This morning I opened my Weekend Australian to find Chris Pearson peering out at me from page 26 of ‘The Inquirer’. This week Pearson’s article featured author Mark Lopez. Lopez has made a name for himself making the cynical argument that pandering to the political beliefs of your lecturers at uni will get you good results (for minimal effort). Contrariwise, for Lopez, deliberately setting yourself at odds with your lecturer’s beliefs is as good as asking for low grades (and then, for greater effort). Merit will only get you so far.

According to Lopez (and Pearson), most educators are the B-grade of their field. English teachers are failed authors; Politics lecturers are failed politicians, and so on and so on: all harbour delusions that they were destined for great things. Pearson cites Lopez’s example of teacher-turned-author Frank McCourt. McCourt was an English teacher who later in life penned Angela’s Ashes, ‘an entertaining book of modest literary or historical value’. People like McCourt are the darlings of the failed-author-cum-English-teacher – rare glimmers of hope for all of those wannabes who are nevergunnabe. The fact that Angela’s Ashes became a set text on the VCE syllabus is proof of Lopez’s thesis. McCourt validated the fantasy selves of the English faculty, and they rewarded him in kind. Or so Lopez argues.

However, there is a more plausible thesis that could be drawn from Lopez’s work, and maybe Pearson’s. Lopez gives voice to the fantasy self of the student who believes that trapped inside them is the next Pulitzer or Nobel Prize winner. ‘If only my biased lecturer, tutor or teacher would not dismiss my work. If only they would set aside their leftist or conservative bias. Then I could blossom and become who I’m meant to be.’ From my own experience as an undergraduate student, this latter thesis is more likely to be true than Lopez and Pearson’s thesis that the educational institutions of the country are filled with educators who can’t set aside their beliefs and judge a student’s work on its merits.

It sounds like Lopez and Pearson are the ones trying to validate their fantasy selves. ‘If only people would realise that deep within there is so much more than a columnist for the national daily.’

Pooh-pooh Pearson. But that’s coming from a blogger, and we all believe that deep within us lies a columnist.