Yes Virginia, There Are Real Teachers.

[original text - Yes Virginia, there is a Santa Claus, here]

Dear David,
I am 8 years old. Some of my little friends say that there is no such thing as a real teacher. Just our bot - Nano and others like her. Papa says "If that’s what Twitter says, it is so." Please tell me the truth, do real teachers still exist?
…………………………

Virginia,
Your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of an age hypnotized by the tech evangelists . They do not believe except what hype, what hyperbole, they hear. They think that no learning can be which is not a done through a rigorous delivery system and logically, systematically computerized, calculated, processed. They are wrong.

All minds, Virginia, whether they be a venture capitalist’s or children's, are little. In this great universe of ours, we are intellectually a mere insect, an ant, a trifle, as compared with the boundless world about us, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.

Yes, Virginia, there are real teachers. I’m one of them. We exist as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that we abound and give to our life its highest beauty and joy - the gift of learning.

Alas! How dreary would be the world if there were no real teachers! It would be as dreary as if there weren’t a refreshing breeze or peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Learning would become memory and recall, a repetitive, parroting of facts and as insufferable as a prison cell.

There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. No inspiration. No farts and no class clowns. We should have no enjoyment, except in obedience and quickly getting our home work copied and done. The eternal light with which real teaching fills the world would be extinguished.

Not believe in real teachers? You might as well not believe in Harry Potter! You might get your Papa to hire men to visit all the schools, filled with dedicated teachers and talk to them, hear their worries and be touched by their faith in humanity, your future, our future. But even if they did not see any real teachers, what would that prove? Only that they are addicted to their own false future and the dregs of materialism. Students are not machines, nor teachers and not all the arguments otherwise will make anyone see any gears turning inside us.

Nobody believes in real teachers, but that is no sign that there is are no real teachers, out there morning to night, keeping the world filled with hope and caring for our youngest like you Virginia. The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see in their hearts, so much they’ve cluttered them with thoughts of dollars or fame or other vain things.

Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that's no proof that they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders that are unseen and unseeable in the world. The world is kept aloft by forces we are so ignorant of. Do not let anyone, my dear Virginia, steal from you the hope of having a real teacher and experiencing the joys of a real classroom.

You tear apart the baby's rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, or even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived, could tear apart. Only faith, fancy, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernatural beauty and glory beyond. Teaching is for humans, with all our errors, spelling mistakes and slips of the tongue. It is what makes life beautiful, this failing together and what makes us rise together. A wise man once said, “By mistakes we learn.” So no, we’ll never learn from a shiny silvery, always right bot. Like Santa Claus, we need our teachers. They keep our hope alive and keep everything fallible, real.

Is it all real? Ah, Virginia, in all this world there is nothing else as real and abiding.

No real teachers? Thank God I teach and so many others keep teaching, forever. A thousand years from now, maybe 10 times 10,000 years from now, we will continue to make glad the hearts of children.

Written and remixed by David Deubelbeiss in 2024