Mrs.
Thompson began her lecture on world war two by explaining to showing
the class baby pictures of Hitler, and photos and video of him
smiling and flirting with people. “That is what makes people
monsters, that none of them are wholly monstrous,” she explained
after she shut the projector off. “We are, none of us, as evil we
we think or as good as we pretend to be. Not even the superintendent
of the school board.”
That
didn’t even win weak laughs, but I’m not sure she noticed.
“Everyone
who hates people who do monstrous things act as if they grew up in a
vacuum. And sometimes people do, but a vacuum can suck as well as
blow. It can pull ideas into it, and funnel out apathy – which is
far more dangerous than evil, and more insidious beside. Who here
watches those X-Factor and Talent shows? Enough of you,” she said,
barely looking at raised hands. “In the last United Kingdon general
election, more people voted for the winner of X Factor than voted in
said election. We tell people that personal responsibility is a holy
grail, that we alone are responsible for our actions, regardless of
who put us in them or the actions of others!
“We
say that no man – or woman – is an island, and yet we say that we
have to take personal responsibility for our failings as if we were
islands. We pretend that free will does not exist an an aggregate in
order to punish criminals, in order to satisfy some primitive notions
of justice. What do we reinforce by that? We punish people for not
exercising their free will to avoid events, as if freedom and will
were simple. As
if we had a sound understanding of our own motivations of why
we do the things we do. If we didn’t lack that, there would be no
psychiatry.”
Emma
raised her hand and coughed, loudly. “Mrs. Thompson? Is this about
the DUI that Jane told
me
you got on the weekend?”
“It
is not
about that alleged incident at all,” Mrs. Thompson snapped.
A
few people snickered, at which point she declared an impromptu quiz
on the second world war and its impact on the cold war despite the
fact that she hadn’t actually got around to teaching
it yet.
Hahahaha!
ReplyDeletethe 'label' on this post is very true ;)
Yup. There is a scene earlier that includes:
DeleteI even paid attention to Mrs Thompson, who had decided to tell the class that in every person was the ruin of a great teacher, and how one only had to look at the teachings of Jesus to understand that. For a moment, I thought I caught a hint of some hint of a plan to her lessons: no one so much as looked shocked, because it was Mrs. Thompson and she always said crazy things. Then she went off on a tangent about how multiple choice tests didn’t work and how they destroyed the foundations of democratic systems. Even I tuned her out after that.
The story is going to offer hints that Mrs. Thompson is being very deliberate in her own crazy-making way. 'The ruins of a great teacher' is meant to describe her rather well since most of her rant-lectures do contain at least one intended gem of: "Wait, that makes sense..." for the reader (and the narrator), which then gets buried under pure BS.