Three Little Words

The Professor

Depending on which particular site you choose to believe, there are somewhere between 180,000 and a million words in the English language - and it is usually listed as either the language with the most words, or at least up there in the top three.  Yet, if you stream "neo-noir" movies, war flicks or limited series on your screen - you might guess at a much smaller number, with various four-letter words heavily over-represented. But I digress. 

Point is that when you opt to communicate in written or spoken English you have an incredible number of words from which to choose.  And the ones we choose to use say a lot about who we are and what we think, what we value. Parents wait breathlessly for baby's first words - debating whether the kiddo was addressing Mom, Dad or the family pooch. Then they have to endure - 10 or 15 years later - the phase when their teen disappears into a language which is really a code designed to make their communication with their peers indecipherable to their parents. Eventually, hopefully, they get a job, a home of their own - and a new "language of their profession" shared and expected by their occupational peers. And that is where I am headed with this post.

I officially entered my dominant "language tribe" in my early 20s when - having completed my PhD - I took a job as an Assistant Professor up in Stevens Point, Wisconsin. And it is the second part of that title that draws my attention to the implications of its etymology - itself an interesting word that means the history, meaning, and evolution of a word. "Professor" - most simply means "one who professes - to declare to have skill or expertise in, to claim to have knowledge in." So, some kind of "truth-teller."  And over the next 50 years, in New Mexico and mostly in North Carolina, I moved through Associate Professor to Full Professor - a title which once prompted me to inquire of my fellow "Fulls”  - what is a Full Professor full of?" 

More seriously, within the academy, and among the students, often the perception is that a Full Professor is full of truth. Debates did arise within the community as to just how this "truth" was best disseminated. A couple of points from that debate:

I have often heard the old self-deprecating cliche employed by some of my fellow professors: "I learn more from my students than they learn from me."  To which my - usually unspoken - reaction was "Then they ought to sue you for malpractice." I mean really, we were teachers, for crying out loud. We were being paid to share with our students the information and knowledge we had acquired in our decades of reading and research.

A more nuanced version of the discussion considered the question of whether it was best to be "a sage on the stage," or "a guide on the side." There were solid points to be made for either perspective - but regardless of where you chose to stand, the bottom line was you were the "professor" either providing your students with, or guiding them to, the truth.  A notion that brings me to the title of the post - "Three Little Words,”  that really should have a completing phrase - "and what makes them so hard for professors to say."

Outside my professional community, people would probably vote for "I love you" being the three words in question. But not really. We say them easily to babies, to puppies, kittens, etc., to celebrities should we meet them. So we have a lot of practice with those three words.  It is when we find ourselves faced with the scenario in which we feel moved to speak them to another person, with whom we would like to spend our lives, that they may become a bit of a stutter. But somehow we muddle through.

For those of us who spend our lives in the academy the stuttering phrase is different - and while difficult - actually should be the foundation of our community. 

The phrase is "I don't know."

It reflects a state that is difficult to admit, because in our continuing role of "profess - er," -  one who professes, a "truth-teller" we are suppose to know. That is our job - knowing, professing. To say "I don't know" seems tantamount to saying "I'm not doing my job." 

Actually the opposite is true. The real job of every "professor" is to discover what - at the end of their lengthy education - they do not know. And then seek to address that deficiency. Bring new depth, more data to that which they profess approaches truth. If we are to function as guides then the task is to guide our students along the path that takes them with us to what we don't know, and then encourage them to help find the next step, the next answer.

Both within, and outside of, the classroom there are linguistic structures that can simultaneously address the uncomfortable reality of "not knowing" and the accompanying desire to acknowledge and value all that one has learned. For example:

"I don't know. But if I were to guess I would guess that . . ." 

Or "I don't know, but we might figure it out by . . ."  

Or "I don't know, but it seems that . . . " 

Or "I don't know. But [some credible source] appears to imply that . . . "

It's a bit of a semantic balancing act, but it might work. What do you think?

I don't know. 🤷‍♂️