The Goal: Read. Reflect. Respond. Over two hundred Chekhov stories. Constance Garnett translations.
Monday, July 25, 2011
THE SCHOOLMISTRESS
Alone.
Corruption all around.
Day after day.
Year after year.
Older and older.
No hope for anything better.
You wonder how you got into this fix.
Teaching might seem noble from the outside.
From the outside.
From the inside you understand the toll the daily grind takes --
Idealists drop like flies.
Realists fight to endure.
All around you there is incompetence and greed . . .
No one really values what you do.
No one gives you support.
Finally you're left with the examinations.
And so it goes.
For a brief moment you see a reflection of what might've been.
For that brief moment you taste happiness.
Until reality sets in.
And you're back to being a schoolmistress.
Back to getting older and older.
Back to being alone.
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Interesting Chekhov quote re this story for you:
ReplyDelete"A teacher must be an artist, in love with his calling; but he is a journeyman, ill-educated, who goes to teach children as though he were going into exile."
I totally agree with Chekhov in this regard. Unfortunately, what I currently see is they're trying to take the art out of teaching and replacing it with science. What that leads to is a prescribed formula at the expense of experimentation and imagination. Great for the bureaucrats who can have a ready made rubric to judge the profession but deadening to any teacher who truly wants to practice the art.
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