Teaching, Living, and Learning: Scenes of Clerical Life, by George Eliot

Sunday, March 13, 2011

Scenes of Clerical Life, by George Eliot

I finally finished "Scenes of Clerical Life" yesterday evening -- ending with the beautiful story of "Janet's Repentance". I so much admire the artistry of Eliot in laying out a very complicated tale as if she were simply sitting by the hearth and telling it to us in her own words. The story of Janet is, like all of Eliot's works, utterly inspiring to me. It ends with some sentences about the nature of peace and acceptance that both the Buddha and Jesus would have enjoyed.

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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