Hope College Psychology Department History

Tracing the history of the department

Phil VanEyl 1993 Retirement Talk

Talk given at Retirement Dinner -- May 10, 1993

This is my swan song. What to do with this last opportunity to talk to you as a group? It should not surprise you that I have been thinking about this event for quite some time. As a result, I have had several ideas. One idea was to describe some of my tough, early history to you. I could have told you stories about an awful winter when, with the wind howling off the North Sea, I had to skate barefoot ten kilometers to my kindergarten class. The reason why I was barefoot was because my stepmother had used my wooden shoes to heat the soup for my beautiful but nasty stepsister. I decided against that type of talk because, if you are younger, your grandparents already treated you to stories like that. And, if you are older, you have told them yourself.

The next idea was to tell you what I would have done if I had been Provost. But that didn’t make sense either because most of you probably have even better ideas.

As part of my search for a topic and the over-all retirement process, I also began to reflect upon the 34 years that I called teaching my vocation and profession. What had I taught, where and how, and how effective had I been? Did I make a difference? Did I teach my students anything really important? What stuck? How did their learning through my efforts help them become the people they are today?

In the process I began to think of my teachers. What did I remember about what they taught me? I reasoned that by finding out about my memories of them I might get some idea of the sort of things most of my students would remember about me. I thought you might be interested in my findings.

My first exposure to education was kindergarten. I remember the building, that it was a 5-minute walk from my home, and that there were at least two women teachers. But that is all I remember.

There are three people I remember in primary school. The first one was Juffrouw Bus, my second-grade teacher. The second one was the headmaster, and the third my fifth-grade onderwijzer, which is Dutch for teacher. What I remember about Juffrouw Bus is that she died rather suddenly, and I also remember the headmaster because he was the headmaster. His name was Meneer Das. Of the three I remember my fifth-grade teacher best. His name was Meneer Broekhuizen. He was my first male teacher. In addition, he was very short which gave him the nickname of Broekie. The Dutch word broek, as part of Broekhuizen, means water but can also be used for pants, which we did. The added ie was a diminutive which made the whole word stand for short pants. However, in Dutch colloquialism the name Broekie also has the meaning of someone not fully grown. We never called him Broekie to his face.

Because he played the violin, he also taught us how to sing. Every Friday afternoon, during the last hour of the day, the fifth and sixth grades would meet in the gym where Broekie instructed us how to sing some very well-known Dutch ballets as well as feisty, patriotic songs, in which we hero-worhipped our Dutch forefathers who a few centuries earlier, with or without God’s help and against tremendous odds, had beaten the tar out of the Spanish.

What I remember best about Broekie, however, was his patience and his never-ending kindness. As kids, we would tease him or play hard to get. In fact, there were times when we were downright rotten. But he would never raise his voice and somehow communicated that. In spite of the trouble we caused, he loved us.

I remember most of my high school teachers. Let me tell you about just two of them. The first one taught geography. I was fascinated by the subject. I just loved hearing about all the wondrous natural and human-made sites and the way people of all those far-away places earned their livelihood, celebrated their special events, and often differed in the way we thought. He opened the world to me. He instilled in me a strong desire to learn first-hand what the world and its people were like outside the Dutch borders.

He loved our human diversity and capacity to do good. But he also knew about our capacity to do evil, to destroy. I remember him saying that: “The human species is like a fungus on the crust of the earth.” If he were alive today, I am sure that we would call him an ardent environmentalist.

The second high school teacher I want to tell you about was the one who tried to teach me French. Of all the languages I learned, French never really clicked. I started studying French in third grade already. It was my first encounter with a foreign language and I didn’t understand why we had to fool around with masculine “le” and feminine “la.” Why couldn’t we use just one, either le or la, instead of having to memorize when it was one and not the other? The Dutch used to have a gender distinction in their language but abandoned it just before I entered school. So on my first test I treated all nouns as masculine. Needless to say, I flunked that test and thought that my teacher and the French language just were not with it. This was the first time I wanted to change the world in a significant way and was rebuffed. Of course, of all the people, I had to pick on the French first.

Now I am taking you back to my high school, ten years later, still a reluctant participant in the pursuit of French mastery, learning about French literature. Monsieur Dommering had a head like a billard ball. The rest of his body matched his face perfectly. He always reminded of a big beach ball. As an aside, my English teacher was of equal proportion and when the two of them walked down the hall together, no-one could pass.

What I remember best about Monsieur Dommering was the time he was reciting a rather unusual poem. It was unusual in that its written shape was like a stretched diamond. It started with one very short word. The next line was made up of two very short words. The third line had a multi-syllable word that was a little longer than the previous line. In other words, gradually the lines became longer. In the middle of the poem the line was longest. From there the lines became shorter again. The poem told the story of a group of Tuaregs galloping through the west African desert on their swift Arabian horses. At first they were hardly visible and hardly audible. But as they approached you could hear them better and better. It was kind of like Maurice Ravel’s Bolero. The sounds were soft but gradually grew louder and louder. Monsieur Dommering spoke the words with care and gradually increased the pace and volume. I must admit that my teacher did a great job. So much so that my best friend, who was next to me in the dual seat, and I really got caught up in the spirit of the happening. We expressed our enthusiasm by making increasingly louder vocal noises as the Tuaregs closed in on us. We even imitated the sounds of pounding hoofs by drumming our fingers underneath our desks. Of course, we knew that our participation was unsolicited and not quite what the instructor had in mind. And, sure enough, as the Tuaregs were just about to pass us, at the climax of visual and auditory stimulation, he changed from French to Dutch and without changing volume told us to shut up. There was instant silence as all of us watched in horror and amazement how Monsieur Dommering’s dentures flew out of his mouth and landed on top of the blond hair of the girl in front of me.

Needless to say, the ride of the Tuaregs had come to a screeching halt. After Monsieur Dommering had retrieved his mouthpiece his first words were directed to me and my friend: “Get out!” This meant that we had to go to the office and face the principal. When he saw us he said: “Not you again!” I suppose I should tell you now that during my high school years at one time I was even expelled.

What is interesting to note about our reprehensible behavior is that both my friend and I chose to become teachers. What does that tell you? A case of guilt? I should talk to a psychologist about that some time.

Right after the war I spent two years at a Dutch university studying economics. These were the days when European professors thought themselves permanently seated at the right hand of God. We would stand as they entered the lecture hall and seat ourselves when he said to do so. Questions would be submitted in writing and answered by appointment only. No-one would ever raise his or her hand during a lecture. If you did, you’d be ignored. With that in mind, it should not surprise you when I say that I don’t know what I learned from them as persons. One professor who lived just a couple of blocks from me in The Hague was someone I never talked with. Often we’d be on the same streetcar to the train station. Then we’d travel on the same train to Rotterdam and take the same streetcar to the university. What do I remember about him? One thing that comes to mind is that I had enormous respect for him. As we traveled together I used to stare at him from the corner of my eye and wondered what it was like to be that professional and that famous. That my admiration for him was justified came a few years later when her received a Nobel prize. For those of you in economics, his name was Tinbergen, the brother of the famous etiologist.

What else do I remember about Tinbergen? He was extremely thorough in his analyses and very careful in his assessments. It was he who said: “There are lies, bigger lies, and then there are statistics.”

As you know, I also spent two years at Hope and four in graduate school. I learned some important things from my Hope profs but here the picture gets more complex because most of them became my colleagues and continued to teach me in that relationship.

I learned from my grad school profs primarily the importance of being available in the process of education. They were Tinbergens in their own right but much more accessible.

So now you know some of the things I remember and value about my teachers. How will my students remember me? Because I neither did any extensive interviewing nor asked the Frost Center to send out questionnaires, I cannot say for sure. But I do have some clues. Let me tell you about a couple of them.

Several years ago we had a young philosopher on the faculty who was a friend of mine. Before taking a new job at Washington State University, he married one of our psychology majors. When they returned for a visit a few years later, the former psychology major said to me: “You know, you were always such an interesting and good teacher.” Because we don’t get that kind of unsolicited feedback that often I saw an opportunity to find out more precisely what had been so interesting and good. She thought for a moment and said: “You always has such wonderful vocabulary. Quite often you used words I had never heard before.” It took me a while to digest that information but did figure out what had been so special about my vocabulary. She was taking most of her psych courses during a six-month period when my parents had come over from the Netherlands and stayed at my house. Although they knew a few English words, you can readily understand why my conversations with them during the entire stay were in Dutch. Apparently, what happened was that in class, when I was back in the English mode, every now and then a Dutch word slipped out.

The same type of thing happened last year when Mickie and I were in one of the Reformed Churches trying to renew an interest in the forgotten Indian Christians of the former RCA Arcot Mission. After the sermon a young man came up to me and informed me that his wife was a former student of mine. So, again being curious and sensing an opportunity, I asked him what else she had said. “I’ll show,” he said as he pulled the church bulletin out of his pocket. On it his wife had written: “A lot of dese, dose and dems.” I don’t think that she had been as impressed with my English as the first woman but, using baseball as an analogy, batting 500 ain’t bad.

The last story takes me back about 25 years. For the summer of 1966 I had been asked to be the first program director for Japanese students from Meiji Gaguin University. That was a fun job. With Paul Fried’s help I got to decide on lectures, instructors, speakers and special events. The special events were cultural and uniquely American things such as a trip to Tiger stadium to watch a baseball game, Greenfield Village, as well as a visit to Windmill Island and the beach. For the field trips we used a bus rental which was alright but inconvenient, not always reliable and somewhat costly. So I worked a deal with Lloyd Van Raalte, the superintendent of the West Ottawa School District, whereby Hope College bought one of his school buses for one dollar with the understanding that we’d sell it back to him by the end of August. That was the very first bus Hope College ever owned. The other thing you want to know is that because my time was flexible, I decided to be the driver of the bus. That turned out to be a lot of fun also. Of course, it took me a while to learn to corner properly but I did learn. In fact, those wonderfully polite Japanese students assured me that I drove just like they did in Tokyo. Never having been in Tokyo I still didn’t know what that meant but at least when they were in my bus they must have felt at home.

During that same summer, my directorship also included all other on-campus summer programs. It gave me less flexibility but I still managed to drive the bus.

As I put the program together for the Japanese students - now joined by a few Dutch, German and about eight Yugoslavian students - I realized that Village Square was also going to be part of the picture. It was held in and around the Pine Grove and would not necessarily interfere with classroom space but, as you my recall, it was a festive and somewhat noisy affair. For instance, Bill Hillegonds, our College pastor at the time, would repeatedly get on the PA system and tell people to go to such-and-such booth for whatever and appeal to mothers to retrieve their lost children. The other thing to remember is that our campus was smaller at that time. To avoid the noise we could not go to Vanderwerf or Peale Science, for instance. All the lectures for my foreign students were scheduled in Winants. What to do? Should I cancel the class for that day? I was a lot younger then and felt that I really couldn’t do that but neither could I, in good conscience, invite anyone to speak under those circumstances. The solution? I scheduled myself to be the speaker. I talked about psychology and cultural differences which we could probably call multiculturalism today. Well, I gave my lecture and everything went far better than expected, although I shouted a lot and did more repeating than usual.

Now I take you to the dining room where on that same day all the foreign students were having their dinner. As had happened many times before, the Yugoslav students had skipped the day’s lecture so they could do their own thing. Of course, the Japanese never missed. So it was not unusual for the Yugoslavs to ask them for updates. That evening was no exception. First they wanted to know what the lecture was about. The Japanese told them. Then they wanted to know who had been the lecturer. In chorus the Japanese replied: “The bus driver.”

Can you imagine how that story played in Tokyo? I have thought about it a lot and think I know. As the story was told to friends and relatives, one of Japan’s most influential journalists overheard it and printed it in every Japanese newspaper. The next thing that happened was that major Japanese companies began to hire bus drivers as CEOs. Of course, the rest is history. In other words, my lecture was responsible for what the world now recognizes as the Japanese economic miracle.

Well, so much for the stories. As the wise teacher of the Old Testament observed: “There is a time to be born and a time to die; a time to sow and a time to harvest; a time to drive the bus and a time to park it.” To be sure, I am ready for a rebirth and I plan to do some more sowing in my new life. I am sure that I will also find some other mode of transportation. So let me conclude by telling you that I have enjoyed my professional journey and I want to thank the administration, past and present, for having put up with me, thank my colleagues from all the disciplines, past and present, for their support, stimulation and friendship, and all of you here tonight for coming and helping me celebrate.