Don't Bother Me, Kids

John Steinbeck's cheeky advice to English students at Monterey High

JOHN STEINBECK STRUCK A NERVE in 1955 when he begged the English teachers of America to stop unleashing their students on Famous Authors.

For a time in America’s educational history, high school teachers encouraged their students to seek out prominent people — presidents and authors and such — so that they might infuse their otherwise tedious term papers with an air of authority. Steinbeck’s phenomenal fame had apparently attracted an onslaught of expectations among precocious young brainiacs who badgered him for a byte of his supreme wisdom. For their stupid term papers.

The intentions were good, but in Steinbeck’s estimation the teachers had unleashed a monster.

Steinbeck described the phenomenon in a wry, playful column for the Saturday Review of Literature, published April 30, 1955.

The demands for term-paper wisdom started simply enough, Steinbeck wrote. He at first received simple queries from students asking him his age and where he was born. But when it became apparent that he was an easy mark for students hoping to pad their term papers with a Steinbeck citation or two, their expectations became progressively more demanding. “Write and tell me what is your philosophy of life,” they’d ask. They sought original essays and short stories. They expected insightful reviews and penetrating biographies. Pulitzer material.

“I was rapidly becoming responsible for their grades,” Steinbeck complained.

His comic essay in the Saturday Review was written in the form of a letter to English instructors, and it asked the guilty teachers to cease and desist. Teachers simply had to stop telling their students to contact him. Immediately. “You are giving me a jumpiness that makes me go out of my way to bypass a school building,” he wrote. “And you are making me seriously consider shooting the postman.”

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SOON AFTER ITS PUBLICATION, the Saturday Review article sparked a spirited debate among students in Frank C. Jacobson’s English class at Monterey High School. In the light-hearted vein in which Steinbeck’s essay appeared, several of Jacobson’s students sent their own brazen letter to Steinbeck. Their letter agreed in principle with his premise, but it elaborated that term papers themselves were just plain stupid. Term papers were a waste of time, they wrote, even when the included the musings of Famous Authors.

Imagine Jacobson’s surprise when he received a response from Steinbeck, in a letter dated April 30, 1955. Jacobson shared the letter with the Monterey Peninsula Herald, which published it a couple of days later in its News Comments column:

Dear Mr. Jacobson:

I have a letter from a group of students of English in the Monterey Union High School signed by each one of them and I am not able to decide whether it is a declaration of war against me or against you.

I appreciate their having written to me in answer to my recent cry of pain in the Saturday Review of Literature. The reaction to that piece has been rather fantastic. I have had great numbers of letters from teachers and from other people thanking me for having written it, so apparently I have not been the only one so pushed around. In fact, Bernard Baruch wrote and said it gave him courage to put a stop to something that has been bothering him for years and he must get many more than I.

Believe me, I am sensible of the difficulty of both the teacher and the student of writing. What the devil are you going to say about it? If there could be a course called Read It and Shut Up it might be of great advantage, but you know among the many letters that I have received from students, many of which were obvious fakes, there have been some which were intensely interesting, that showed consciousness of mind and a genuine curiosity and in some cases were highly instructive to me. Such letters have not been many, but they have occurred. 

Please tell the English students who wrote me that I was awfully glad to get their letter. If they want to step outside I'll do that or if they want to get along I’ll do that. You might tell them a story I heard recently that I like very much. It’s a story of a little boy who says to his father, “Daddy, can’t I please go to bed?” and the father says, “Shut up and deal.”

And with that advice to students of English and the Monterey Union High School, I close, and please assure them that I am turning their names over to the FBI.

Yours very sincerely,

John Steinbeck

— Story and photo illustration by Joe Livernois