This is a book of short stories about education and teaching. One of the stories concerns a teacher reflecting on the number of murderers and serious criminals who came through her English class and bemoaning that all she did was teach them rhyming iambic pentameter. Another concerned an author who was awoken every Saturday and Sunday by children playing soccer with tin cans. He tired of this so went down and made a contract of sort with them to play every Saturday and Sunday outside his window. He paid what was then a good amount of pocket money. Within three weeks they stopped playing. The obligation had robbed them of the pleasure and he got to sleep in.
Stump the Bookseller
New format, same book stumper solving.
I don’t know the anthology; but, in case it helps you, the first is a passage that I have seen quoted in several places, and has been attributed to Naomi Joan White:
I HAVE TAUGHT ALL!
I have taught in high school for ten years. During
that time I have given assignments, among others, to a murderer,
an evangelist, a pugilist, a thief, and an imbecile.
The murderer was a quiet little boy who sat in the front
seat and regarded me with pale blue eyes; the evangelist,
easily the most popular boy in school, had the lead in the
Junior play; the pugilist lounged by the window and let
loose at intervals a raucous laugh that startled even the
geraniums; the thief was a gay-hearted lothario with a
song on his lips; and the imbecile, a soft-eyed little
animal seeking the shadows.
The murderer awaits death in the state penitentiary;
the evangelist has lain a year now in the village
churchyard; the pugilist lost an eye in a brawl in Hong
Kong; the thief, by standing on his tiptoe, can see the window
of my room from the county jail; and the once gentle-eyed
little imbecile beats his head against a padded wall in
the state asylum.
All of these pupils once sat in my room, sat and
looked at me gravely across worn brown desks. I must have
been a great help to these pupils — I taught them the
rhyming scheme of the Elizabethan sonnet and how to diagram
a complex sentence.
— Naomi John White, “I taught
All.” The Clearing House, XII
(Nov. 1957), 151.
That is the passage I remember. Thank you. I will pursue references to the author. Cheers Selina
Thanks all. The passage is the one I remember and I am now pursuing anything that references this author. Selina