So Are They Really That Smart at Harvard? (x)

When you get to Harvard, you expect people to be smart. Really smart. Especially the professors. So are they?

Not really. They're pretty much like the professors I've known at the University of Illinois and Northwestern. Some good, some not so good, some engaging, some boring, some that love teaching, some that seem to be doing it out of obligation. They drink coffee, they're not always that good at running a class discussion, they write comments on your paper in pencil.

Most of my professors are in the Graduate School of Education. But Mr. Harber was smarter than all of them.

Who is Mr. Harber? My first year of teaching was at Paxton-Buckley-Loda High School back in 1994. It was a rural town in central Illinois where the parking lots were filled with pick-up trucks and the stands were filled with Carhartts. Mr. Harber was the librarian across the hall from my classroom. If I believed in God, I would say God placed him there to help me through my first year. He had taught for 15 years before becoming the librarian, and he was articulate, open minded, thoughtful, sharp as a tack, had an answer for all things educational, and sported a beard that extended down past his collar. What would have taken me 10 years to learn as a teacher, I did in only 2 thanks to him. Even here at Harvard, 14 years later, I still hear myself repeating something he had said to me way back in the mid-nineties.

He was the smartest man I had ever met. He is smarter than any professor I have met here. Not that folks aren't smart around here, they're just not Mr. Harber.

What does this mean? The smartest man and smartest educational scholar I ever met is librarian in a small rural town in central Illinois without publicity and a modest salary. The professors at Harvard are big names--leaders in the field, published authors, on the radio, the young ones are "rising stars" and the veterans are "esteemed author-educators". But why? Why do they get all the press clippings? Why are they assumed to be the best in the business? What did they do to get that title? Do they deserve it? How egregious is the salary difference between a Harvard professor and a rural Illinois teacher? Should we bring Mr. Harber to Harvard? Would he want to come? Would he even be Mr. Harber then? Do the Harvard professors know that they can be matched and surpassed by modest educators like him? Does that ever make them nervous?