The Teacher as Guardian Shadow

Ernie Barnes died two weeks ago. He was a professional football player who became a renowned artist whose canvases and drawings of the human body, especially athletes, in motion, were commissioned by the Olympic Committee and acquired by major galleries and collectors.

With his pen or brush he captured with scientific accuracy the raw emotion of human anatomy in action. A really talented guy.

The NFL drafted him straight from college. The Washington Redskins traded him to the Baltimore Colts and he was then taken up by the New York Titans, the team that later became the Jets. But because he was far more fired up by art than by football he “traded cleats for brushes and put all the violence and power I’d felt on the field into my painting,” he said.

So why is this seemingly random biography of a guy whose dad was a clerk and whose mother kept up the house of a rich Southern lawyer so remarkable and an appropriate human interest story for this site? That’s just the point. His extraordinary inspiration is an ordinary phenomenon when you dig a little deeper and uncover the catalyst of his self-discovery.

Barnes had been conflicted in his youth. He suffered inner turmoil because his social reticence and obesity made him the constant prey of bullies. He was sunk in a perpetual self-image crisis. How did he escape from this cage of self-loathing?

One of his teachers in junior high school motivated him to respect and repair his body and to immerse himself in the pursuit of the art he loved. This teacher walked him through the epiphany and Barnes never forgot this genuine hero til his dying day.

Teachers, more than any other group except perhaps immediate family, have touched the lives of practically every individual in every generation and nation and inspired those of capable of it to achieve fulfillment and contribute to the betterment of the world. Every Barnes has such a teacher and every teacher has such a Barnes and we are all Barnes in one way or another.

Let’s not let bureaucracy, politics, fads of philosophy and methodology or any other external influence intrude like cyanide on our pride as educators. We are the enablers of redemption.