With his trademark wit and biting sarcasm, Frank McCourt delighted a sold-out crowd with the struggles and triumphs of his 30-year teaching career. The Pulitzer Prize-winning author capped his visit to campus by delivering the Baird Pulitzer Prize Lecture. Details...
In a speech titled “Was I Teaching or Was I Learning? I’d Say Both,” Frank McCourt regaled the audience with
stories from his three decades as a teacher in New York City public
schools, which he chronicles in his most recent memoir, “Teacher Man.”
He also discussed growing up in the slums of Limerick, Ireland, which
he described with brutal honesty and surprising warmth in his first
memoir, “Angela’s Ashes,” which became a New York Times bestseller and
received the Pulitzer Prize in 1997.
“I’m glad I grew up in Ireland,” McCourt said. “I’m glad I had a
miserable childhood. If not, what else would I have to write about?”
McCourt described the influence of the Catholic Church during his
childhood, the strict teachers he encountered and the fear of
committing a sin. “We weren’t educated in Ireland,” McCourt said. “We
were brainwashed.” McCourt described his teachers as “brutal, violent
and sadistic in a way.”
“We went to school trembling,” he said. “We dreaded school. If you
didn’t know the answer, they’d call you to the front of the room and
humiliate you. We were incapable of thinking for ourselves. To doubt
was to question God’s wisdom, and to question God’s wisdom was a sin.”
McCourt said he had to “shed” a lot of what he learned in Ireland when
he began teaching in America. As a young man in New York, McCourt
became interested in various religions, studying Hinduism and
Confucianism, and discovering the freedom “to cast off the past.” He
learned to think for himself, which he shared with his students as a
teacher. “That’s education, thinking for yourself,” he said. “The one
thing that drove me as a teacher, I tried to convince my students to
think for themselves.”
Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., in 1930 to struggling Irish immigrant parents,
McCourt and his family returned to Ireland in hope of a brighter
future, only to fall into deeper poverty. He quit school at 13 and
returned to New York six years later. Following service in the Army, he
attended New York University on the G.I. Bill, earning a bachelor’s
degree, and later earned a master’s degree from Brooklyn College.
McCourt taught English and creative writing at high schools and a
community college in New York City. He said teaching was a natural fit
for him. “I loved books and I loved kids, so I put the two together.”
During his lecture, he read from his memoir “Teacher Man,” which
describes the struggles and triumphs of his 30-year teaching career.
“Nobody helps you,” he said in teaching. “You stumble each day in
despair.” McCourt said it took 15 years for him to feel competent as an
educator.
McCourt was 66 when “Angela’s Ashes” was published. He said he felt
constant pressure as a writing teacher to become a published author. “I
envied some of my students who were already getting published,” he
said. “The most exquisite thing of all…is to go and do it and not only
to do it but to get the Pulitzer Prize.” McCourt is also the author of
the bestselling memoir “Tis” (1999).
The Baird Pulitzer Prize Lecture Series, which brings some of the
nation’s most accomplished writers and journalists to campus, is
endowed by James Baird and his wife, Jane, of Burlington, N.C. The
Pulitzer is the nation’s most prestigious award in journalism and the
liberal arts.