As I walk to the school for a meeting with my daughter's teacher I am having Socratic fits of abstraction. For it has always been difficult with teachers - how to convey what I want for her - not what the teacher wants.I pass seniors tending their garden they smile benignly - pensioners with their defensive property pretensions. Others are surly and scowl as if shouldering debilitating glooms.
I sit opposite my daughter's teacher in the grand oak panelled hall.
"I mean by 'literary theory' the shift from the hermeneutical process of identifying the meaning of a work of literature.
There is a pause, I shouldn't have said hermeneutical.
The teacher looks challenged
"You know, the depth model, the hidden meaning of a piece of literature. Teaching them to hunt out the X of the piece, what is its quintessence."
"Yes, so what would be your approach be in explaining the meaning of a piece of literature?, the teacher's tone is quite agressive, 'I don't follow you....'
"I would like you to focus occasionally on the question of how that meaning is generated, wouldn't you?"
A shuffle beside me, my wife stands thanks the teacher and walks out. Chastened, I follow, '...that's the last time I am going to a
Parent's Meeting with you...you were rude and agressive..
My shoulders sag as I follow her out of the school
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