“Charlie. Please don’t take this the wrong way. I’m not trying to make you feel uncomfortable. I just want you to know that you’re special...and the only reason I’m telling you is that I don’t know if anyone else ever has.”
“The man’s cub—the man’s cub? I speak for the man’s cub. There is no harm in a man’s cub. I have no gift of words, but I speak the truth. Let him run with the Pack, and be entered with the others. I myself will teach him.”
Miss Kirwin was that rare educator who was in love with information. I will always believe that her love of teaching came not so much from her liking for students but from her desire to make sure that some of the things she knew would find repositories so that they could be shared again.
The Herdmans moved from grade to grade through the Woodrow Wilson School like those South American fish that strip your bones clean in three minutes flat . . . which was just about what they did to one teacher after another.
That was the thing about the Herdmans—there was always another one coming along, and no teacher was crazy enough to let herself in for two of them at once.
“Their greatest danger was in the disbelief of their teachers. Though every one had a copy of the law, few read it; all were ready, by some excuse, to avoid this duty. Some asserted they knew it, yet never thought on it: some called these the laws of past times; not of the present. Other said the Great King did not regard the actions of his subjects, that he had neither mines nor dungeons, and that all would certainly be taken to the Heavenly City.”
“The pedagogue’s mouth watered, as he looked upon this sumptuous promise of luxurious winter fare. In his devouring mind’s eye, he pictured to himself every roasting-pig running about with a pudding in his belly, and an apple in his mouth; the pigeons were snugly put to bed in a comfortable pie, and tucked in with a coverlet of crust; the geese were swimming in their own gravy; and the ducks pairing cosily in dishes, like snug married couples, with a decent competency of onion sauce.”
“How did this girl come to be? I used to ask myself. Sometimes I thought she should be teaching me. She seems to be in touch with something that the rest of us are missing.”
Govinda said: “Still, oh Siddhartha, you love a bit to mock people, as it seems to me. I believe in you and know that you haven’t followed a teacher. But haven’t you found something by yourself, though you’ve found no teachings, you still found certain thoughts, certain insights, which are your own and which help you to live? If you would like to tell me some of these, you would delight my heart.”
Quoth Siddhartha: “I’ve had thoughts, yes, and insight, again and again. Sometimes, for an hour or for an entire day, I have felt knowledge in me, as one would feel life in one’s heart. There have been many thoughts, but it would be hard for me to convey them to you. Look, my dear Govinda, this is one of my thoughts, which I have found: wisdom cannot be passed on. Wisdom which a wise man tries to pass on to someone always sounds like foolishness.”
″“Today, we’ll hear the teachings from his mouth.” said Govinda.
Siddhartha did not answer. He felt little curiosity for the teachings, he did not believe that they would teach him anything new, but he had, just as Govinda had, heard the contents of this Buddha’s teachings again and again, though these reports only represented second- or third-hand information. But attentively he looked at Gotama’s head, his shoulders, his feet, his quietly dangling hand, and it seemed to him as if every joint of every finger of this hand was of these teachings, spoke of, breathed of, exhaled the fragrant of, glistened of truth. This man, this Buddha was truthful down to the gesture of his last finger. This man was holy. Never before, Siddhartha had venerated a person so much, never before he had loved a person as much as this one.”
Quoth Siddhartha: “You know, my dear, that I already as a young man, in those days when we lived with the penitents in the forest, started to distrust teachers and teachings and to turn my back to them. I have stuck with this. Nevertheless, I have had many teachers since then. A beautiful courtesan has been my teacher for a long time, and a rich merchant was my teacher, and some gamblers with dice. Once, even a follower of Buddha, traveling on foot, has been my teacher; he sat with me when I had fallen asleep in the forest, on the pilgrimage. I’ve also learned from him, I’m also grateful to him, very grateful. But most of all, I have learned here from this river and from my predecessor, the Ferryman Vasudeva. He was a very simple person, Vasudeva, he was no thinker, but he knew what is necessary just as well as Gotama, he was a perfect man, a saint.”
“For us lads of eighteen they ought to have been mediators and guides to the world of maturity, the world of work, of duty, of culture, of progress—to the future.”
“How would you know it was Halloween or Valentines Day or Mothers Day early enough to do something about it, if merchants didn’t stay on the job?
The other group I can count on is kindergarten teachers. They always know about holidays, and when it comes to valentines and other evidence of love, no merchant can compete with them.”
“Education must begin with the solution of the teacher-student contradiction, by reconciling the poles of the contradiction so that both are simultaneously teachers and students.”
“Worse yet, it [banking model] turns them [students] into ‘containers’ to be ‘filled’ by the teacher. The more completely she fills the receptacles, the better a teacher she is. The more meekly the receptacles permit themselves to be filled, the better students they are”
“I feel that her being is inseparable from my own, and that the footsteps of my life are in hers. All the best of me belongs to her—there is not a talent, or an inspiration or a joy in me that has not awakened by her loving touch.”
“Gradually I got used to the silence and darkness that surrounded me and forgot that it had ever been different, until she came—my teacher—who was to set my spirit free.”
“He about whom many are not even able to hear, whom many cannot comprehend even after hearing: wonderful is the teacher, wonderful is he who can receive when taught by an able teacher.”
“But by the end of two years, most have either changed careers or moved to suburban schools - a consequence of low pay, a lack of support from the educational bureaucracy, and a pervasive feeling of isolation.”
“Teachers who offer you the ultimate answers do not possess the ultimate answers, for if they did, they would know that the ultimate answers cannot be given, they can only be received.”
“On the way home, we sang with special enthusiasm,
On top of old Smoky, two thousand feet tall,
I shot my old teacher with a big booger ball.
I shot her with glory, I shot her with pride.
How could I miss her? She’s thirty feet wide.”
“When you are very old and gone childish-small again, with childish ways and childish yens and, in need of feeding, make a wish for the old teacher nurse, the dumb yet wise companion, send for me. I will come back. We shall inhabit the nursery again, never fear.”
“Lilly loved school. She loved the pointy pencils. She loved the squeaky chalk. And she loved the way her boots went clickety-clickety-clack down the long, shiny hallways. Lilly loved the privacy of her very own desk. She loved the fish sticks and chocolate milk every Friday in the lunchroom. And, most of all, she loved her teacher, Mr. Slinger.”
“Mr. Slinger was as sharp as a tack. He wore artistic shirts. He wore glasses on a chain around his neck. And he wore a different colored tie for each day of the week.”
“Lilly ran and skipped and hopped and flew all the way home, she was so happy. And she really did want to be a teacher when she grew up-- That is, when she didn’t want to be a dancer or a surgeon or an ambulance driver or a diva or a pilot or a hairdresser or a scuba diver...”
One day her teacher asks her why she’s always late for school. Frightened, she reveals her secret. Her punishment: she must write 200 lines stating repeatedly, “There are no talking cats, and from now on I will arrive at school on time.”
Why would she “want” to go to school, when
...her teacher is a warty toad?
...her friends are crooks and villains?
...the principal chops your head off if you talk in class?
It can’t be true...or “can” it?
Find out in this laugh-out-loud account of the horrors of going to school, told from the point of view of a girl with a huge imagination
She talks about her teacher being a toad, describes her classroom as being a hole, and goes as far as saying she is fed worms for lunch. However, although Honor Brown depicts her school as being such an awful place, the ending of the story takes an unexpected turn when Honor Brown finally finishes school and doesn’t have to go back as she cries and sobs and states that she will really miss school.
“While the flour baby project has indeed left Simon wiser and more tolerant, he is and still can be rather a handful for his mother and his teachers, although he did actually and in fact do a much much better job caring for his flour baby than many if not most of his schoolmates, than his school friends did.”
″‘A fine woman. A cultured woman,’ they said, but were glad it was their children and not they who had to spend each day in the classroom. The Ferretti voice rang out across the empty town, like a tocsin bell announcing the outbreak of battle: Senhora Ferretti’s battle against Ignorance.”
“Inside he could see a classroom. There were children sitting at their desks, and a teacher writing on the blackboard.
Mr Tickle waited a minute and then reached in through the window. Mr Tickles extraordinary long arm went right up to the teacher, paused, and then – tickled!
The teacher jumped in the air and turned round very quickly to see who was there.”
“Mr Tickle grinned a mischievous grin. He waited another minute, and then tickled the teacher again. This time he kept on tickling until soon the teacher was laughing out loud and saying, ‘Stop it! Stop it!’ over and over again. “
“A woman in an ugly black dress stood before them. ‘I am your new teacher, Miss Viola Swamp.’ And she rapped the desk with her ruler. ‘Where is Miss Nelson?’ asked the kids. ‘Never mind that!’ snapped Miss Swamp. ‘Open those arithmetic books!’ Miss Nelson’s kids did as they were told.”
“So my final school year began. I had promised myself that I would be a saint for this year alone. I would make the greatest impression on my teachers and become the model student. I knew it would all fail. But just not on the first day. Sister Gregory walked toward me, and when she was so close that I could see her mustache, she held out her hand. ‘Show me what you’re reading.’ ”
″‘You’ve got a real talent for magic, dearie,’ she said, beaming at Gwendolen, ‘and I wouldn’t be doing my duty by you if I let it go to waste. We must see about a teacher for you right away.‘”
“I’ve writ on the wrong page, Miss. My pencil went all blunt. My book was upside-down, Miss.
My book was back to front. My margin’s gone all crooked, Miss.
I’ve smudged mine with my scarf. I’ve rubbed a hole in the paper, Miss. My ruler’s broke in half.”
“My work’s blew out the window, Miss. My work’s fell in the bin.
The leg’s dropped off my chair, Miss. The ceiling’s coming in.
I’ve ate a poison apple, Miss. I’ve held a poison pen! I think I’m being kidnapped, Miss! So . . . can we start again?”
“There is a girl with no front teeth. And a boy with hardly any hair Having had it cut.
There are sums without answers, painting unfinished, And projects with no hope of ever coming to an end.”
“The only thing that’s brim-full in our class is the waste-paper basket. Here is the rule for what to do whenever your teacher has the flu, or for some other reasons takes to her bed and a different teacher comes instead.”
“When you want to change places or wander about, or feel like getting the guinea-pig out, Never forget, the message is this: ‘Our teacher always lets us, Miss!‘”
Then, when your teacher returns next day and complains about the paint or clay, remember these words, you just say this: ‘That other teacher told us to, Miss!‘”
“So she wrote on her green notebook, ‘Why don’t I like Mrs Westvessel?’ and began to make a list of reasons. Making lists of reasons was sometimes a good way to figure things out. ‘Reason one’ wrote Anastasia, ‘Because she isn’t a good teacher.’
“She wanted to tell people about him. That he was a teacher, that he had lost his leg when his school was bombed. That he had loved her and told her stories, and now she was all alone in this big, sad land.”
Solomon is full of anger: with his teachers, with his parents, with himself. He cannot bear to be at school or at home, so he hides in a corner of the kirkyard.
It is about a boy with dyslexia. His teacher bully’s him and he often skives off school and hides in a graveyard. He sits under a rowan tree. But he didn’t know that rowan trees were planted to ward off evil.
The story begins at school where Janna-Berta and the other students and teachers are alarmed of a nuclear accident in the vicinity. She returns home. Her younger brother Uli is alone because the parents are away and the grandparents on vacation.
“He’s already been taught by the greatest teacher of all, Mario—Nature herself. She gave him wings to rub together and the instinct to make such lovely sounds. I could add nothing to the genius of this little black Orpheus.”
“When Tyke overhears teachers discussing the possibility of Danny being sent to a Special Needs School, he concocts a plan to keep him there. This plan does not pay off.”
Mr. Davis had evidently taken his coffee too strong that morning, there was an east wind, which always affected his neuralgia, and his pupils had not done him the credit which he felt he deserved. Therefore, to use the expressive, if not elegant, language of a schoolgirl, “He was as nervous as a witch and as cross as a bear”.
“I wish all the girls would leave, and spoil his old school. It’s perfectly maddening to think of those lovely limes,” sighed Amy, with the air of a martyr.