It is good to be home again.  Just as after a long vacation, I find myself asking, now what?  We are dropped back onto America territory in the chapter On Native Ground.  Steiner seems a little uncomfortable here though (hearing the words paideia and football all mashed together makes for interesting reading).  He is quick to point out what we have been thinking all along: “”Master” carries the stain of slavery.” Not only does it hold this image for American culture, but it goes against our independent nature.  Americans shudder for fear of being “mastered” or somehow “owned.”  Of course, we might want to “own” or “master,” but certainly not be the receiver.  We want our talents to be “self made” and not “doctrinally schooled.”  But Steiner is all ready to talk about American masters for a whole chapter, so some sort of master must exist in a culture that intends to deny them.  Steiner has shaped his image of the master (and by now, ours as well) into unrecognizable forms and I am certain he will be making more alterations to the term “master” when he looks at the American culture. 

 We find in Henry James something similar to Nietzsche—a man who is a master without discipleship.  James, however, finds that he needs only to master himself.  As Steiner shares, “[h]is journals read like tutorials of the self, the critic instructing, encouraging…”  His writing is a warning to those who engage in a master/disciple relationship.  The young novelist in The Lesson of the Master is willing to do what the master tells him despite the fact that the master tells him that he is a “weary, wasted used-up animal” and that he should never try to be like him; so the lesson here is to not be like the master, meanwhile, this appears to be all that the disciple wants (125).  Is a master actually mastering the disciple if the disciple does not follow the master’s orders?  But then again, the master is making clear he is not much of a master. 

It reminds me of the idea in the previous chapter of the master “training his disciple for dissent.”  Maybe James is choosing to master only himself as a way of avoiding this dilemma.  Does he believe that there is less harm done if he is “left alone” as his master character states?  In the case of Nietzsche, we cannot say there is no harm done by avoidance.

In Nadia Boulanger we experience the reluctance to master, but we do see what can be done if one chooses to share their knowledge.  And by doing so, she has done much more good than harm.  It appears she did not enter the world of teaching with great joy.  She wanted to compose, but  chose not to as she was in her younger sister’s shadow.  Instead, she “would be nothing but a supreme teacher” (134).  This makes an interesting point for the idea that one must be “called” to teach.  By not being able to do what she wanted to do in life, she “resigned” to the role of the teacher.  Maybe this is where her success as a teacher comes from though—she isn’t trying to be a great teacher and therefore sidesteps some of the common dangers associated with teachers who think that they are great.  I’ve heard many individuals say they never thought they would be a teacher and ended up being one of the best.  It is as if a lack of awareness of the act of teaching leads to more genuine pedagogy.   Boulanger knew music and through this came to know teaching.  She began teaching young and may not have had grand images of what a teacher was supposed to be.  While she may be somewhat “above” her students when it comes to knowledge of music, she certainly has an ability to put herself on the level of her students as a teacher: “May I have the power to exchange your best with my best” (136).  She uses metaphors to describe her role as the teacher that beg the image of a humble servant, a patient farmer: “The teacher is but the humus in the soil.  The more you teach, the more you keep in contact with life and its positive results” and “When I teach, I throw out the seeds.  I wait to see who grabs them…”(136, 137).  This is how she “spellbinds” her students—who would expect someone so ordinary to do something so extraordinary? 

This may be the persona of the teacher that sells with the American public.  One who masters by not appearing to master.  Master without the pomp and circumstance.  Steiner’s discussion of Knute Rockne exhibits this effective lack of “superiorness” as well.  Rockne was a master who acted as if he was on the same level as his team: he “regarded his disciples as family.  He maintained close personal touch…”(139).  Yet, his coaching philosophy went on to transform the world of football and he inspired two hundred of his own athletes to become coaches themselves. 

In some way, this reminds me of the advertisements for being a Big Sister/Brother.  Something about that you don’t have to be perfect, you just have to know how to be yourself.  We imagine the master as this perfect, “supreme” being and we fear being that.  Not only do we fear it, we don’t imagine that we can be that way.  We have Socrates, Jesus and Knute Rockne for competition.  Maybe that is where we go wrong.  We forget that most of our masters and teachers are just people.  People who are willing to be themselves to other people.  And when we are ourselves, we are putting ourselves in danger.