ABSTRACT
In Pedagogical pleasures, Erica McWilliam (1999) examines the humor and delight of teachers as part of broader disciplinary practices that construct teachers. She recounts how her two uncles and mother, all deemed first-rate teachers in 1950s Australia, relished retelling stories of shaking students or holding them upside down. They also delighted in stories about students’ attempts to con teachers that went awry. Those shared stories contributed to feeling like a teacher in that place and time, pleasures that would be out of place today. As she writes:
Teachers now would be unlikely to feel or experience pleasure in shaking a child or turning it upside down…The pleasure a modern teacher might glean from the telling or hearing of such a tale is more likely the satisfaction of knowing that they themselves would never stoop to such unruly practices because they know them to be unethical and dangerous.
(1999, pp. 1–2) McWilliam explores enjoyment and gratification as a crucial but neglected aspect of teachers’ lives and work. She persuades that proper pleasures, which are historically contingent, are integral to becoming a teacher. Other scholars of teaching have touched on the affects of teaching, as well: Waller (1933), for example, discussed the stern facial expressions that become part of teaching, while Freedman, Jackson, and Boles (1983) emphasized the chronic embitteredness of veteran elementary teachers. Lortie (1969) wrote that “a good day, when student and teacher were in sync” was the greatest satisfaction, and that teachers were mortified by losing their tempers. In “I Love Them to Death,” Peter Taubman (2006) explores how teachers’ aggressions, fears, and fantasies of control get sanitized within more acceptable notions of sacrifice and love. He tracks how these proper pleasures have even been codified by accreditation organizations such as the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) that require “that teacher candidates hold particular dispositions—values or attitudes—generally vaguely progressive, if they are to be recommended for certification” (p. 21). Taken together these authors draw 70attention to how affect is used in the project of “fabricating” (Popkewitz, 2008; Popkewitz & Kirchgasler, 2014; Popkewitz, Diaz, & Kirchgasler, 2017) teachers and the profession of teaching in historically contingent ways.