"The communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly
declare that their ends can be achieved only by the forcible overthrow of
all existing social institutions." With those words, the opening of the
last paragraph of "The Communist Manifesto", we started 9th grade social
studies. How many of us went home and told our parents with glee they were
making us memorize part of that book? How many parents rightly asked if we
would also memorize the preamble to the Declaration Of Independence? How
many parents asked "who's making you do this?"

Imagine if they saw him. Not at Parents' Night, when he wore a tie, but the
other days when he sported an open collar, feral hair, granny glasses, the
ubiquitous coffee cup. Memory plays tricks, and his long hair may have been
neater than I recall (less Karl Marx, more John Lennon on the 1969 Beatles
album with "The Ballad Of John And Yoko") but he never looked like a
teacher. Didn't sound like one either. His deep voice was not given to
Aschmann's rolling cadences but to clipped, choppy sentences: "Kathy,
where's your manual? Always, always bring your manual to class!" Just his
speaking made Wick Rudd and I laugh during the first few weeks. He sounded
cool.

Early on he gave us a survey to fill out, then assigned each of us to
research "your most foolish answer." My dumbest answer was to "why are we
in Vietnam?" Thinking back, my domino theory answer wasn't wrong so much as
it wasn't my answer. I was repeating received wisdom, without questioning
or adding my own thought. His class demanded that we abandon cliche and
grapple, unaided by Democratic, Republican or George Wallace doctrine, with
China (and filial piety), Africa ( and why "Things Fall Apart") and Vietnam
(and why we're there). Synthesize the viewpoints in the manual, learn some
history, ask and answer your own questions.

Nonetheless, he wasn't beyond pushing his own views, and "The Communist
Manifesto" was but one way of immersing us in a cold bath of far left to
shake off our indoctrination to date. Tony Terraforte taught us to doubt
textbooks but Mr. Tucker and Mrs. Lieberman threw the textbook out. All
that year we used the raggedly-bound set of ditto sheets called the
"manual". And the manual leaned left. He and Lieberman, with her commune
fashions, did too. His politics, his casual dress were diametrically
opposed to those of Bruce Crandall or Albert Barough and the ever-present
Delaney Book.

I've used "cool" a lot because that's my strongest impression of him at that
time. Richard Bub wasn't cool. Mabel Snell wasn't cool. He was, in part
because he ridiculed: Nixon, the war, even assemblies, pep rallies and
dress codes. Ridicule sells to teenagers. But he was also cool chiding us
not to ridicule names like (here he carefully pronounced) "Chinua Achebe" or
"Okonkwo". He was cool using the coffee cup after I broke the handle and my
Krazy Glue repair dissolved in his dishwasher. He had charisma. Sometimes
that's enough to carry a non-discussion of the Boxer Rebellion during a dead
7th period.

Later in high school I soured on his act and the cult of personality
surrounding Conservation Club. But most of that was sour grapes that
Jan, Louise, Carolyn and others paid much more attention to him than to me.
He did the job well. He made 9th grade social studies exciting. He made it
possible to challenge authority (Mr. Nixon, or Mr. Rees or Dad) with facts
and theory, not just jeers. I looked forward to 7th period and the teacher
who looked and sounded so different, better...cool.

Dave Virrill

The only thing missing from Dave Virrill’s portrait of Robert Tucker was the
chalk throwing. It was thrilling to witness broken bits of crumbling gesso
flying through the air as he would seek to rouse us from our collective
torpor to make some critical point about this or that crime against
humanity.

Oh, and I remember with fondness the “Hastings Artichokes,” Tucker’s
suggestion for a more sensitive and ecologically-conscious football team
where players would have artichokes attached to their helmets that would
mesh together during head-on tackles. He objected to the mindless machismo
of the stinging yellow jackets.

On a strictly personal level, he changed my life. I need to preface this by
saying what a wildly under-achieving member of the high school community I
was, academically, athletically, socially. Well, on my first quarter of
ninth grade Social Studies, Mr. Tucker gave me an A-, a somewhat
unprecedented demonstration of teacher confidence, along with the comment:
“not fulfilling potential,” or something to that effect.

He was right. I was winging it, putting in the least amount of effort
possible without causing alarm, and he called me on it, even if my test
scores were adequate. That additional comment caused in me an incredible
sense of wonder. “Hey maybe I’m not so stupid after all…”

The other life-changing event in Mr. Tucker’s class was a phrase he repeated
several times: “just because it is printed in a book, does not mean it is
true.”

Now, for someone brought up to worship books and all things contained||
therein as verging on sacred, here was a truly revolutionary thought: just
because it’s in a book, doesn’t mean it’s true!

If I have had any success in life, as a university student, as a linguist,
as a journalist, or communicator, I think I owe a debt of gratitude to Mr.
Tucker who planted a seed of doubt in my mind all those years ago: “hey,
maybe you’re not so dumb after all!”

Vivienne Heston-Demirel