Sometimes I worry about students who are far too gentle and kind for their own good, and there are far more of these than people sometimes imagine. What will happen when they collide with the big bad world out there, or, rather, it collides with them?
Of course, there's always the possibility they will inherit it.
2 comments:
Reminds me of the piece in James Joyce's Ulysses where the young teacher, Stephen Dedalus is confronted by a boy who seems to have no redeeming qualities (not what you're alluding to here but his response captures something):
"Yet someone had loved him, borne him in her arms and in her heart. But for her the race of the world would have trampled him under foot . . ."
May they be well protected.
That's a great moment. It's that, as you say, lack of redeeming qualities that Joyce gets unerringly right. And the fact that Stephen doesn't pretend to like the kid. (Or pretty much anyone, for that matter.) The moments of humanity in Ulysses gain such intensity precisely because of the utter detachment of the narrative, in whatever form it happens to be taking at any particular time.
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