Using straightfaced irony

Years ago, a friend of mine made an argument concerning teaching I've never been able to shake. Basically, his point was that, in order to be an effective teacher, or any kind of teacher, all you had to do was know your stuff. "I could teach anything I know how to do," he claimed. "I could teach a cooking class no sweat. You just need to know how to cook."

I can't remember what he's good at cooking. I remember burning a lot of meals in his apartment in college, and then running up a tab on credit at the local diner. Maybe he's changed habits. Or maybe he's stumbled upon articles on how to teach cooking.

There's a lot to unpack in that argument, and how much of this wrongheaded, utterly absurd sentiment is present in the debate about education these days isn't easily discernible. But it calls to mind a passage I recently came across from Flannery O'Connor.

In 1952, O'Connor was staying with her mother in Milledgeville, Georgia, suffering from the disease lupus which she may have known even then would cut her life drastically short. Being trapped at home (I don't know that she would have put it that way; I probably would), she found outlets: her writing, her peacocks, and an extensive correspondence with friends back in New York and Connecticut, notably the Fitzgeralds, who played no small part in her creative process.

In one letter, she reports that her mother will be taking in a family of "Displaced Persons" and putting them up in an adjacent dwelling. One neighbor, upon hearing her mother note that the curtains won't match, asks haughtily whether or not they "know what colors even is?" In another letter, she mentions her mother is anxious for them to arrive, and even floats an idea as to what O'Connor can do with them:

She says I ought to be able to teach them English (educ!) and I say well I ain't able to and she says well she could if she wanted to and I say how and she says CAT: C- A- T. and you draw a picture of one. I don't doubt but what she could do it.

That should have been my response to what's-his-name all those years ago: "I don't doubt but what you could teach cooking." And maybe handed him his order of fries from the drive thru. That would have done the trick.

"Man, all those years in culinary school were a waste of time! All I needed was enotes!"