Seymour Mayne: Teaching with a sense of mission

Seymour Mayne

English professor Seymour Mayne isn�t interested so much in assignments, due dates or grades as he is in his students� response to his classes. Will they carry with them a lifelong love of literature and reading? Has he created a connection between the text and life?

�I never give up on anyone,� says Mayne. �Something they�ve read has touched them in some way, and I have to encourage them.�

This approach, Mayne admits, makes him an unusual professor and sometimes puts him at odds with conventional academic methods.

The study of literature �must contribute to a widening of awareness. It must have an effect on their daily lives,� he says. �Literature isn�t just a game of technical skill. It should give you insight into human experience.�

With a sense of his own mission, a lively lecture style and a love of his subject, it�s no wonder that Mayne is widely admired and loved by students.

Mayne himself had good role models along the way. From an early age, he was exposed to teachers who believed in their mission to educate and civilize young people.

These early teachers and professors were often eccentric, committed intellectuals, exiles from Europe who had a passion for ideas, which they ably conveyed through their teaching. Many of them had moving personal stories, some of them about the Holocaust, and they had a fervent desire to pass on history and wisdom to their young students.

Over the course of his 40-year career in academia, Mayne has seen the nature of teaching change. Nowadays, he says, teaching is more professional and regularized; the day of the eccentric professor has almost gone.

�Norms and collective agreements are good,� says Mayne. �They protect professors from arbitrary administrative action. But the result is that if you don�t fit a certain set definition, you won�t find your way into the teaching staff.�

The pressures to conduct research and constantly publish have transformed the life of a university professor and the way in which literature is taught.

Mayne chose to be a scholar-writer, in the tradition of such Canadian greats as Charles G. D. Roberts. His two main concerns�aside from his writing�are to teach Canadian Literature and to help other writers.

His interest in CanLit began at a time when it was largely ignored by academics. Mayne worked hard to change this attitude throughout his career. History bore him out. These days, CanLit is probably studied more by more people outside of Canada than inside, says Mayne.