Murray’s BIG PICTURE Philosophy

Before I go any further with this, I need to consult this post.

• “Not So Good Old Days” and To Heck with Nostalgia”
• In “Creativity: Talk-Article Outline” (4/1/69) Murray closes with a poem, “In Praise of Diversity” Phi Beta Kappa Poem, Columbia University, 1953. Of this poem, Murray writes, “But as teachers of creative writing I would like to suggest you listen to the following poem.” I think that this poem embodies one of his core beliefs about the value of diversity and his advocacy for the poem likely reflects his sense, from his childhood, that he was a square peg always being put into a round hole (Folder: Murray: Random Handouts, Conference Papers, Teaching Exercises)
• On the importance of being a generalist—Murray decided NOT to start a journalism school or even major program, he saw the humanities as valuable and a broad and general education the best route for students studying English –check out “The Practical Advantage of an Impractical Education” (Folder: Murray Early Pubs on Teaching Writing”)
• I've taught a section of 501 again this spring, and found it once more just about my favorite course. I particularly enjoy teaching the remedial students who turn out not to be so remedial. (Faculty Annual Report, 5/5/75)
• This passage from his article "Teach the Motivating Force of Revision" (1978), p. 58-59:

This story seems to capture Murray's sense of outsider-ness in academe:

I am surprised at this eagerness. I am embedded in tenure, undeniably middle- aged, one of the gray, fading professors I feared I would become, but still have not felt the bitterness I saw in many of my own professors and see in some of my colleagues. I wonder if I've missed something important, if I'm becoming one of those aging juveniles who bound across the campus from concert to lecture, pleasantly silly.

There must be something wrong with a fifty-four-year-old man who is looking forward to his thirty-fifth conference of the day. It is twelve years since I really started teaching by conference. I average seventy-five conferences a week, thirty weeks a year, then there's summer teaching and workshop teaching of teachers. I've probably held far more than 30,000 writing conferences, and I am still fascinated by this strange, exposed kind of teaching, one on one.

It doesn't seem possible to be an English teacher without the anxiety that I will be exposed by my colleagues. They will find out how little I do; my students will expose me to them; the English Department will line up in military formation in front of Hamilton Smith Hall and, after the buttons are cut off my Pendleton shirt, my university library card will be torn once across each way and let flutter to the ground.

The other day I found myself confessing to a friend, "Each year I teach less and less, and my students seem to learn more. I guess what I've learned to do is to stay out of their way and not to interfere with their learning." ("The Listening Eye" p. 13-14)