You may laugh at the antics and costumes of the youthful spooks who beat a path to your door this evening in search of sweets, but when's the last time you had a really good giggle sitting at an education conference or reading one of this field's innumerable journals and newsletters? Why is there so little humor in educator-land? Why are people so solemn and straitlaced?
Maybe you don't agree. Maybe you find plenty of humor in the education field, ample opportunities for amusement, satire, irony and plain old belly laughs. Perhaps you're satisfied with the odd Kappan cartoon and the compilations of student "bloopers" that sometime substitute for jokes at the beginning of a speech about education. Perchance you don't mind the mirth dearth. Possibly you are pretty solemn, too.
I get dirty looks when I laugh at education gatherings, and my efforts at joke-telling or lightheartedness usually earn me rebukes. If I quote from a "blooper" collection, I'm apt to get a hostile comment from the audience about mocking kids or belittling teachers. At one recent gathering, my passing reference to "mom and pop" charter schools earned me a harangue from a self-important and politically correct fellow who seemed to think I was making fun of moms, pops, charters and the serious business of policy analysis.
So rare is education humor that efforts to engage in it can go unrecognized, sometimes by me. A few weeks back, the television show "West Wing" depicted "President Josiah Bartlet" giving a speech to teachers in front of a big NEA banner, during which he urged more spending on public education and smaller classes. It wasn't a funny speech but it prompted an effort at lightheartedness by the NEA itself, which issued a statement endorsing "President Bartlet's" position. This prompted an education newsletter to ask what I thought of the statement. I said I couldn't tell whether the NEA had lately evolved a sense of humor or was no longer able to distinguish fiction from reality. When this crack appeared in print, an unhappy NEA public affairs person emailed me and the reporter, plaintively noting that indeed the teachers union DOES have a funny bone and wondering why the newsletter lacked one, such that it needed a critic to comment even when the NEA was poking fun.
Well, gag me with a spoon. Unable to puzzle out for myself why so many education people have humor deficits, I asked some friends and colleagues to give me their own theories. Most of those who replied didn't want to be named - I suppose they fear retribution from the solemnity police - but they offered some interesting theories, mainly centering on insecurity, sanctimony or sense of inadequacy.
- "Many in the ed biz feel they are not taken seriously by other professions and, therefore, to make light of their own work would simply reaffirm what they believe is the outsider view of the field. They feel like Larry Flynt Publications at a magazine convention: so worried that everyone else is looking down on them that they get overly defensive in their attempts to establish their bona fides....Educators take themselves soooo seriously because they worry they won't be taken seriously unless they do."
- "They're too dim to be truly witty. You have to be smart to be funny."
- "It stems from sanctimony, which the dictionary defines as 'affected or hypocritical holiness'."
- "It's a status issue. Lots of school people do have a sense of humor. But people on the front lines of U.S. education aren't afforded much respect or status. The way to gain that status is to leave the front lines and take jobs in high posts of school administration or policy. So, to differentiate yourself from those on the front lines, you dress in a suit, you talk the language of business - and you don't make jokes."
- "Education is like feminism, which also forbids jokes. Perhaps this is the result of political correctness, which punishes people for laughing and joking. Maybe it stems from a deep insecurity, a fear that people are laughing AT you for being a pedagogue."
- "Educators feel they are not very competent and so they cannot joke about themselves. Deep down they are self conscious....People with self confidence, who are high achievers, and who feel successful can make jokes about themselves.
I've noticed that abundant humor can sometimes be found within small subgroups of education people once they've bonded with each other and don't think anyone else is watching. Thus one occasionally finds oneself engaging in a flurry of jokes, jests, jibes and wry comments in a meeting, over the phone or with a handful of e-mail buddies. But only when one knows them well, trusts them and doesn't fear being caught in the act of making light.
Humor within small cells, sects and subgroups of educators is better than no humor, to be sure, but it's also reminiscent of life in a totalitarian state where the secret police are patrolling. (I observed a vivid form of this in Tibet some months ago. The Tibetans become candid and wry only when sure that their utterly humorless and bloody-minded Chinese minders are nowhere in sight.) The same people who kid and joke in private turn solemn and earnest as soon as the spotlight goes or the mike is opened.
I don't entirely understand this phenomenon. But one thing I'm sure it's not: it's not simply that educators deal with serious matters. So do doctors and lawyers. Yet you can buy books of doctor and lawyer jokes - and they tell jokes on themselves and kid each other all the time. When did you last see a book of educator jokes or funny stories?
Do YOU have a theory? Please share it. Preferably in a lighthearted way!
