Hard Times!
Hard Times!
Thank you to all for the great suggestions...!
'The Professor', by Charlotte Brontė (the one book of hers I hated) depicts a chauvinistic, prejudiced and racist professor who holds his pupils in total contempt. The appalling thing is that this character seems to be a vessel for conveying Brontė's own views on the Flemish girls she taught during her stint as an assistant teacher in Belgium.
'Old School', by Tobias Wolff, is set in a New England boarding school for boys, and has interesting depictions of the interaction between students and teachers. The school is a nurturing place where the kids' interest in literature is actively encouraged.
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie is a good one.
A lot of John Irving's novels (A Prayer for Owen Meanie, The World According to Garp) have sections that center around private boy's schools, but I can't remember them really concentrating too much on the classroom environment.
"If the national mental illness of the United States is megalomania, that of Canada is paranoid schizophrenia."
- Margaret Atwood
"The Soul is Not a Smithy" David Foster Wallace (Short Story from Oblivion)
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