, and the expansion of education during the cold war, they had assimilated themselves into the establishment. Their experiences confirmed their belief in the right of individuals of talent to rise, although it also confirmed a belief that their values were universal and exportable, rather than produced of their own unique experiences.

They had an imperial edge; they saw themselves as warriors in the progressive tradition, in a global struggle against fascism and communism, and this made them vulnerable to the charge that they promoted American exceptionalism and neglected the achievements of women and members of minority grouops, even if few professors really corresponded to this caricature.

The old lions had different priorities. If they seemed “conservative,” it was because they understood from experience the fragility of civilized society and the university. If the United States was a violent, imperial power, for them it was still, as Lincoln said, “the last best hope of Earth.”

Though protected by tenure, the career trajectory of the old lions after the 1970s slid downward. As the New Left generation came to dominate the academy, the old lions gradually lost the power to define the overall mission of their institutions. Some grew embittered, indifferent to teaching, hostile to their colleagues, and looked forward to retirement. Some found homes in required, introductory courses. In these, and in increasingly small graduate seminars, the best of them carved out a legacy for themselves in the midst of an institutional culture that overtly rejected them.

And now the old lions are departing like the “Greatest Generation,” but they still live inside many of our heads, mocking our shortcomings and pretensions, demanding that we ask hard questions, and pushing us -- and, indirectly, our students -- to be equal to the challenges and dangers of our own time.