Teaching, Living, and Learning: Conrad and Milton

Sunday, January 02, 2011

Conrad and Milton

Lately Ive been thoroughly enjoying rereading Paradise Lost and a bit of Joseph Conrad. This morning, a foggy, silent Sunday, I read some lines from the end of Book 2 in Milton's epic, and then finished Conrad's "The Secret Sharer". It was a time of utter serenity for me, sitting in the "great room" before the glowing fire and reading these words written with such music and wisdom. I said to myself, once again, that I could easily spend the rest of my life reading and rereading, over and over, the works of a few great writers -- Milton, Conrad, Shakespeare, Dickens, Wordsworth. In fact, I may just do that -- and they would be joyous, fulfilling years, for sure.

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I found this quote (below) in Jane Austen's Mansfield Park. She's describing Fanny Price's home at Mansfield, but the words exactly remind me of the atmosphere I try to maintain in my classroom:
" ... no sounds of contention, no raised voice, no abrupt bursts, no tread of violence, was ever heard; all proceeded in a regular course of cheerful orderliness; everybody had their due importance; everybody's feelings were consulted."

...........

The following quote is from David Copperfield by Charles Dickens. I would like my classroom to be like Dr. Strong's school:

"Dr. Strong's was an excellent school...It was very gravely and decorously ordered, and on a sound system; with an appeal, in everything, to the honor and good faith of the [students], and an avowed intention to rely on their possession of these qualities unless they proved themselves unworthy of it, which worked wonders. We all felt that we had a share in the management of the place, and in sustaining its character and dignity."

If I replaced "agent" with "teacher", this passage from a short story might, I hope, describe me in my classroom:
"The agent spent his days in following what seemed to many observers to be only a dull routine, but all his steadiness of purpose, all his simple intentness, all his gifts of strategy and powers of foresight, and of turning an interruption into an opportunity, were brought to bear upon this dull routine with a keen pleasure."
-- from "The Gray Mills of Farley" by Sarah Orne Jewett