project hail teacher

Project Hail Mary is one of the rare instances of optimistic science fiction that doesn’t just absolutely suck the soul out of me. If you don’t want that optimism ruined for you then I beg you, go out and watch the movie and read the book before reading my dawdling thoughts on the narrative. It is best to be like me and go in blind, Rocky is not the biggest plot twist.

Andy Weir knows how to write a teacher. Ryland Grace, on film and page, is a teacher’s teacher. The kind that pop up in fiction and make the rest of us look bad when students realise we don’t all jump to the desks shouting poetry about captains and ripping up textbooks that we had to pay for out of our own shallow pockets. Enthusiastic, knowledgable, quietly infamous for some ridiculous claim he made years ago that could very well be true yet still draws the ire of his colleagues, I’ve met Grace in the hearts of teachers more times than I can count.

Then he gets sent to space.

You’ve read the book and seen the movie (last warning) so I have no reservations in telling you that Grace had absolutely no desire to get blasted to Tau Ceti and intended very much to take the, um, easy way out and suffer with everyone else on Earth while those with heroically sacrificial spirit journeyed off to save the world. As outlandish as it seems, we ask this exact sacrifice of our teachers everyday. Sans the space travel.

Teachers are truly meant to have only a few responsibilities: curate knowledge and organise it into teachable chunks, make sure students aren’t actively dying while in the classroom, evaluate student progress through the course, foster a community in the classroom with the hope (the hope) that it flourishes outside of the classroom. Ask any teacher, including me, and you’ll find that their de facto job description soars far beyond that.

Teachers are now tasked with being parents, counsellors, career specialists, behavioural experts, gun violence experts, professional de-escalators, diagnostic-ready amateur doctors, saints of patience and understanding in the face of intense scrutiny and harassment. An endless list that has led to a mass exodus out of the career.

Ryland Grace deeply cares about his students and his planet, but he doesn’t want to sacrifice his life for either. Completely understandable. The narrative of Project Hail Mary makes it clear that Earth is incredibly lucky that Grace was forced into being on the Hail Mary and his skills as a teacher are instrumental to his success both communicating with Rocky and, eventually, saving the worlds. Just as a single good teacher can completely alter the life of a student who goes on to do unfathomable good for their community. Just as a good teacher, when placed exactly where they need to be, can be more powerful than centuries of wisdom poured into the gaping mind of a student. But Andy Weir is optimistic. Grace survives and becomes a teacher on Erid. On our Earth, with our teachers, we get no such happy ending. Teachers in science sans the fiction get life-long debt, intense mental illness, suicide, identity crisis, and the knowledge that for all the good we do we shall see no reward but the ire of our societies.

I don’t know if Andy Weir set out to write a compelling metaphor for the teaching experience in the twenty-first century. I’ve personally seen nothing to suggest this, but I do hope that with Project Hail Mary being hailed as a monumental multimedia success that more people realise that Grace being a teacher is vital to the moment he is drugged, sobbing, and shoved on the Hail Mary when he just wanted to stay home.

There is a common theme, especially in the movie, of those on the Hail Mary being brave. That bravery and self-sacrifice is something to be aspired to and idolise. In 2020, I remember everyone cheering for teachers and hailing their strength and sacrifice as the glue binding our society together through the pandemic. We were heroes! right? Vital to the structures of our society and deserving of praise and kind words on Twitter. Nothing more though. Teachers got loaded onto the rocket ship to save the world and when they all died the next generation of teachers was expected to do more. Do more for much less. We have a fleet of spaceships ready to be pumped full of our teachers and lines of drugs ready to be pumped into the ones that won’t get on quiety.

Andy Weir also wrote the most damaging portrayal of teachers imaginable: that we teach for the need of it and would expect nothing but a studious group in return. Ryland Grace survives to keep teaching and that’s all he needs, even above going home. Teachers are forced into incomprehensible roles and God fucking dammit they had better appreciate it.

I’m staring down the barrel of lay-offs in higher education with friends and colleagues as our profession sinks further into the depths of inhospitability and Project Hail Mary just makes me think about everything teachers have been forced to sacrifice to do something we all know society needs to function. At the risk of parroting the platitudes of 2020 (and tooting my own horn at the same time), teachers are heroes and we do need them. Why can’t we treat them like it then? Why can’t Grace just get to stay home? Why can’t he get a living wage and health insurance and retirement? Why do we have a budget for rocket ships and amnestics burning holes in our pockets, not enough enough to just pay us? Why do teachers need to be heroes?

A beautiful coffin the vacuum of space may be, but I’m with Grace here. I think I just want to stay home.