Bel Kaufman Quotes
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There is a premium on conformity, and on silence. Enthusiasm is frowned upon, since it is likely to be noisy. The Admiral had caught a few kids who came to school before class, eager to practice on the typewriters. He issued a manifesto forbidding any students in the building before 8:20 or after 3:00—outside of school hours, students are "unauthorized." They are not allowed to remain in a classroom unsupervised by a teacher. They are not allowed to linger in the corridors. They are not allowed to speak without raising a hand. They are not allowed to feel too strongly or to laugh too loudly. Yesterday, for example, we were discussing "The fault, dear Brutus, lies not in our stars/ But in ourselves that we are underlings." I had been trying to relate Julius Caesar to their own experiences. Is this true? I asked. Are we really masters of our fate? Is there such a thing as luck? A small boy in the first row, waving his hand frantically: "Oh, call on me, please, please call on me!" was propelled by the momentum of his exuberant arm smack out of his seat and fell on the floor. Wild laughter. Enter McHabe. That afternoon, in my letter-box, it had come to his attention that my "control of the class lacked control.
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Trouble is,” Paul smiled his most charming smile, “a teacher has to be so many things at the same time: actor, policeman, scholar, jailer, parent, inspector, referee, friend, psychiatrist, accountant, judge and jury, guide and mentor, wielder of minds, keeper of records, and grand master of the Delaney Book.
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Never mind the cream; it will always rise to the top. It's the skim milk that needs good teachers.
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Dear Bea—Can’t make it today—sorry. Parent arriving lunch per. to ask why son got 35% on Midterm. Must answer him. How? Sylvia Dear Syl—Don’t try. There’s no communication; no one really listens. Every man is an island. Give him a container of coffee instead.
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Funny, how once you touched off a memory, it was like pulling out a stitch—all the others kept unraveling.
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As a former student put it: “In a liberry it’s hard to avoid reading."
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I had used my sense of humor; I had called it proportion, perspective. But perspective is distance.
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Your fingers smell of incense—a lover sings to the corpse of his dead sweetheart.
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Her disappointment was minor compared to her astonishment. “Again I didn’t win? But last year I didn’t win also!”
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I have this colored friend Betty well, I never thought about it one way or the other until one day I went over her house for the first time and her father opened the door and I was surprized to see he was colored. Because, to me I was so used to her she always looked normal.
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This is from Payroll Division: I wasn’t even teaching in June, and I certainly don’t have $2.75. Apparently they don’t know I’m file # 443-817 and have got me confused with another–possibly.
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That was what marriage was: the ultimate knowledge of each other, with no need to preen or to pretend. Even its irritations came from closeness.
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Dear Bea— I've been wading through a pile of "Due before 3" mimeos—but now at last I know what to do with them: into the wastebasket! I'm also hep to the jargon. I know that "illustrative material" means magazine covers, "enriched curriculum" means teaching "who and whom," and that "All evaluation of students should be predicated upon initial goals and grade level expectations" means if a kid shows up, pass him. Right?
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I feel no different than I felt at 99, 98 or 97. Just because you live a long time, you get all this attention. Just because you survived? Of course, I survived a lot.
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In August they had a bad fright. Her lawyer had suggested that—in view of the circumstances—they drop the divorce. This filled them both with profound dread; at the thought of staying married, of sinking back into the deadly boredom of their pre-divorce days, they felt nothing but horror. They realized more than ever that marriage for them was unthinkable.
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A marriage, she thought, had to have a reason for being.
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Appreciation is appreciated.
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Teachers try to make us feel lower than themselves, maybe because this is because they feel lower than outside people. One teacher told me to get out of the room and never come back, which I did.
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Each country has its own manner of telephoning. The Russians, at least, are honest. They say, “It is Ivan Ivanovich who is bothering you.”
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The preciousness of every moment is emphasized with every tick of the clock. Isn't it a magnificent day today?
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To meet this expense, he sold his violin. Besides, Charlotte did not care for music.
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I like the word OLD. Not senior, that's for proms. Older? Older than whom? 'Old' is honorable and ripe...
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I haven’t seen her since. I wrote to her a few times, not really expecting an answer, for—as she often used to say—the tongue is longer than the pen and can lead you straight to Kiev.
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She wore no make-up, and her small, tense face looked chronically embarrassed, as if it got attached by mistake to the wrong person.