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Within the Walls
Teaching and Loving the Students
From the movie, Motherless Brooklyn, quote from actor Ed Norton playing Lionel Essrog: “Frank said anyone teaching God’s love while they hit you with a stick should be ignored on every subject.”
Can anyone relate to this quote? Catholic school memories could take you down this path if you went there for elementary and high schools. I can remember kids getting hit with yardsticks and yes, while they preached about God’s love. Nuns making us wear a dunce hat standing in a corner. There were so many instances of this type of poor teaching, aka abuse, school became how to stay out of trouble while learning and keeping still for fear of releasing Godzilla, yet you were learning what love isn’t, what school shouldn’t be like, and that God definitely had his eyes closed, and certainly was not in the classroom despite the prominent displays of crucifixes and other holy pictures or objects.
I like this quote because there is wisdom in it. Even if you could manage to ignore the teacher’s methods, you had to do the work anyway to pass a grade, try to learn from the books you were given, and sorrowfully, follow instructions without discussion or disagreement. The ways used to instruct us weren’t likely to make better students or better listeners. It was a setup for worse behavior due to the feelings that were shoved down…
