He will wipe the tears from all faces.' It takes nothing from the loveliness of the verse to say that is exactly what will be required
Marilynne RobinsonRead
Teaching is a distraction and a burden, but it's also an incredible stimulus. And a reprieve, in a way. When you're trying to work on something and it's not going anywhere, you can go to school and there's a two-and-a-half-hour block of time in which you can accomplish something.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Teaching can be both challenging and rewarding, providing structure and focus.
This quote by Marilynne Robinson highlights the dual nature of teaching as both a distraction from personal work and a useful structured environment that fosters productivity. It acknowledges that although teaching can feel burdensome, it also offers a valuable opportunity to achieve something meaningful in a supportive setting, especially when personal projects falter.
Themes
TeachingEducationBurdenStimulusProductivity
In practice
Example use cases
During a teacher training workshop, this quote reminded us of the challenges and rewards of educating others.
More from Marilynne Robinson
All quotes →It seems to me there is less meanness in atheism, by a good measure. It seems that the spirit of religious self-righteousness this article deplores is precisely the spirit in which it is written. Of course he's right about many things, one of them being the destructive potency of religious self-righteousness. (p. 146)
Marilynne RobinsonRead
A narrow pond would form in the orchard, water clear as air covering grass and black leaves and fallen branches, all around it black leaves and drenched grass and fallen branches, and on it, slight as an image in an eye, sky, clouds, trees, our hovering faces and our cold hands.
Marilynne RobinsonRead
The moon looks wonderful in this warm evening light, just as a candle flame looks beautiful in the light of morning. Light within light...It seems to me to be a metaphor for the human soul, the singular light within that great general light of existence.
Marilynne RobinsonRead
There are worries that seem to me sustained by the love of worry. For example, that people are reading from screens, or listening to recorded books. Why scold the impulse to enjoy language and narrative in whatever form it takes?
Marilynne RobinsonRead
Every single one of us is a little civilization built on the ruins of any number of preceding civilizations, but with our own variant notions of what is beautiful and what is acceptable - which, I haste to add, we generally do not satisfy and by which we struggle to live.
Marilynne RobinsonRead
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I don't know. I imagine good teaching as a circle of earnest people sitting down to ask each other meaningful questions. I don't see it as a handing down of answers.
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