Bob Blaisdell, professor of English at City University of New York’s Kingsborough Community College, has an article up at Inside Higher Ed in which he explains in hilarious detail what being an Ideal Teacher involves.

Apparently one must possess several gorgeously wonderful traits, one must be capable of bringing them all to the podium, and one must stop about a nanometer shy of flicking any unsightly humanness onto one’s students. To be an Ideal Teacher, one must be there enough to show them how amazing their instructor really is, but not there so much that the magic is lost. Also, there must be no ingesting of food or liquids, as that may render the Ideal Teacher into nothing more than human, which, as we are all aware, is significantly less than ideal in the eyes of other humans. (Especially one’s students.)

…He is also glimpsed once in a while in the hallways and also passing through the cafeteria. He can drink juice or water, maybe coffee, but it’s better if he doesn’t. He really shouldn’t eat. Ideal Teacher has to eat, but not when a student can see, because what if his diet includes the pork or beef or meat or vegetables or protein-matter that the student disapproves of? In any case, an Ideal who eats human food is disgusting and he really shouldn’t.

After school (he shouldn’t live there, not on campus or on a cot in his office), Ideal Teacher can be seen leaving but he absolutely does not take public transportation! He does not share the grim bus ride to the subway or the impatient rush-hour subway ride towards the city. He does not sit shoulder to shoulder with Brooklynites and mark papers while sipping and sloshing coffee and eating a crumbling cookie. Banish the thought! No bus, no train. He has a car, and it’s an unusual car — not too expensive, but cute and funny. He does not live too close to the college. More…

That level of perfection doesn’t seem like it would be all that difficult to attain. Probably.

Posted by Alexa Harrington

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