Bel Kaufman quotes
The clerical work is par for the course. "Keep on file in numerical order" means throw in wastebasket. You'll soon learn the language. "Let it be a challenge to you" means you're stuck with it; "interpersonal relationships" is a fight between kids; "ancillary civic agencies for supportive discipline" means call the cops; "Language Arts Dept." is the English office; "literature based on child's reading level and experiential background" means that's all they've got in the Book Room; "non-academic-minded" is a delinquent; and "It has come to my attention" means you're in trouble.
Bel Kaufman
The ceiling fell? The ink ran dry? A student dared to smile?
Of every new disaster
I prove myself the master
By sending out more circulars, more circulars to file!
A missing kid? A kissing kid? A paper on the floor?
For every major crisis
One remedy suffices:
More circulars, more circulars, to put into a drawer!A crowded cafeteria?
A substitute's hysteria?
A visitor from Syria?
A missing Book Receipt?I merely send out circulars
To add to other circulars
To add to other circulars
Numerical and neat!
Bel Kaufman
You teachers are all alike, dishing out crap and expecting us to swallow it and then give it back to you, nice and neat, with a place in it for the mark to go in. But you're even phonier than the others because you put on this act - being a dame you know how - and you stand there pretending that you give a damn. Who you kidding?
We're dirt to you, just like you're dirt to the fatheads and whistle-blowers who run this jail, and they're dirt to the swindlers and horn-tooters who run the school system.
Bel Kaufman
With me they get a solid foundation, the disciplines of learning. In my class they don't get away with hot air discussions and exchanging their opinions and describing their experiences. What opinions can they have? What have they experienced? What do they know? That's an affront! They learn what I know.
Bel Kaufman
Teaching here isn't so bad. Once you accept as one of the ineluctable laws of nature that kids will continue to say "Silas Mariner" and "Ancient Marner" and "between you and I" and "mischievious" and that the administration will continue to use phrases like "egregious conduct" and "ethnic background" you can go on from there.
Bel Kaufman
The cardinal sin, strange as it may seem in an institution of learning, is talking. There are others, of course - sins, I mean, and I seem to have committed a good number. Yesterday I was playing my record of Gielgud reading Shakespeare. I had brought my own phonograph to school (no one could find the Requisition Forms for "Audio-Visual Aids" - that's the name for the school record player) and I had succeeded, I thought, in establishing a mood. I mean, I got them to be quiet, when - enter Admiral Ass, in full regalia, epaulettes quivering with indignation. He snapped his fingers for me to stop the phonograph, waited for the turntable to stop turning, and pronounced:
"There will be a series of three bells rung three times indicating Emergency Shelter Drill. Playing records does not encourage the orderly evacuation of the class."
Bel Kaufman
Bel Kaufman
Photo:
Jewish Women's Archive,
CC BY-SA 2.0
Occupation: American Novelist
Born: May 10, 1911
Died: July 25, 2014
Quotes count: 25
Wikipedia: Bel Kaufman
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