Introduction

Mr. Burrows is standing on a chair at the front of the classroom, hanging by one arm from an imaginary White House chandelier. The man he impersonates is drunk, and he is desperately trying to get the attention of the man who has just been sworn in as President. "Hey Andy!" the man calls out, "Over here! Hey Andy!" It is 1829 and Andrew Jackson, man of the people, who during his presidential campaign invited everyone he met to attend his inauguration, is now paying the price. "The people" attend his inauguration in droves, a huge disorderly party takes place, and the White House is damaged. Mr. Burrows, who is teaching us American history junior year, dramatizes the story so convincingly and humorously that I will always remember that the first inauguration of Andrew Jackson was the scene of a big, raucous, egalitarian party.

Mr. Burrows was not only a teacher but also a performer, and he used his performing skill in the service of his teaching. He had a wonderful sense of humor, and many times in his class we were laughing along with him. He was a rigorous and challenging teacher, but he was at the same time charming and entertaining. We paid attention.

We are reading excerpts from The Iliad sophomore year and the bell rings, ending class in the middle of a passage. He sighs impatiently, looks skyward in exasperation, and as we begin to pack up notebooks and backpacks, he waves an arm at us and passionately cries out, "We'll fight the Trojan War tomorrow!" The Trojan War may be ancient history, but in this class it is going on right now. I am shaken by the energy and drama of his cry, and I take away something about the passion that literature can arouse. I realize that Mr. Burrows is unlike any teacher I've ever had.

Classes

He expected us to take detailed notes in History class, and then carefully re-write the notes in the evening in outline form. (I still have several History notebooks from his class, full of page after page of historical information in outline form.) We kept a list of names and a list of dates for each unit. We drew maps. For each unit, we were expected to think up and carry out an independent project. Most days he would assign us a "term" or two. We were expected to look up the term in an encyclopedia and basically copy the information onto paper. During the junior and senior years, he assigned us essays and papers to write on historical or current-events topics.

He lectured during his English class. He also read literature to us, and he read beautifully. And he would open up the class to discussion about something we'd read. (I was shy about speaking in front of the class.) We also studied vocabulary and grammar; Mr. Burrows is the reason I can tell a direct object from an indirect object.

In English class, he gave us mimeographed copies of literature every day: poems, essays, speeches, and short stories. We read books that he assigned. He asked us to write a lot of essays on the literature we were reading.

Sophomore year we covered European History and Literature. Units included the Prehistoric Age, Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, Rome, the Medieval Age, the Feudal Age, the Renaissance, and the Rise of Nations.

Junior year we studied American History and Literature through around 1900. We were expected to compile a "literature notebook" (actually it was multiple notebooks) with all the literature that he'd handed out to us in it, and the essays we'd written. He gave us a lot of leeway regarding how we illustrated, organized and presented the material. (I had difficulty with this freedom, being more accustomed in school to doing what I was asked.) Some ambitious students re-typed all the literature he handed out, in that way making it their own. Eventually I did a lot of re-typing, and illustrated the notebooks with photographs cut out of photography magazines.

Senior year was American History up to the present. Senior year Mr. Burrows taught only History, so we had to go elsewhere for an English class.

We worked hard. Looking back, it is fair to say that Burrows was essentially an (unacknowledged) Honors History and English track in the high school. Everyone in the class was bright and headed to college. Students who didn't want to be pushed academically and do a lot of homework in History and English didn't sign up for Burrows.

As I said, we worked hard. Mr. Burrows knew his stuff and he pushed us. For the unit on Mesopotamia sophomore year, for example, on the History side we took (and re-wrote) two weeks' worth of lecture notes, memorized 20 dates, and made maps of Abraham's Journey, Ancient Mesopotomia, the Assyrian Empire, the Exodus From Egypt, the Hittite Empire, and the Kingdom of David and Solomon. Our Names List included 49 names, including "David," "The Philistines" and "Cambysis". The Names List included detailed information on each Name, and (handwritten) took 19 pieces of two-sided notebook paper. We looked up several "terms". I think that we did a project of our choosing. We handed in the entire unit when we moved on to study Egypt.

For my project on Greece sophomore year, I photographed Greek columns in Duluth. (Click here to see some photographs from this project.) In the 1975 yearbook photograph for "Open Mind" see the ("Photographs" section of this site), taken in Mr. Burrows' classroom, you can see several student projects in the background. That photograph illustrates an importance practice that Mr. Burrows followed - when the class was studying a unit, he filled the classroom with artifacts, photographs, magazine articles and old student projects from that unit. When we were studying Mesopotamia, we were surrounded by materials from Mesopotamia. It might be a fair guess that, at the time the 1975 Open Mind photograph was taken, the sophomores were studying Egypt.

English

During our sophomore year, we read the Colonial-era preacher Jonathan Edwards' famous sermon, "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God." I think that Mr. Burrows, teacher / performer, read some of it to us in an appropriately threatening tone:

The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider, or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked: his wrath towards you burns like fire; he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else, but to be cast into the fire; he is of purer eyes than to bear to have you in his sight; you are ten thousand times more abominable in his eyes, than the most hateful venomous serpent is in ours. You have offended him infinitely more than ever a stubborn rebel did his prince; and yet it is nothing but his hand that holds you from falling into the fire every moment.

Mr. Burrows loved Henry David Thoreau, and junior year we read Walden. I think Mr. Burrows appreciated Thoreau for the spiritual qualities in his writing, rather than his political philosophy. Mr. Burrows brought to our attention this line early in Walden:

"I have travelled a good deal in Concord."

"To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts."

Junior year we read many poems of Emily Dickinson, and often Mr. Burrows read a poem to us while we followed along on a mimeographed copy of the poem. That may sound odd, but he had some of the artist in him, he read beautifully, and I think we understood that he was able to bring the poems to life. Here are three Emily Dickinson poems from junior year:

I taste a liquor never brewed,
From tankards scooped in pearl;
Not all the vats upon the Rhine
Yield such an alcohol!

Inebriate of air am I,
And debauchee of dew,
Reeling, through endless summer days,
From inns of molten blue.

When landlords turn the drunken bee
Out of the foxglove's door,
When butterflies renounce their drams,
I shall but drink the more!

Till seraphs swing their snowy hats,
And saints to windows run,
To see the little tippler
Leaning against the sun!

---

I held a jewel in my fingers
And went to sleep.
The day was warm, and winds were prosy;
I said: "'Twill keep."

I woke and chid my honest fingers, -
The gem was gone;
And now an amethyst remembrance
Is all I own.

---

Because I could not stop for Death -
He kindly stopped for me -
The Carriage held but just Ourselves -
And Immortality.

We slowly drove - He knew no haste
And I had put away
My labor and my leisure too,
For His Civility -

We passed the School, where Children strove
At Recess - in the Ring -
We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain -
We passed the Setting Sun -

Or rather - He Passed Us -
The Dews grew quivering and chill -
For only Gossamer, my Gown -
My Tippet - only Tulle -

We paused before a House that seemed
A Swelling of the Ground -
The Roof was scarcely visible -
The Cornice - in the Ground -

Since then - 'tis Centuries - and yet
Feels shorter than the Day
I first surmised the Horses' Heads
Were toward Eternity -

Senior year we read excerpts from The Spoon River Anthology by Edgar Lee Masters. I remember Mr. Burrows reading this one to us:

Lucinda Matlock

I went to the dances at Chandlerville,
And played snap-out at Winchester,
One time we changed partners,
Driving home in the moonlight of middle June,
and then I found Davis.
We were married and lived together for seventy years,
Enjoying, working, raising the twelve children,
Eight of whom we lost
Ere I had reached the age of sixty.
I spun, I wove, I kept the house, I nursed the sick,
I made the garden, and for holiday
Rambled over the fields where sang the larks,
And by Spoon River gathering many a shell,
And many a flower and medicinal weed -
Shouting to the wooded hills, singing to the green valleys.
At ninety-six I had lived enough, that is all,
And passed to a sweet repose.
What is this I hear of sorrow and weariness,
Anger, discontent and drooping hopes?
Degenerate sons and daughters,
Life is too strong for you -
It takes life to love Life.

Stories

One day Mr. Burrows told us the story of his brief singing career in New York. Mr. Burrows had a terrific singing voice, and he went to the Juilliard School, I believe, to become a professional bass. Having completed his training, he was doing well, having some professional success in New York City, when he had some negative experiences. Some people were jealous of him, and he found out the hard way that, in show business, people aren't always very nice. He didn't tell us exactly what happened, but it was enough to convince him to leave show business. He earned a master's degree at Columbia University and then returned to Minnesota to become a teacher.

Mr. Burrows spoke of difficulties in entertaining potential friends in New York. He'd have people over to socialize, he'd serve milk and cookies, but his invitees would clearly expect alcohol. Mr. Burrows also expressed amazement that so many people lived in New York City without taking advantage of its cultural offerings. "Why put up with living in New York if you're not going to take advantage of it?" he wondered.

Once in a while, we did some singing together as a class, and Mr. Burrows led us with that wonderful, rich singing voice.

Tony Hertzel one day decided to have some fun with a skeleton borrowed from the anatomy lab. At first he situated the skeleton in the Principal's office, sitting in the Principal's chair. Upon seeing it, Mr. Srdar howled, "Get this thing out of my office!" Then Tony took the skeleton up to Mr. Burrows' classroom. It should be said that Mr. Burrows took a dim view of any absence from school, going so far as to tell us that "sickness is no excuse" for missing school. Tony positioned the skeleton in a chair in the classroom, with a propped-up sign that read, "Sickness Is No Excuse". Mr. Burrows cracked up when he saw it.

My gang of friends learned sophomore year that Gene Roddenberry, creator of Star Trek, was coming to speak at the University of Minnesota - Duluth. The Great Bird of the Galaxy at U.M.D.! As good nerds we all loved Star Trek, and knew this was an opportunity not to be missed. The only problem was that Roddenberry's lecture was scheduled for the same time as Mr. Burrows' class. What to do? We all decided to get excused from school to attend the lecture, except Julie, who decided to attend class. (Responsible Julie is now an English professor.) In Mr. Burrows' class, we all sat in the same row, so on the day of the lecture one whole row towards the front of the classroom was p-r-e-t-t-y empty. We had a great time seeing Roddenberry. He showed the Star Trek blooper reel, which was hilarious. He talked about Star Trek and the future of science fiction. We were in nerd heaven.

That night, however, talking to the responsible Julie on the phone, we learn that Mr. Burrows is none too pleased about our absences. He assigned a pile of extra work, due the following day, and he's probably hoping that he'll catch us unprepared for class. We all do the extra work. The next day, even though we have legitimate excuses for the previous day's absence and we're caught up in our work, Mr. Burrows won't let us into class. We trudge down to the office, and Mr. Srdar goes up and talks to Mr. Burrows. We try again to enter Mr. Burrows' classroom, only to be told again that we cannot enter. We trudge again down to the office, and Mr. Srdar goes up and again talks to Mr. Burrows. Finally, Mr. Burrows allows us into the classroom. Mr. Burrows makes some comment to me later in the class about how I should drop his class. After a day or two, the incident is dropped and our state of grace as devoted Burrows students is restored. If I had it to do over again, would I go see Roddenberry? Definitely. I was such a goody-goody in high school, it's a good thing I didn't always do what was expected. Then again, if Julie hadn't responsibly gone to class and let us know what we'd missed, we all might have been in deeper doo-doo.

My family threw a rare party one weekend afternoon in winter, and I invited Mr. Burrows, who lived about a five minute walk from my house. He was in good spirits - funny, talkative and warm. Someone mentioned what the 'wind chill temperature' was outside. Mr. Burrows good-naturedly suggested that the weather people should stop tormenting us with that statistic, and that we should return to the time before the concept had been thought up, and everybody laughed.

I was sitting in the school library, working trigonometry problems (a topic that I now teach). Mr. Burrows walked by and asked what I was doing, and I told him. "Better you than me," he said, and walked on.

Several times a year, I happened to be walking home from school along the same road at the same time as Mr. Burrows. I had a feeling that he liked his solitary afternoon walk home, but I liked him too much and was too selfish not to join him. If he did prefer to walk alone, he was too genteel to say so. During one walk, we talked about death, and he said he wasn't afraid of death. He said something like, "If death means oblivion, so be it."

Open Mind

Trips

Mr. Burrows also took a group to Europe, I think between our junior and senior years. I didn't go on the trip, I don't remember why, but now I regret not going.

Discussion

Mr. Burrows liked to say, "Doing gives you the power to do." I don't claim to fully understand what he meant by this (I am open to enlightenment). I take it as a tough-minded, old-fashioned, strong-work-ethic philosophy which took aim at the idealistic, airy-fairy 1960s. "You're not going to get there by sitting around dreaming about it," it seems to say, "but only by getting started down the road." "Doing gives you the power to do" reminds me somehow of Thoreau's "If you advance confidently in the direction of your dreams, and endeavor to live the life which you have imagined, you will meet with a success unexpected in common hours."

Mr. Burrows disapproved of the sexual revolution that came out of the 1960s, and he warned the girls in his classes that those changes were not to the girls' benefit. He disapproved of the changes in dress that the 1960s brought, and considered it inappropriate for Americans to routinely dress "as if they had just cleaned out the barn." Mr. Burrows disliked the trend of young people going traveling or taking time off to "find themselves". He had no problem with people traveling or taking time off, but he insisted that people were not going to "find themselves" that way. He also took a dim view of people who were in search of happiness. To Mr. Burrows, happiness was elusive, not something to be directly sought. To him, happiness was likely to be the inadvertent result of some disciplined effort in a worthy direction that had nothing to do with a conscious pursuit of happiness. I think, by the way, that Mr. Burrows led a happy life, at least until illness stopped him from doing what he wanted to do. While it may be true that Mr. Burrows did not much like the 20th century, I would guess that he felt comfortable in the 1950s.

Mr. Burrows clearly considered language, and using language well, to be extremely important. So important that he took the position that language enabled thought: "If you can't express it, it's not a thought" he would say. He spoke with scorn of a young person on a trip who, when confronted by a fabulous natural landscape stretched out before him, could only mutter, "Neat!"

Criticism

Mr. Burrows had a worldview, and thus a political point of view, that could not adequately be described as "conservative." Even the term "reactionary" doesn't capture it. As Tom Hertzel said, Mr. Burrows felt comfortable in every century except his own, so it seems most accurate to say that his worldview was of another era. Mr. Burrows spoke highly of the American Liberals of the 1800s; I think today we might call them Republicans. (He was always careful to distinguish the praiseworthy Liberals of the 1800s from the hated liberals of his own time.)

Some of the things Mr. Burrows said in class were really not…very nice. He defended slavery in this country, and said that slavery was economically essential to the early development of the country. (There's an argument for reparations from slavery to African-Americans, right?) He had little or no sympathy for the objections of the native Americans to having the land taken over by Europeans. I think he believed that, since European culture was superior to native culture, it made cold, hard sense for the Europeans to take over the country. He defended apartheid in South Africa because "the whites were there first." He had no sympathy for the poor. He told a story of his father's poverty in the early 1900s, and of the creative goad to action that the poverty provided. He said that one's responsibility to the poor or to any other disadvantaged group went as far as paying one's taxes.

As someone uncomfortable with the 20th century, he didn't identify with the 20th-century rise of the middle class, even though he was himself middle class. He looked back to earlier times and identified with the aristocracy. He saw the aristocracy as central to civilization; sophomore year he said, "All of the advances of western civilization have come from a handful of wealthy, leisurely people." He might have fancied himself as an 18th-century aristocrat. But it is just too convenient to assume that, if you were able to jump 200 years back in time, you'd wind up at the top of the social order. There certainly were many more people in the 18th century who were poor than there were "wealthy, leisurely people." So I do not understand Mr. Burrows' identification with the aristocracy, and I have never been sympathetic to it.

I should add that, despite whatever "identification with the aristocracy" Mr. Burrows may have had, he did not aspire to a life of leisure. He worked hard as a teacher, much harder than he had to. He told us that he knew wealthy people who did not have to work, and did not work, and that he did not wish to be like them. He liked the definition that work gave to his life.

Mr. Burrows was, I think, something of a social Darwinist. The Europeans won their battles against the native Americans because the Europeans were superior and deserved to win. Apartheid is OK in South Africa because, if the whites are on top there, they deserve to be. There is nothing worth questioning about Americans at the top having obscene wealth - they are on top because they deserve to be. You don't have to concern yourself with the poor - they are poor because they deserve to be. In high school, I noticed this line of thinking in Mr. Burrows, and I once asked him whether, in a military conflict, the side that "deserves" to win (in some moral sense) is always the better-armed side. Mr. Burrows, perhaps seeing the trap awaiting him, answered "Yes." His answer supports this view of him as a social Darwinist. The side that should win does always win - so it makes sense to accept the status quo and to view any challenge to the status quo as misguided.

Everyone has his politics, but the problem was that he injected his politics into his classes. At times it felt to me as if he was trying to indoctrinate us into his way of viewing the world. Perhaps an injection of politics is inevitable, especially for a History teacher. Perhaps it is only because I objected to the content of his politics that I even raise this issue. I raised this issue with him when I wrote him in 1985, and he responded: "I was amused and infinitely pleased at your analysis of my teaching… Don't be afraid to be a positive, even optimistic person because whether they accept or reject your dogma, they are thinking, and that is our goal." He appears to claim in this letter that, by injecting politics into his classes, he was only trying to stimulate thought. I agree that his injection of politics might stimulate thought, but overall I find his claim disingenuous. For one thing, he never liked being interrupted when I or someone else tried to call him on something objectionable he'd said. He preferred to lecture, and he didn't really want to hear what thoughts he might have stimulated in his listeners. He didn't want to enter into a thought-provoking discussion. In addition, it is my simple gut feeling that his agenda when being political was not to stimulate thought, but to transmit his worldview to the students in his class.

I have gone on at some length about Mr. Burrows' politics, and that is because his injection of reactionary politics into his classes made me angry in high school. It bothered me and I didn't have much of a voice to oppose him then. He was the teacher and I was a student. I loved Mr. Burrows, I created this website to honor him, but I also feel compelled to articulate and try to make sense of what I see as his most serious weakness.

One other criticism: I think Mr. Burrows should have used a textbook in his History classes. Reading a textbook, written by professional historians, would have provided a useful supplement to the lectures Mr. Burrows delivered in class. It would also have imparted visual information (e.g. photographs and maps) more effectively than Mr. Burrows was able to in a lecture.

Summing Up

In 1985, I think I'd heard that Mr. Burrows was rather sick, and I wrote him a letter. I don't remember exactly what I said, but my recollection is that I was full of praise for his teaching. I think I also said that I thought it had been a mistake for him to inject his political ideology into the class. He responded with the only letter I have from him. Click here to read the letter.

It unfortunately can happen that older teachers get into a rut, and their teaching can lose energy. Mr. Burrows had been teaching his Core curriculum for about twenty-five years by the time I took his class, but I saw no rut and no lack of energy. He poured himself into his teaching, and cared deeply and intensely about teaching us effectively - and succeeded. He understood what some older teachers do not, which is simply that while the material may be old hat to the teacher, it is brand new to this group of students, and a giving teacher can find a lot of energy in that newness.

I also appreciate Mr. Burrows for "walking the walk" when it comes to excellence and the other values he praised. Mr. Burrows may have valued excellence above all else, and he talked about it in class, pushed us to achieve it in the academic work we did in his course, and exhorted us to aspire to it in our lives after high school. It would have been easy for us to devalue such calls if they came from a source that we did not respect as authentic. But we listened to him because he embodied excellence in teaching. We understood on some level the quantity and quality of sustained effort that had gone into creating the rich, rigorous three-year curriculum that he offered us, and the energy required to bring the curriculum to life year after year. We knew about the trips that he led to the Twin Cities and to Europe, we knew about Open Mind, we knew that he lived the values that he preached. Mr. Burrows had our respect, and we listened to his exhortations that we believe in ourselves and strive for excellence in our lives. He was an unforgettable teacher.

Jonathan Stevens, Duluth East Class of 1977
Highland Park, New Jersey
Last modified: December 13, 2003

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