The Theban Mysteries Read Free Page B

Kate had ever seen. Miss Tyringham was, indeed, a beautiful woman, not the less so because her face, which had been ever free of makeup, her hair, which had always been casually brushed back, seemed trying to detract from her beauty, to deny it: the onlooker perceived the beauty more acutely because he imagined he had shown unusual perception in noticing it at all. There were, to be sure, those among the parents who objected to Miss Tyringham’s way of “getting herself up,” and they used occasionally to express to one another their wish that
someone
would tell her not to wear such mannish suits. The parents of girls who had
not
been accepted at the Theban made more pointed remarks about Miss Tyringham. Kate admired the courage or natural insouciance or simple shortage of time which permitted one to be so emphatically oneself.
    “I wonder,” Miss Tyringham said, “if our whole definition of the word ‘teach’ does not need to be reconsidered. Have we perhaps for too long supposed teaching to be a ritual in which I, the elder and supposedly wiser, hand on to you, the younger and moreinnocent, the fruits of my learning and experience? Perhaps teaching is really a mutual experience between the younger and older, perhaps all there is to be learned is what they can discover between them. I don’t of course mean, as so many of the girls here clearly do, endless bull sessions where everyone talks and no one listens, let alone learns. I mean a disciplined sort of seminar in which one person, you for example, moderates, schedules, and referees, always in the expectation that you, like the students, will emerge with new insights into the
Antigone
none of you might ever have achieved alone.”
    “Well,” Kate said, admiring the way her instructions had been so painlessly imparted, “there’s certainly no danger of my posing as an authority on the life and habits of the Greeks—but you know, even were I an authority, most of the fruits of my learning would be readily available in paperback. I’ve become convinced that our old ideas of teaching date back to the days when there were so few books that only some priest had read them; he then passed on the information to the others, thirsting for knowledge but bookless. Which, no doubt, is why they are called lectures—now as applicable to our life as those hot academic gowns, designed for wear in drafty monasteries, in which we parade beneath a hot June sun. All the same, I hope you don’t regret having asked me. I’m afraid of performing like a wallflower who, when asked to dance, can’t think of a word to say to the man.”
    “You are hardly a wallflower in the academic world.”
    “In
this
academic world I am; they are so young, so certain, so self-absorbed. No doubt they must be, to survive adolescence. But I’m not sure that I understandtheir language, any more than I understand their dances.”
    “Not to put too fine a point on it,” Miss Tyringham said, “you still have the weapons of marks and reports which go on their school records; anyway, all the old habits of diffidence have not wholly gone. But I do think there are new forms of dialogue, even within education. Hopeful speech for today.”
    “I’m glad you can still make hopeful speeches. Reed and I have been afflicted with a nephew—in fact, he and you entered our lives, so to speak, if not hand in hand, ring by ring. I had the delightful task of talking to Harvard, an institution whose reasons for continuing existence he seems to find remarkably scarce, apart, of course, from serving the military-industrial complex. Well, it turned out, as you no doubt can guess, that Harvard like every other college has had so many flights from the nest that they now have a code for unofficial leaves in their computers. Jack is to be allowed back with lots of concessions on
both
sides. Colleges may be hell to get into now, but apparently once they take you in they are admirably reluctant about pushing you out, or