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Worrying about a Child’s Future
Mr. Harris has come to see the Headmaster of his son’s school to ask his advice about his son’s future education
Headmaster: Good morning, Mr. Harris. Do sit down. I understand you’d like to have a word with me about William.
Mr. Harris: Yes, that’s right, Headmaster. I felt I should see you as soon as possible before William does anything he’ll regret.
Headmaster: Regret, Mr. Harris?
Mr. Harris: Well, you see, he’s set his heart on becoming an artist, and my wife and I think he ought to take up something more secure. I meant even if he went to Art School, there’d be no guarantee he could get a good job afterwards.
Headmaster: He could probably teach, Mr. Harris.
Mr. Harris: He wouldn’t like that. He says he wouldn’t be a teacher if it were the last job on earth – oh, I beg your pardon, Headmaster, I didn’t mean –
Headmaster: Not at all, Mr. Harris, I wouldn’t have been a teacher myself if I’d had my way. I’d have been an actor if my parents had let me, so I have some sympathy with William’s problems. Now, let’s see – if he wants to be an artist, he’ll have to decide what sort of artist he wants to be.
Mr. Harris: I don’t quite follow you, Headmaster.
Headmaster: Well, what I mean is, if he wanted to be a commercial artist, graphics, cartoons, that sort of thing, he might do very well if he took an art course at a Technical College, and besides, the entry qualifications wouldn’t be so stiff. On the other hand, if he wants to go to one of the major Art Schools, you’d better not raise his hopes too high. There’s a good deal of competition to get accepted, and he’d have to have at least three O’levels and two ‘A’s at good grades before he’d even be considered. Oh and there’s another thing, he’d have to do a year’s foundation course first, probably at another college. He’d get a grant, of course, provided he’d got right ‘O’s’ and ‘A’s’.
Mr. Harris: But art, Headmaster! It’s so chancy. I wish he weren’t so set on it.
Headmaster: I don’t think you should stand in his way, Mr. Harris. If I were you, I’d let him decide for himself. You’d better accept the fact that nowadays young people don’t worry about security the way we did when we were young.
Mr. Harris: Well, I must admit my wife and I would have felt much happier if he’d chosen to do something else. Perhaps it’s still not too late for him to change his mind. You know, I could get him a good job with my own firm if he had a science degree.
Headmaster:From what I know of him, Mr. Harris, I don’t think he’s the sort of boy to change his mind, not in a hurry at any rate. In any case, I think you ought to let him decide.
Mr. Harris: But an artist, Headmaster! What’ he going to live on?
Headmaster: Making a career as an artist isn’t easy, of course. It would be a good idea if you had a talk with our art master, Mr. Sims; he can tell you more about the possibilities than I can. I know he thinks very highly of William’s work, though you’d better not tell William I said so.
II. Discuss with your partner who/what influenced your choice of profession.
III. Teaching is a noble and rewarding job, but there are a lot of difficulties in teaching. Read the following text and find out what problems a young teacher may face.
Assistant Teacher
Ursula was a bright girl of seventeen. She stood in the near end of the great room. It was her classroom. There was a small teacher’s desk, some long benches, two high windows in the wall opposite.
This was a new world, a new life, with which she was threatened. She sat down at the teacher’s desk. Here she would sit! Here she would realize her dream of being the beloved teacher bringing light and joy to her children! Then she returned to the teachers’ room. There was Mr. Harby. The schoolmaster was a short man with a fine head. He took no notice of her. No one took any notice of her.
The first week passed in confusion. She did not know how to teach, and she felt she never would know. Mr. Harby sometimes came down to her class, to see what she was doing. She felt so incompetent as he stood by. He said nothing; he made her go on teaching. She felt she had no soul in her body. The class was his class. She was only a substitute. He was hated. But he was master. Though she was gentle and always considerate of her class, yet they belonged to Mr. Harby, and did not belong to her. He kept all power to himself. And in school it was power, and power along that mattered.
Then she began to hate him. All the other teachers hated him. For he was master of them and the children.
So she taught on. She was getting used to the surroundings, though she was still a foreigner in herself.
“If I were you, Miss Brangwen,” Mr. Brunt, one of the teachers told her once, “I should get a bit tighter hand over my class. Because they’ll get you down if you don’t tackle them pretty quick.”
“Oh, but – “
“Harby’ll not help you. This is what he’ll do – he’ll let you go on, getting worse and worse, till either you clear out or he clears you out.”
“You have to keep order if you want to teach,” said another teacher.
As the weeks passed on, there was no Ursula Brangwen, free and cheerful. There was only a girl of that name who could not manage her class of children. She did not tell anybody how horrible she found it to be a schoolteacher.
The headmaster only wanted her gone. His system, which was his very life in school, was attacked and threatened at the point where Ursula was included. She was the danger. And he decided to get rid of her.
When he punished one of her children for an offence against himself, he made the punishment very heavy. When he punished for an offence against her, he punished lightly, as if offences against her were not important. All the children knew this, and they behaved accordingly.
This was coming up to a crisis. While he punished the class, he made her the cause of the punishment and her class began to pay her back with disobedience. And one evening, as she went home, they threw stones at her. Because of the darkness she could not see who those that threw were. But she did not want to know.
Only in her soul a change took place. Never more would she give herself as individual to her class. Never would she, Ursula Brangwen, come into contact with those boys. She was going to fight.
She knew by now her enemies in the class. The one she hated most was Williams. He was a sort of defective, not bad enough to be so classified. Once he had thrown an inkwell at her, twice he had run home out of class. He was a well-known character.
During the geography lesson, as she was standing at the map with the cane, the boy did everything to attract the attention of other boys.
“Williams,” she said, gathering her courage, “what are you doing?”
“Nothing,” he replied, feeling a triumph. Ursula turned to the map again, to go on with the geography lesson.
“Please, Miss” – called a voice. She turned round.
“Please, Miss, William has nipped me.”
“Come in front, Williams,” she said. The rat-like boy sat with his pale smile and did not move.
“Come in front,” she repeated.
“I shan’t,” he cried, rat-like.
Something broke in Ursula’s soul. She took her cane from the desk, and brought it down on him. He was twisting and kicking. She saw his white face, with eyes like the eyes of a fish, stony, yet full of hate and fear. She brought down the cane again and again. A few times, madly, he kicked her. But again the cane broke him, he fell down and lay on the floor like a beaten animal.
“Get up,” she said. He stood up slowly. “Go and stand by the radiator.” As if mechanically, he went.
“If you do the same with Clarke and Lewis, Miss Brangwen, you’ll be all right,” said Mr. Brunt after the lesson.
The next morning Williams came to school, looking paler than ever, very neat and nicely dressed. He looked at Ursula with a halfsmile, ready to do as she told him.
Now Ursula did not send her children to the headmaster for punishment. She took the cane, and struck the boy over head and hands. And at last they were afraid of her, she had them in order.
But she had paid a great price out of her own soul, to do this. Sometimes she felt as if she would go mad. She did not want to see them beaten and broken. She did not want to hurt them. Yet she had to. Oh why, why had she accepted his cruel system? Why had she become a schoolteacher, why, why?
(After The Rainbow by D. H. Lawrence)