Rating: 
Summary: I know Franklin Lears
Review: I was a teacher at Meffud High in l969, and knew Franklin Lears, the author, and all of the superstructure of headmasters and submasters of MHS. It was a challenge teaching there, and Mr. Edmundson does describe most of the student body well. There were, however, more studious students who had every intention of attending college and did so.What I regret about this book, aside from its stretched metaphors of philosophy that ramble like this sentence, is the fact that Edmundson never contacted Franklin Lears to find out how his life went, and if he could be loosely veiled in this memoir. If Lears was so important, why not check up on the man? Rather than "Teacher" this book is more of a memoir of coming of age, and leaving a lifestyle in Meffud.
Rating: 
Summary: tangents are worth the read
Review: i'm reading this book for a class, but i have to say, it's more enjoyable than any other homework, so far. i'm living in medford, now, so the references to the local haunts are fun to pick out. one complaint i and several others in my class have had about this book is that mark (once you start reading you feel like you're on a first name basis with the author) introduces a story and then takes the really long way around to get to the other end of it. he starts to tell an anecdote about the Teacher, and then gets caught up in the description of his football experiences, for example. now that we have this in mind, however, it's worth the tangents he takes to get through the stories. it's easier to see the big picture, after the chapter is read. i just wanted to give the head's up to the new reader that he does take these tangents, but as long as you know that going in, you won't be bothered by them, but will, instead, take them as they come and enjoy them. i totally recommend it....even for outside of class!
Rating: 
Summary: A Gifted Student Remembers the Gift
Review: If you are lucky, you had a teacher back in high school you can remember, one who demonstrated that learning could be more than memorization and scoring high on tests, one whose lessons you remembered long after your education was officially over because the lessons were about learning itself. Mark Edmundson is a professor of English at the University of Virginia, a contributing editor to _Harper's_, and has a bunch of other intellectual chops. It might have turned out differently for him if it weren't for one teacher; he had all the makings of a punk, a television addict, and a sports fan who longed for his days of high school football glory. That he turned out differently he credits to one teacher, and in _Teacher: The One Who Made the Difference_ (Random House), he introduces us to him. He also introduces us to a bunch of minor teachers and role models (not necessarily good ones), many goofy classmates, and, in a book full of openness and acceptance, his own unattractive adolescent self. For Edmundson says, "When I encountered Franklin Lears, I was a high school thug. I was a football player, a brawler, who detested all things intellectual." Lears looked peculiar and he was. Unlike the other teachers, he did not have a set lesson plan full of facts that were to be installed into the heads of his students. He had a capacity to listen and to accept the students' ideas as interesting and worth considering, without imposing his own. He couldn't make immediate changes in their attitudes, and he couldn't change everyone, but some of them eventually got to accept that thinking was useful, was within the capacities of even football jocks, and above all, was fun. Lears abandoned the planned textbook, and settled on books that people were talking about at the time, _The Autobiography of Malcolm X_, _Siddhartha_, and _One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest_. Besides the booklist, Lears brought the influence of Socrates, and Edmundson makes plain that the analogy of Lears to Socrates and of Medford High students to listeners in the Athenian agora is not forced and not ridiculous. Socrates (ostensibly, at least), took nothing on faith, questioned everything including what everyone else accepted either unthinkingly or with solemn thought, accepted the thoughts of others as good points of departure for reasoning, and he knew how to laugh. Lears, too. The book has memorable portraits of fellow students, and especially Edmundson's father. It is best at demonstrating that the old Socratic method still works, and can still inspire ambition. Simple questioning, and insistence on introspection and putting answers into words, created something Medford High had not seen before. "This was a class that people looked forward to going to, that we talked about all the time, nights and weekends." There is much about good teaching in this wise book, and much about living well. Lears only taught a year before going off to law school, and Edmundson has not attempted to keep up with him. It is nice to think, however, that he will pick up this volume and recognize how much effect he had, and how much erudition and clarity he has inspired in this particular student.
Rating:
Summary: A Vibrant Trip Back in Time
Review: Mark Edmundson writes vividly of a time and place with which I am familiar (I knew the author in Junior High). More than anything, Teacher evokes strong memories of growing up when the world was changing in ways we didn't always understand, and people our age weren't quite sure of how we fit in. Its message is timeless, though, for the pressure to conform remains strong among teenagers, and I suspect it always will. Edmundson's writing is compelling: his portrait of Lears brought to mind teachers who made a difference to me and the choices I made in life because of their influence. His descriptions of his friends could easily be those of my own. Teacher is more than a memoir; it reads like a testament to a generation.
Rating:
Summary: Telling It Like it Was and, Maybe, Still Is
Review: Mark Edmundson's book was a serendipitous gift to me a month ago. A fellow worker gave it to me for my helping him. As soon as I began reading it, my heart swelled. Not because of some stupendous opening paragraph, but because I am a 1965 graduate of Medford High. Gentle Reader, I can tell you that Mr. Edmundson is telling it like it was. He is keenly accurate in depicting the teachers (names changed, yes, but I knew who many of them were), the physical surroundings, limitations, and punishments of living and growing in Me'ford (or Meffa, as we used to say), and the cast of characters that we all grew up (then) and grow up (now) with. I find that Mr Edmundson's writing is easy and flowing; he captures those long ago moments and brings them into present-day memories. The situations, characters, and temptations he describes are understandable and self-illuminating, at least for me. I never met Frank Lears, but I "know" him. We all have met a "teacher" somewhere in our lives that has Learsian qualities. These are the people who know that there is no teaching without learning; no knowledge-growth without self-growth; no value to questions-and-answers without inward answers-and-changes. Frank Lears in 1969 was a remarkable experience. Frank Lears in 2002 is equally remarkable and even more valuable now in my over-50 life. Because I still don't have all the answers, let alone all the questions.
Read the book, not to remember, but to think. If you do, then Mr. Edmundson could become your "Teacher"
Hans Hansen
Medford High School
Calss of '65
Rating:
Summary: How Reading Can Change Your Life
Review: Mark Edmundson's chronicle
of a year in the life of Medford High is, first and foremost, a
compulsively good read, by turns moving and hilarious, unsentimental yet ultimately uplifting. Teacher is bracing from first page to last. Yet Edmundson manages not only to delight but also--deftly, brilliantly--to instruct. Teacher taught me more about education--its purposes, its practices, its rewards--that anything I've ever read on the subject. What
makes a great teacher? What are books for? How can reading change your life? By the end of this wonderful book, you know.
Rating: 
Summary: More a football memoir than anything else
Review: My niece gave me this book to help me work through my mid-life crisis. Maybe teaching would be my next career!. So I read through this mostly football book and found that the teacher makes only cameo appearances while Edmondson gives you lots of details about his height, weight and playing style. The teacher, who left the profession after only one year, is never well defined. He gives up trying to teach his students the classics of philosophy but has more luck with Kesey and Malcolm X. Oddly the pivotal momemt seems to be a snow-ball fight. If this book had been advertised as a high school memoir about inner growth and the importance of football, I would give it 4 stars. However, as it is I think the author and publisher are guilty of false advertising.
Rating: 
Summary: High school nerd tale
Review: Reading this book, I started off thinking that the author had quite a high school career--amazing professors, amazing classmates, and, of course, the high school girls. I wondered about the last thing, however, when I began to notice that the girls never spoke and their interest in Edmundson was told via the author. The jacket cover suggests the author is Woody Allenish-type, so nothing there to claim attraction. His brilliance? Hard to tell. It appears to be at his own word. Then there's the author's mean streak: he attacks first and asks questions later. An author who manufactures the interest of adoring women? Definitely.
Rating:
Summary: Life is not defined by who you were in high school
Review: This book is about Mark Edmundson's senior year at Medford High School, and the teacher who broke that year - and that life - apart. The personalities of fellow students, teachers, administrators, coaches - names changed to protect the innocent! - will be recognizeable to anyone who might have passed through senior year, circa 1970, anywhere, though the particular teacher was one we weren't all as fortunate to have had. This book chronicles that slow realizing when a student begins to understand that you can become your own teacher and you can reach beyond the expectations others may have determined for you. 'Teacher' would make an excellent all-school read, a even better all-faculty read. I loved it, and have passed it along to many friends.
Rating:
Summary: A Great Iconoclast Archetype
Review: This book is an excellent memoir, but more importantly, Edmundson portrays one of the best iconoclast figures I've ever come across in Frank Lears. The inspiring thing for all of us is that Lears (not his real name) is a real person and not a character from fiction. I've read all the reviews here and those of you chosing to nit-pick Edmundson for his diversions into football and what not, I believe, are missing his point. His aim is to relate to the reader the concepts advocated by Mr. Lears. Namely, that reading good books, asking tough questions and going against the forces of conformity are ways of liberating one's soul and putting yourself on a truer, as Sarte would say, more authentic path. In this sense, Lears is the personification of that notion. And, that it actually worked on one (or more?) of these knucklehead students is testimony enough.
Like some reviewers, all of us raised in the culture of celebrity lives, I too wished there had been more on Lears, the man. Even if it was an afterword or something. I would've preferred him a bit more flushed out and tangible. But I believe Edmundson deliberately eschewed this approach in favor of focusing on the ideas Lears advocated and what he represented as a person.
One reviewer correctly mentioned that there is an excellent interview with Edmundson on the NPR website and a second interview follow up about him catching up with Mr. Lears 25 years later. (Perhaps he'll put this in a magazine article for the readers here.) In the latter interview, he relates that Lears went to law school (where? unspecified) and recently--he must be in his mid-50's now--has been working in the ex-Soviet republics putting together their codes of law. This seemed consistent to me with the portrait of the artist as a young man. Lears also commented on what he thought Edmundson got right and wrong in the book (Lears is not on the interview, Edmundson recounts their conversation), but I'll leave that to you readers to go hear for yourselves...
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