The Teacher as Humorist

Abstract

AT THE risk of adding another to the list of humorless dissections of humor, I should like to offer a few comments on as a valuable adjunct to the many skills involved in the art of teaching. The presence of the phrase sense of humor in so many accounts of the qualifications considered desirable in teachers may stand as some justification for these remarks. It seems reasonable to conclude that appears so frequently in these accounts because of the widespread belief that the humorous teacher, other things being equal, does a better job of teaching than his humorless colleague. This belief appears to be well founded. One reason is that teacher and student are not merely minds meeting in the classroom and outside of it; they are feeling human beings, acting and reacting upon each other in various ways. The teaching relationship necessarily involves nervous and emotional interplay as well as the more purely intellectual interchanges. Yet many people both inside and outside the profession talk and act as if the relationship could be equated with transmission of knowledge from an older to a younger robot. The truth is that even aside from inevitable clashes of personality, the very nature of the teaching situation, which is one of inequality, of presumed superiority, tends automatically to generate a certain amount of tension. This tension is heightened by the correction which is an inescapable part of the teaching process, and by the competition unavoidable in this type of social situation. This tension tends to be relieved by humor. Humor is therefore therapeutic and sanative. Like the quality of mercy, which the great humorists possess in full measure, it blesses him that gives and him that takes, especially if he takes it gracefully. However, the last sentence suggests a further consideration. Oddly enough, the witty pedagogue may