Back in 7th grade, my history teacher, Mr. Moorehead, made a promise to all us kids: study hard, get a good grade on the test, and you might just get to spend a class in the teacher’s chair. And before you think what’s the big deal, let me tell you about junior high in the 80s in rural America.
My junior high school was pretty new, which meant we got the latest and greatest in academic seating - cold, plastic seats bolted onto an aluminum frame with a wire basket underneath and a faux-wood desk in front. They were stiff, uncomfortable, and, did I mention cold?
But Mr. Moorehead’s chair, the teacher’s chair, that was something special. In my memory, the chair was more throne than seat. It swiveled. It rolled. It…reclined.
As if being allowed to reside in such a heavenly piece of furniture were not enough to encourage us to study our asses off, sitting in the big chair meant you had access to Mr. Moorehead’s candy bowl. Just a little tray of hard candies for when, “you had a tickle in your throat.” So not only did you have the big, moveable, comfortable chair, you now had the power to bestow kingly gifts upon the favored and to ignore those contemptible suck-ups who would normally never talk to you1. In the black and white world of kid vs. adult thinking, this was my first taste of what it meant to sit in the literal seat of power. Thrilling, heady, laden with candy.
Of course, forty years later, out here in the world of grown-up logic and emotional regulation, who gets to sit in which chair is not quite as stirring. And if you believe that, I have some ocean-front property to sell you back home in the AZ.
Chair has always been something of a loaded word. It comes mostly from Old French although there are roots that delve backwards into Greek and possibly even PIE. In all these roots, chair’s antecedent words mean, “seat of the person in authority.” Professors, bishops, and kings, oh my.
Lower-case chair is just a chair, but upper-case Chair takes us right back to person in authority.
It did not take long at all before it broadened to just mean a thing a person sits on. That said, chair has persisted as kind of a dual-meaning word defined by a lower-case or upper-case C. Lower-case chair is just a chair, but upper-case Chair takes us right back to person in authority.
In academia, Chair is a term of art denoting someone who has taken on a leadership role in addition to their teaching role. Usually a senior professor is asked (or volunteered) to act as the leader of a department. Depending on the institution, this Department Chair may have the dubious joy of overseeing the curriculum, the budget, the faculty, and, did I mention teaching? It’s a lot. It’s also a very common career goal. Earning the title of Department Chair signals that you have not only succeeded as a teacher and a researcher, but that you are seen as a guide and a leader.
So, basically, you have a parallel evolution of chair as a piece of furniture slowly being downgraded from throne to, you know, a chair, while metaphorically, the opposite happens. Chair starts by denoting authority in the church and then expands to universities and then boardrooms, showing that whoever is in the position has the authority and responsibility to lead.
The irony in all of this, however, is that, as teachers, we often exercise our authority by making students abandon their chairs.
When I was a kid, you never wanted to be told to get out of your chair. I mean, at recess or to tease your friend, sure, but when the teacher told you to? It meant one of two things - you were being singled out because you needed correction (read punishment) or because you were being called on to answer a question. Either way you were in trouble and there was no clearer signal to that than being made to leave the relative safety and anonymity of your chair.
These days, teaching in the Japanese university system, the easiest way to trigger my students fight-or-flight response is to tell them they’ll have to stand up to deliver their presentations or oral reports. You can see the panic in their eyes as I remind them that part of their presentation score is not just based on whether they stand but on how they stand: hands held naturally, chins held high, eyes flitting from audience member to audience member in that dreaded ritual known as eye-contact, and, of course, in front of all their peers still comfortably encased in their chairs.
As teachers, we often exercise our authority by making students abandon their chairs.
It’s honestly not great, but also kind of unavoidable. There’s research to suggest that students need some pressure to succeed, but that classrooms should be safe spaces2. Teachers are thus tasked with threading yet another needle, making the classroom a comfortable environment for learning but not so comfortable that students feel they can slack off and not participate. And if that sounds hard, imagine trying to do it.
Which brings me back to chairs and seating. The teacher’s chair, in a classroom, is sacrosanct. Young students tease teachers they like by occupying their chairs, thus forcing the teacher to acknowledge and give them attention. Depending on the individuals, this is either a beloved part of student-teacher bonding or a contest of wills. Sometimes both.
For older students, the location of their seats in relation to the teacher’s chair can say a lot about the dynamics in any given classroom. “Good” students typically place themselves in chairs closer to the teacher. Other students, either shy or slackers or some mid-point between, tend to sit farther away. Unless, of course, there is that most dreaded of all teacher classroom-management tools: the seating chart.
Personally, I don’t use seating charts. It’s tempting to say that I just don’t care enough to make them, and that’s somewhat true - I’d rather put my time into teaching rather than making sure little Tomohiro is where I’ve decided he needs to be. But the greater truth is that I don’t find them valuable. The good students will pay attention and study no matter where they sit and the others will goof off and text their friends no matter where they sit. Letting them do it from the relative safety of a chair by the window makes class run smoother and the only student adversely affected is the one not doing their work. C’est la vie.
And really, that’s the final point, where chair and Chair merge is in the authority given to and projected by a leader, be it in the boardroom or the classroom; for any true Chair, every chair is a throne.
Stay curious,
Joel
The one and only piece of candy I gave out was to a girl named Patricia. I had had to call her a few weeks prior to get the homework assignment. This had meant a terrifying trawl through the phonebook looking for the right family’s number and an equally terrifying number of calls asking, “Is Patricia there?” Once I finally got hold of her and got the homework, a new fear set in: what if she told everyone that I, a boy, had called her, a girl? Fortunately, in class the next day, she waited until no one was looking to lean over and whisper, “Did you do the homework ok?” So here’s the lesson kids: be cool and you get candy. ‘Cause I sure as hell didn’t share with any of those tormenting assholes.
Not in a political sense but in the sense that they are not worried that they will be belittled or shamed for making mistakes or not passing a test.