write an essay on the school for sympathy

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Summary of E.V Lucas The School for Sympathy

The School for Sympathy” is a heartwarming short story about the power of empathy. It follows the journey of a young boy named Tom who attends a unique school where students learn to understand and sympathize with others. Through various lessons and experiences, Tom learns the importance of putting himself in others’ shoes and showing kindness and compassion. The story beautifully illustrates how empathy can foster genuine connections and make a positive impact on the lives of those around us.

The author was well-aware of Miss Beam’s school. But he had never been there. He had the chance to go there one day. Only a 12-year-old girl was present when he first arrived on school. A bandage surrounded her bandaged eyes. She was being led through the garden’s flower beds by a young kid, perhaps eight years old. The young lady bowed. Evidently, she inquired about the author from her guide. To her, the boy appeared to be describing the writer. They eventually died. The author entered the structure and spoke with Miss Beam, the school’s principal.

Miss Beam was a mature, strong-willed, caring, and understanding woman. Her hair began to become gray. For the little boys and girls in the school, she served as a mother figure. The author questioned Miss Beam about her teaching strategies. There wasn’t much scholastic schooling, according to Miss Beam. Only writing, addition, subtraction, multiplying, and spelling were taught to the guys. Reading aloud to them and giving lectures took care of the rest. The students had to remain still and quiet throughout these.

The writer questioned Miss Beam about the uniqueness of her approach, and Miss Beam responded that the true goal of the school was not to foster thoughtfulness. The true objective was to instill citizenship and humanity. Miss Beam was pleased that some parents had confidence in her to attempt to carry out her goal. They enrolled their daughter and son in her school. The author was instructed to peer out of the window by Miss Beam. He observed some lovely grounds and lots of happy kids, but he was saddened to see that none of the kids were active and in good health. He mentioned the female with her eyes bandaged that he noticed when he entered the room to Miss Beam. He noticed two more people with bandaged eyes by looking out the window right now. He also noticed a young girl using a crutch. She resembled a cripple.

Laughing, Miss Beam remarked that she wasn’t actually weak. The person using a crutch and having a lame day were the ones with bandaged eyes who weren’t actually blind. The other people were going through a blind day. That was a crucial component of her setup. The young boys and girls’ participation in misfortune helped them comprehend and appreciate other people’s misfortune. Every student experienced a blind day, a lame day, a maimed day, and a stupid day throughout the course of the term. Their eyes are bandaged on the day of the blind. Overnight, the bandage is placed on. They come to in darkness. It is suggested that other kids assist them and guide them. Both blind people and those who assist them can learn from it.

Themes in The School for Sympathy

It was not in any way a privation. Everybody was incredibly gracious. The pupil could very easily have learned the truth about the miseries before the day was done. The hardest day was the blind day. The dumb day, according to some kids, was the worst of all. Bandages weren’t covering the mouth. Only willpower had to be used by the child. The author was taken by Miss Beam to a bandage girl in the garden. She presented the author to the girl before departing.

The young woman was questioned if she had ever tried to urinate. Peeping, according to the girl, would be dishonest. She had no idea how awful being blind was. A blind person was unable to see anything. He was worried that something would hit him at any time. She was treated quite well by her guides. The best were those who had been blind at the time. She would play the guide and be more cautious.

She was asked if she would like him to show her where. They ought to take a brief stroll, the girl suggested. That, according to her, was her worst day ever. When the day was finished, she would be relieved. The other poor days did not compare to the blind day in terms of severity. One leg was restrained on Lame Day. On a crutch, one hobbled along. It was nearly enjoyable. An arm was restrained on the day of injury. It wasn’t as bad as the day I went blind. She would not mind going a day without hearing or speaking. Being blind was quite terrifying. She was always dodging things, and her head hurt.

She inquired as to their location at that moment. They were allegedly walking toward the house while in the playground. He saw Miss Beam and a tall girl moving up and down the terrace. The tall female had been dressed in a pink blouse over a blue wool shirt. The first girl enquired about the color of Millie’s hair and speculated that she might be Millie. Her hair, according to the author, was light in hue. The previous girl identified herself as Millie, the head girl. The author then spoke of an elderly guy resting among roses. He was identified by the girl as Peter, the gardener. A black female wearing red and on crutches was reported by the author. The youngster identified herself as Beryl.

As he led the girl about, the author realized he had become into a far more considerate person than previously. He also realized that the surroundings were made more fascinating by the need to describe them to someone else. The last of the author’s trips to the school has concluded. Miss Beam came to say goodbye to him. The author apologized to her for having to leave the location. Miss Beam rejoiced about it. She claimed that something was in her system.

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English Summary

The School for Sympathy Lesson Summary Notes and Explanation in English Class 8th

Back to: Kerala Board Class 8th English Guide and Notes

Table of Contents

Introduction

In this essay, the writer introduces the readers to a new type of school. As the name indicates, the school’s purpose is to create sympathy among its students for the lame, the blind, and the handicapped. It teaches all the subjects taught by other schools but it differs from other schools in one important aspect that is, it makes its students good citizens.

The writer visits The School for Sympathy

The author met Miss Beam, she was a middle-aged, kindly, and understanding lady. He asked her questions about her way of teaching. She told him that the teaching methods in her school were very simple. The students were taught spelling, arithmetic, and writing. The author told Miss Beam that he had heard a lot about the originality of her teaching method.

Miss Beam explains the system followed in the school

The author looked out of the window. He saw a large garden and playground. Many children were playing there. He told Miss Beam that he felt sorry for the physically handicapped. Miss Beam laughed at it. She explained to him that they were not handicapped. It was the blind day for a while for some it was the deaf day. There were still others for whom it was a lame day. Then she explained the system. To make the students understand misfortune, they were made to have experiences of misfortunes. In the term, every child had one blind day, one lame day, one deaf day, one maimed day, and one dumb day. On a blind day, their eyes were bandaged. They did everything with the help of other children. It was educative to both the blind and the helpers.

Miss Beam told the author that the blind day was very difficult for the children. But some of the children feared the dumb day. On a dumb day, the child had to exercise willpower because the mouth was not bandaged. Miss Beam introduced the author to a girl whose eyes were bandaged. The author asked her if she ever peeped. She told him that it would be cheating. She also told the author that she had no idea of the difficulties of the blind.

All the time she feared that she was going to be hit by something. The author asked her if her guides were good to her. She replied that they were very good. She also informed the author that those who had been blind already were the best guides.

The writer praises Miss Beam’s system of education

When the author told her about the tall girl’s dress, she at once made out that she was Millie. The author described the surroundings to her. He felt that as a guide to the blind, one had to be thoughtful. He was full of praise for Miss Beam’s system of education which made the student sympathetic and kind. The writer himself had become ten times more thoughtful.

The lesson gives the idea of the role of school education in our life. Miss Beam was running a school. The name of her school was the ‘School for Sympathy’. It was different from other schools. The students were taught spelling, adding, subtracting, multiplying, and division. But the real aim of her school was to make children kind and thoughtful.

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Short Story Reviews

The School for Sympathy by E.V. Lucas

In The School for Sympathy by E.V. Lucas we have the theme of thoughtfulness, appreciation, equality, sympathy and humanity. Taken from his A Choice of Essays collection the reader realises after reading the essay that Lucas may be exploring the theme of thoughtfulness. Each child is given a role to play on a daily basis. Some are blind, lame or dumb and deaf. This leads to their carers being more thoughtful than would be usual for a person to be and if anything appreciative of the fact that they have not been struck down with a disability. A matter which impresses Lucas very much and which leads to the title of the essay. If anything Lucas may be suggesting that others too, particularly adults, might learn from the actions of Miss Beam’s students. What is also interesting about the essay is the fact that the girl that Lucas is helping does not really overly worry herself by the fact that she may be suffering from an affliction. True she dislikes being blind but it does not get her down. Her mind is able to adjust to the circumstances she finds herself in. Which may be Miss Beam’s goal.

It might also be worth noting the gratitude that Lucas feels when he leaves the school. He is thankful that he has had the opportunity to help somebody. Which may be the point that Lucas is attempting to make. He may be suggesting in life others could be more obliging to people who may not be as fortunate. To lend a hand or use their eyes to see for another person. It is a simple thing to do and one which an individual will feel greatly rewarded for doing. Rather than having society think only of itself if others thought like the school children in Miss Beam’s school the world would be a better place. Those who might suffer with an infliction will not feel isolated or fearful of the world around them. They will in reality be viewed as being the same as everybody else. The way that life is meant to be with equality for all. And nobody is left behind. It is also possible that Lucas who is so impressed will mention Miss Beam’s school to others just as it has been mentioned to him and if anything the experience that Lucas goes through is life-changing.

The fact that each student in the school experiences the same infliction’s, though on different days, is also significant as Miss Beam is treating everyone equally and as such allowing for the experiences of each child to be a developing curve in their life. No child regardless of who they may be is exempt from being inflicted with a disability for a day. It is also possible if not certain that each child appreciates life more due to the fact that they have been inflicted with a disability. They learn to help others, to be altruistic. Something that is rare when it comes to mankind and an issue that Lucas clearly understands. Hence his writing of the essay as an example to others of how a person should live their lives. However the lesson may be lost on the majority of people who might only be concerned about the small bubble of life that they live in. To them Lucas’ message falls on deaf ears. Which is somewhat ironic considering that some of the children have to pretend to be deaf on some days.

The verse at the end of the essay is also interesting as it shows how deeply affected Lucas has been when it comes to visiting the school. He cannot separate himself from another person’s woes which highlights how kind and altruistic Lucas is but it also highlights the fact that he may feel as though he is carrying a burden. He is emotionally and mentally attached to what has happened at the school. Something which some critics might suggest is a good thing but nonetheless it can burden a person or leave them at a point or moment of realisation that they simply cannot ignore and realise how fortunate they themselves actually are. Which appears to be the case when it comes to Lucas. Even though none of the children are really inflicted with a disability Lucas understands the point that Miss Beam is making. She is teaching children humanity something that other schools might be apt to do. Though the reality is that Miss Beam, the children in the school and Lucas will always be in the minority. Life has a tendency to discard those who are weaker and only the strong will survive. Miss Beam really is a pioneer in her teaching methods.

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I like this story. I think we also need that type of school in India.

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Wonderful moral to society

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The School for Sympathy Summary

September 7, 2023 by Raju

For a more detailed understanding, you can refer to the sources provided, such as englishsummary.com, preservearticles.com, and transferandpostings.in, which may offer additional insights and explanations about “ The School for Sympathy ” and its themes. Read More  English Summaries .

The School for Sympathy Summary, Pronunciation & Translation

[1] I had heard a lot about Miss Beam’s school, but I did not get the chance to visit it till last week.

When I arrived at the school I saw a girl of about twelve, with her eyes covered with a bandage, being led carefully between the flower-beds by a little boy of eight. She stopped, and asked who it was that had come in, and he seemed to be describing me to her. Then they passed on.

[2] Miss Beam was all that I had expected middle-aged authoritative, kind and understanding. Her hair was beginning to turn grey, and her round figure was likely to be comforting to a homesick child.

We chatted for a little while, and when I asked her some questions about her teaching methods, which I had heard were simple.

[3] “…….. We teach only those things that are simple and useful to pupils-spelling, adding, subtracting, multiplying, writing. The rest is done by reading to them and giving them interesting talks. There are practically no other lessons.

“…….. I have heard so much,” I said, “about the originality of your system.”

[4] Miss Beam smiled. “Ah, yes” she said. “I am coming to that. The real aim of this school is not to teach thought but thoughtfulness-humanity, kindness and citizenship. That is the ideal I have always had, and happily there are parents good enough to trust me to try and put it into practice. Look out of the window for a minute, will you?”

I went to the window, which looked out on a large garden and playground at the back.

[5] “What do you see?” Miss Beam asked. “I see some very beautiful grounds.” I said, “and a lot of jolly children. But what surprises me, and pains me too, is that they are not all healthy and active. As I came in I saw one poor little thing being led about because of some trouble with her eyes. And now I can see two more in the same condition, while there is a girl with a crutch just under the window watching the others at play. She seems to be a hopeless cripple.

[6] Miss Beam laughed. “Oh, no”, she said, “she’s not lame really, this is only her lame day. Nor are those others blind, it is only their blind day.” I must have looked very much astonished, for she laughed again. “There you have an essential part of our system in a nutshell. In order to get these young minds to appreciate and understand misfortune, we make them share in misfortune too.

[7] In the course of the term every child has one blind day, one lame day, one deaf day and one dumb day. During the blind day their eyes are bandanged, and it is a point of honour not to peep. The bandage is put on overnight, they wake up blind. This means that they need assistance in everything, and other children are told to help them and lead them about. It is educative to both of them the blind and the helpers.”

[8] “Everyone is very kind, “Miss Beam continued, “and it is really something of a joke, although of course, before the day is over the reality of the disability becomes clear even to the least thoughtful. The blind day is, of course, really the worst, but some of the children tell me that the dumb day is the most frightening. There, of course, the child must use will-power only because the mouth is not bandaged. But come down into the garden and see for yourself how the children like it.

[9] Miss Beam led me to one of the bandaged girls, a little merry thing. “Here’s a gentleman come to talk to you,” said Miss Beam, and left us. “Don’t you ever peep?” I asked, by way of an opening. “Oh, no”, she exclaimed, “that would be cheating! But i’d not idea it was so awful to be blind. You can’t see a thing. One feels one is going to be hit by something every moment sitting dawn such a relief.

[10] “Are your guides kind to you?” I asked. “Pretty good. Not so careful as I shall be when it’s my turn. Those that have been blind already are the best. It’s terrible not to see. I wish you’d try!” “Shall I lead you anywhere” I asked.

[11] “Oh, yes”, she said, “let’s go for a little walk. Only you must tell me about things. I shall be so glad when today’s over. The other bad days can’t be half as bad as this. Having a leg tied up and hopping about on a crutch is almost fun. I guess. Having an arm tied up is a little more troublesome, because you have to get your food cut up for you, and so on, but it doesn’t really matter. And as for being deaf for a day, I shan’t mind that-at least, not much. But being blind is so frightening. My head aches all the time, just from avoiding things that probably aren’t there. Where are we now?”

[12] “In the playground”, I said, “going towards the house. Miss Beam is walking up and down the terrace with a tall girl.” “What has the girl got on?” My companion asked. “I blue skirt and a pink blouse.” “I think it’s Millie”, she said, “What colour is her hair?” “Very light”, I said. “Yes, that’s Millie. She’s the head girl. She’s very decent.” “There’s an old man tying up roses”, I said. “Yes, that’s Peter. He’s the gardener.” “And here comes a dark girl in red, on crutches.” “Yes”, she said, “that’s Berryl.”

[13] And so we walked on, and in guiding this little girl about I discovered that I was ten times more thoughtful already than usual. I also realized that having to describe the surroundings to another, makes them more interesting. When Miss Beam came to release me I was sorry. to go, and said so. “Ah!” she replied. “Then there is something in my system after all.” I walked back to the town murmuring (incorrectly as ever) the lines : Can I see another’s woe, And not share their sorrow too? O no, never can it be, Never, never, can it be. – Simplified form EV Lucas

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Summary of “School for Sympathy” by E.V. Lucas

write an essay on the school for sympathy

The writer had heard a lot about Miss Beam’s school. But he had never visited it. One day he got the opportunity to visit it. On entering the campus he saw no one except a girl of twelve. Her eyes were covered with a bandage. A little boy of about eight was guiding her between the flower beds in the garden. The girl stooped. She evidently asked here guide about the writer. The boy seemed to describe the writer to her. Then they passed on. The writer went into the building and met Miss Beam the head of the school.

Miss beam was middle aged, authoritative, kindly and understanding. Her hair and started turning grey. She was a mother figure for the young boys and girls in the school. The writer asked Miss Beam some questions about her scholastic methods. Miss Beam said that there was not much scholastic education. The boys were taught spelling, adding, subtracting, multiplying and writing only. The rest was done by reading to them and by lectures. During these the students had to sit still and quite.

The writer asked Miss Beam about the originality of her system; Miss Beam said that the real aim of the school was not to instill thoughts thoughtfulness. The real aim was to instill humanity and citizenship. Miss Beam was happy that some parents trusted her to try and put her ideal into execution. They sent their sons and daughter to her school. Miss Beam asked the writer to look out of the window. He saw some beautiful grounds and many jolly children; He was pained to find that all the children were not healthy and active. He told Miss Beam about the girl with her eyes bandaged whom he saw as he came in. Looking out of the window now he saw two more with their eyes bandaged. He also saw a little girl with a crutch. She seemed to be a cripple.

Miss Beam laughed and said that she was not really lame. Those with eyes covered in bandages were not really blind, the one with a crutch and her lame day. The others were having their blind day. That was an essential part of her system. Participation in misfortune enabled the young boys and girls properly understand and appreciate the misfortune of others. In course of the term every students had a blinds day a lame day one maimed day and one dumb day. On the blind day their eyes are bandaged. The bandaged is put on overnight. They wake blind. Other children are advised to help them and lead them about. It is educative to both the blind and their helpers.

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There was no privation about it. Everyone was very kind. Before the day was over the student could very well known the reality on the miseries. The blind day was the worst. Some children complained that the dumb day was the most dreadful. The mouth was not bandages. The child had to exercise will-power only. Miss Beam took the writer to a bandages girl in the garden. She introduced the writer to the girl and left the place.

The writer asked the girl if she ever tried to peep. The girl said that peeping would be cheating. She had no idea that it was so horrible to be blind. A blind man could not see anything. He always feared to be hit by something every moment. Her guides were very good to her. Those who had been blind at ready were the best. She would be more careful she would play the guide.

The writer asked her if he could lead her some where. The girl said that they should go far a little walk. She said that was the worst day for her. She would be glad when the day was over. The other bad days were not even half bad as the blind day. On the lame day a leg was tied up. One hoped about on a crutch. It was almost fun. On the maimed day an arm was tied up. It was not as awful as the blind day. She would not mind being dumb or deaf for a day. Being blind was very frightening. Her head always ached from dodging things.

She asked the writer where they were then. The writer said that they were in the playground, going towards the house. He could see Miss Beam walking up the down the terrace with a tall girl. The tall girl had worn a blue woolen shirt and a pink blouse. The first girl said that she might be Millie and asked about the color of her hair. The writer said that her hair had alight color. The former girl said that she was Millie, the head girl. The writer then said about an old man lying up roses. The girl said that he was Peter, the gardener. The writer described a dark girl in red, walking on crutches. The girl said that she was beryl.

Steering the girl about the writer discovered that he had become much more thoughtful than before. He also discovered that the necessity of describing the surroundings to another made them more interesting. The writer’s visits to the school come to its end. Miss Beam came to see him off. The writer told her that he felt sorry to leave the place. Miss Beam felt happy about it. She said that there was something in her system.

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The School for Sympathy Summary

The School for Sympathy Summary

“The School for Sympathy” is a thought-provoking short story by E.M. Forster that delves into the complexities of human emotions and the quest for genuine empathy. Set in an intriguing world where individuals are trained to experience and understand emotions deeply, The School For Sympathy story raises questions about the authenticity of empathy and its role in human relationships. Read More Summaries Class 8 English Summaries .

The School for Sympathy Summary in English

The writer once got a chance to visit Miss Beam’s school about which he had heard a lot before. When he entered the school, he just saw a girl of twelve with a bandage covering her eyes. A little boy of about eight was guiding her between the flower beds in the garden. The girl asked the boy about the writer.

The boy seemed to describe the writer to her and they went away. Then the writer went in and met Miss Beam. He asked her some questions about her style of teaching. Miss Beam said there was not much scholastic education. The students were taught spelling, adding, subtracting, multiplying and writing only. She said that the goal of her system was to sow the seeds ‘ of humanity and citizenship in the children. He noticed that the children there were not healthy. He mentioned about the girl he had seen before to Miss Beam.

The School for Sympathy images

She laughed and said that she was not really blind. The ones with eyes covered in bandages were not really blind and those with a crutch was not lame either. It was just a part of her system. This practice made the children empathized with the differently-abled and appreciate the gift of life. Then she introduced the writer to the girl and left the place. He asked her if she tried to peep.

She replied that peeping would be cheating. She described her experience acting blind and how she realized the struggle a blind person had to face. She said that the ‘blind day’ was the worst day for her. She was guided by the writer for a walk. The writer described the surrounding to her. The writer noticed that the girl had become much more thoughtful and sensitive. Miss Beam came to see him off on his leaving.

Conclusion:

In conclusion, “The School for Sympathy” by E.M. Forster introduces readers to a society where empathy is taught as a skill, challenging us to reflect on the true nature of compassion and whether it can be manufactured or must arise naturally from within. The School For Sympathy Summary this thought-provoking narrative prompts us to question the authenticity of emotions and the significance of genuine human connections in an increasingly mechanized world.

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PSEB Solutions

PSEB 12th Class English Solutions Supplementary Chapter 1 The School for Sympathy

Punjab State Board  PSEB 12th Class English Book Solutions Supplementary Chapter 1 The School for Sympathy Textbook Exercise Questions and Answers.

PSEB Solutions for Class 12 English Supplementary Chapter 1 The School for Sympathy

Short Answer Type Questions

Question 1. Give a brief account of Mr. Lucas’s visit to Miss Beam’s school. Mr: Lucas के Miss Beam के स्कूल में दौरे का संक्षिप्त वर्णन करो। Answer: Once the author visited Miss Beam’s school. It taught normal school subjects and also made the students sympathetic, thoughtful and kind. The author saw many handicapped children. Actually they were all healthy. They were playing at being crippled. Each child was made to have one blind day, one lame day, one dumb day and one maimed day in a term.

This made the students understand the misfortunes of the handicapped. The blind day was very troublesome. At the end of the visit, the author thought that Miss Beam’s school did a very useful service in making the students sympathetic and kind.

PSEB 12th Class English Solutions Supplementary Chapter 1 The School for Sympathy

एक बार लेखक मिस बीम के स्कूल गया। इसमें आम विषय पढ़ाए जाते थे और यह विद्यार्थियों को सहानुभूतिपूर्ण, विचारशील और दयालु बनाता था। लेखक ने बहुत से अपंग बच्चे देखे। वास्तव में वे सभी स्वस्थ थे। वे अपंग होने का अभिनय कर रहे थे।

एक अवधि में हर बच्चे के लिए एक अन्धा होने का दिन, एक लंगड़ा होने का दिन, एक बहरा और गूंगा होने का दिन और एक अपाहिज होने का दिन आवश्यक था। इससे विद्यार्थियों को अपंग मानवों के दुर्भाग्य की जानकारी होती थी। अन्धा होने का दिन बहुत कष्टदायक था। दौरे के अन्त में लेखक ने सोचा कि मिस बीम का स्कूल विद्यार्थियों को सहानुभूतिपूर्ण तथा दयालु बनने में बहुत लाभदायक काम करता था।

Question 2. “In the course of the term every child has one blind day, one lame day, one deaf day, one maimed day, one dumb day.” What were the children expected to do on these days ? ” (पढ़ाई की) अवधि के दौरान प्रत्येक बच्चे को एक दिन अन्धा, एक दिन लंगड़ा, एक दिन बहरा, एक दिन अपंग, एक दिन गूंगा होना पड़ता है।” इन दिनों बच्चों से क्या आशा की जाती थी ? Answer: On the blind day, the eyes of children were bandaged. Such children needed help in everything. On the lame day, a leg of the child was tied up and he was to hop about on a crutch. On the deaf day, the ears of children were clogged. On the maimed day, an arm was tied up and the children had to get their food cut for them.

On the dumb day, they were to remain silent. As their mouths were not bandaged, they had to depend upon their will power. They were made to take part in these misfortunes in order to make them appreciate and understand the misfortune of others. The basic idea was to make the children sympathetic towards such helpless children.

अन्धा होने के दिन, बच्चों की आंखों पर पट्टी बांध दी जाती थी। ऐसे बच्चों को प्रत्येक काम में सहायता की आवश्यकता थी। लंगड़ा होने के दिन बच्चे की एक टांग बांध दी जाती थी और उसे बैसाखी पर फुदकना पड़ता था। बहरा होने के दिन, बच्चों के कान अवरुद्ध कर दिये जाते थे।

अपंग होने के दिन बच्चे की एक भुजा बांध दी जाती थी और बच्चों को उनका भोजन काटना होता था। गूंगा होने के दिन उन्हें चुप रहना होता था। क्योंकि उनके मुंह पर पट्टी नहीं बांधी जाती थी उन्हें अपनी इच्छा-शक्ति पर निर्भर रहना पड़ता था। उन्हें इन दुर्भाग्यों में भाग लेने के लिये शिक्षित किया जाता था ताकि वे दूसरों के दुर्भाग्य को समझ सकें। मुख्य विचार बच्चों को ऐसे असहाय बच्चों के प्रति सहानुभूतिपूर्ण बनाना था।

Long Answer Type Questions

Question 1. What did the author see in Miss Beam’s school at first sight? How did he feel about it? पहली नज़र में लेखक ने Miss Beam के स्कूल में क्या देखा ? इस के बारे में उसे कैसा लगा ? Answer: The author visited Miss Beam’s school. He looked out of the window. He told Miss Beam that he had seen some very beautiful grounds and a lot of jolly children. But it was an unpleasant and painful experience. He pointed out that all the children were not as healthy and active as they should be.

On entering the school, he saw a girl being led about by another child. It could be understood that the girl had some trouble with her eyes. After that, the writer could see two more girls in the same condition. He also saw a girl with a crutch watching the other children at play. He came to the conclusion that the girl must be a helpless cripple.

लेखक मिस बीम के स्कूल गया। उसने खिड़की से बाहर देखा। उसने मिस बीम को बताया कि उसने बहुत सुन्दर स्थल और बहुत से प्रसन्न बच्चे देखे हैं। लेकिन यह असुहावना और दुखद अनुभव था। उसने कहा कि सब बच्चे इतने स्वस्थ और चुस्त नहीं थे जितने होने चाहिये। स्कूल में प्रवेश करने पर उसने एक लड़की को दूसरे बच्चे द्वारा ले जाते हुए देखा।

यह समझा जा सकता था कि लड़की की आंखों मे कोई तकलीफ थी। इसके पश्चात् लेखक दो और लड़कियों को उसी हालत में देख सकता था। उसने एक लड़की को बैसाखी के साथ दूसरे बच्चों को खेलते हुए देखा। वह इस निष्कर्ष पर पहुंचा कि लड़की असहाय विकलांग थी।

Question 2. Give a character-sketch of Miss Beam. Answer: Miss Beam was kind-hearted, middle-aged, authoritative and full of understanding. She started a new school known as the School for Sympathy. Important school subjects were taught in this school. But this school was different in one aspect. Here the students were given training in good qualities. The real aim of the school was to give training in thoughtfulness, humanity and good citizenship.

Every child in her school had one blind day, one lame day, one deaf day and one dumb day etc. The children thus had a taste of misfortune. As a result, they learnt to be sympathetic towards handicapped people. Miss Beam was an asset to society. She wanted to promote noble ideas in society.

मिस बीम एक दयालु-हृदय वाली, अधेड़ अवस्था की, रौबदार और समझदार स्त्री थी। उसने School for Sympathy के नाम से एक नया स्कूल चालू किया। स्कूल के महत्त्वपूर्ण विषय इस स्कूल में पढ़ाये जाते थे। लेकिन एक बात में यह स्कूल भिन्न था। यहां विद्यार्थियों को अच्छे गुणों की शिक्षा दी जाती थी। स्कूल का मुख्य उद्देश्य विचारशीलता, मानवता और नागरिकता में प्रशिक्षण देना था।

इसके स्कूल के प्रत्येक बच्चे का एक अन्धा होने का दिन, एक लंगड़ा होने का दिन, एक बहरा होने का दिन और एक गूंगा होने का दिन होता था। इस तरह बच्चे दुर्भाग्य का अनुमान लगा सकते थे। परिणामस्वरूप, उन्होंने अपंग लोगों के प्रति सहानुभूतिशील होना सीख लिया। मिस बीम समाज के लिए एक पूंजी थी। वह समाज में अच्छे विचारों का विकास करना चाहती थी।

Question 3. Give in your own words the theme of the lesson ‘The School For Sympathy’. Answer: Traditional or conventional education given in schools is not ideal. It gives information of facts. It enables a person to earn his living. In addition to the normal subjects, the students of Miss Beam’s ideal school were also given lessons on humanity and citizenship.

Here students got a real understanding of misfortune. During training every child had one blind day, one deaf day and one dumb day. During the blind day their eyes were bandaged. The bandage was also put during the night. By being blind for a day the child realised what a misfortune it was to be blind. In the same way children learnt the difficulties of the deaf and the dumb people.

स्कलों में दी जाने वाली परम्परागत शिक्षा आदर्श नहीं है। यह तथ्यों की सूचना देती है। यह मनुष्य को अपनी आजीविका कमाने योग्य बनाती है। आम विषयों के अतिरिक्त मिस बीम के आदर्श स्कूल में विद्यार्थियों को मानवता और नागरिकता के पाठ पढ़ाए जाते थे। यहां विद्यार्थियों को दुर्भाग्य की वास्तविक जानकारी दी जाती थी।

प्रशिक्षण के दौरान प्रत्येक बच्चे का एक अन्धा होने का दिन, एक बहरा होने का दिन और एक गूंगा होने का दिन होता था। अन्धे होने के दिन के दौरान उनकी आंखों पर पट्टी बांध दी जाती थी। पट्टी रात को बांध दी जाती थी। एक दिन अन्धे बने रहने पर बच्चे को महसूस होता था कि अन्धे होना कितना दुर्भाग्यपूर्ण था। इसी तरह बच्चों को बहरे और गूंगे लोगों की कठिनाइयों का पता चलता था।

Objective Type Questions

This question will consist of 3 objective type questions carrying one mark each. These objective questions will include questions to be answered in one word to one sentence or fill in the blank or true/false or multiple choice type questions.

Question 1. What does the author tell us about Miss Beam ? Answer: He tells us that Miss Beam was a middle-aged, kindly, understanding and impressive lady.

Question 2. What was the real aim of Miss Beam’s school ? Answer: Its real aim was to make the students thoughtful, helpful and sympathetic citizens.

Question 3. Why did the author feel sorry for some of the children ? Answer: He felt sorry for some children because they seemed to be handicapped.

Question 4. Were the children playing in the ground really physically handicapped ? Answer: They were not really handicapped.

Question 5. Why were the children acting to be blind, deaf or lame ? Answer: The children were acting to be blind, lame and deaf to have experience of misfortune.

Question 6. What is the educative value of a blind, deaf or lame day? Answer: Students get an idea of the discomfort of handicapped persons and then they have sympathy for the handicapped.

Question 7. Which day is the most difficult for children ? Answer: The blind day is the most difficult for children.

Question 8. Who did Miss Beam lead the author to ? Answer: Miss Beam led the author to the girl whose eyes were bandaged.

Question 9. How did the girl with bandaged eyes feel on her blind day? Answer: All the time she feared that she was going to be hit by something.

Question 10. What does the girl with the bandaged eyes tell the author about her guides ? Answer: She tells the author that the guides were very good.

Question 11. What, according to the girl with the bandaged eyes, is almost a fun ? Answer: According to her, hopping about with a crutch is almost a fun.

Question 12. Why does the girl with the bandaged eyes say that her head aches all the time on her blind day? Answer: She says that her head aches all the time just from dodging things that are not there.

Question 13. What does the girl, with the bandaged eyes, tell the author about the head girl ? Answer: She says that she is very decent.

Question 14. What does the girl with the bandaged eyes say about the gardener ? Answer: She says that he is hundreds of years old.

Question 15. What made Miss Beam think that there was something in her system? Answer: Miss Beam was right to think so because her school had taught the author to share the sorrows of others.

Question 16. Choose the correct option: (i) Miss Beam was a cruel lady. (ii) Miss Beam was a young lady, teaching in a school. (iii) Miss Beam was a middle aged, kindly and impressive lady. Answer: (iii) Miss Beam was a middle aged, kindly and impressive lady.

Question 17. Choose the correct option : (i) The aim of Miss Beam’s school was to make the students thoughtful, helpful and sympathetic citizens. (ii) The object of Miss Beam’s school was to make the students bookworms. (iii) Miss Beam’s school made the students into good sportspersons. Answer: (i) The aim of Miss Beam’s school was to make the students thoughtful, helpful and sympathetic citizens.

Question 18. Choose the correct option : The author was sorry for some children of Miss Beam’s school because they were : (i) poor. (ii) handicapped. (iii) sick. Answer: (ii) handicapped.

Question 19. Write True or False as appropriate : (i) The children in Miss Beam’s school were handicapped. (ii) They were acting to be handicapped. (iii) They were being treated for being handicapped. Answer: (i) False (ii) True (iii) False.

Question 20. Write True or False as appropriate : The most difficult day for the students in Miss Beam’s school was the lame day. Answer: False.

Question 21. Write True or False as appropriate : The most difficult day for the students in Miss Beam’s school was the deaf day. Answer: False.

Question 22. Write True or False as appropriate : The most difficult day for the students in Miss Beam’s school was the blind day. Answer: True.

Question 23. The writer had heard of the ……….. of the system of Miss Beam’s school. (Fill up the blank) Answer: originality

Question 24. The bandaged girl tells the writer that the gardener was …………. of years old. (Fill in the blank) Answer: hundreds

Question 25. What was the name of the bandaged girl ? Answer: Millie.

The School for Sympathy Summary in English

The School for Sympathy Introduction:

In this essay the writer tells us about a new type of school. As the name indicates, its purpose is to create sympathy among its students for the lame, the blind and the handicapped. It teaches all the subjects taught by other schools. But it differs from other schools in one important aspect. It makes its students good citizens.

The School for Sympathy Summary in English:

The writer had heard a lot about Miss Beam’s School for Sympathy. One day he got the chance to visit it. He saw a twelve-year old girl. Her eyes were covered with a bandage. An eight-year old boy was leading her carefully between the flower-beds.

After that the author met Miss Beam. She was a middle-aged, kindly and understanding lady. He asked her questions about her way of teaching. She told him that the teaching methods in her school were very simple. The students were taught spelling, arithmetic and writing.

The author told Miss Beam that he had heard a lot about the originality of her teaching method. Miss Beam told him that the real aim of her school was to make the students thoughtful. She wanted to make them helpful and sympathetic citizens. She added that parents sent their children to her school gladly. She then asked the writer to look out of the window.

The author looked out of the window. He saw a large garden and playground. Many children were playing there. He told Miss Beam that he felt sorry for the physically handicapped. Miss Beam laughed at it. She explained to him that they were not really handicapped. It was the blind day for a few while for some it was the deaf day. There were still others for whom it was the lame day. Then she explained the system.

To make the students understand misfortune, they were made to have experience of misfortunes. In the course of the term every child had one blind day, one lame day, one deaf day, one maimed day and one dumb day. On the blind day, their eyes were bandaged. They did everything with the help of other children. It was educative to both the blind and the helpers.

Miss Beam told the author that the blind day was very difficult for the children. But some of the children feared the dumb day. On the dumb day, the child had to exercise willpower because the mouth was not bandaged. Miss Beam introduced the author to a girl whose eyes were bandaged. The author asked her if she ever peeped. She told him that it would be cheating. She also told the author that she had no idea of the difficulties of the blind.

All the time she feared that she was going to be hit by something. The author asked her if her guides were good to her. She replied that they were very good. She also informed the author that those who had been blind already were the best guides. The author walked with the girl leading her to the playground. She told him that the blind day was the worst day.

She didn’t feel so bad on the maimed day, lame day and deaf day. The girl asked the author where they were at the moment. He told her that they were going towards the house. He also told her that Miss Beam was walking up and down the terrace with a tall girl. The blind girl asked what that tall girl was wearing.

When the author told her about the tall girls dress, she at once made out that she was Millie. The author described the surroundings to her. He felt that as a guide to the blind, one had to be thoughtful. He was full of praise for Miss Beam’s system of education which made the student sympathetic and kind. The writer himself had become ten times more thoughtful.

The School for Sympathy Summary in Hindi

इस लेख में लेखक एक नये प्रकार के स्कूल के बारे बतलाता है। जैसा कि इसके नाम से स्पष्ट होता है, इसका उद्देश्य उसके छात्रों में लंगड़ों, अन्धों और अपंगों के लिए सहानुभूति पैदा करना है। इस स्कूल में वे तमाम विषय पढ़ाये जाते हैं जो कि अन्य स्कूलों में पढ़ाये जाते हैं। लेकिन यह स्कूल दूसरे स्कूलों से एक महत्त्वपूर्ण पक्ष में भिन्न है। यह अपने छात्रों को अच्छे नागरिक बनाता है।

The School for Sympathy Summary in Hindi:

लेखक ने Miss Beam के सहानुभूति के लिए स्कूल के बारे में बहुत कुछ सुन रखा था। एक दिन उसे यह देखने का अवसर मिला। उसने एक 12 वर्ष की लड़की देखी। उसकी आंखें पट्टी से ढकी हुई थीं। एक आठ वर्ष का लड़का बड़ी सावधानी के साथ फूलों की क्यारियों में से उसका मार्ग-दर्शन कर रहा था।

उसके बाद लेखक मिस बीम को मिला। वह अधेड़ उम्र की दयालु समझदार स्त्री थी। उसने उससे पढ़ाने के ढंग के बारे में पूछा। उसने उसे बताया कि उसके स्कूल में पढ़ाने का ढंग बहुत सादा था। विद्यार्थियों को हिज्जे करना, गणित और लिखना सिखाया जाता था।

लेखक ने मिस बीम को बताया कि वह उसके पढ़ाने के ढंग की मौलिकता के विषय में बहुत कुछ सुन चुका था। मिस बीम ने उसे बताया कि उसके स्कूल का वास्तविक ध्येय विद्यार्थियों को विचारशील बनाना था। वह अपने विद्यार्थियों को सहायक और सहानुभूतिशील नागरिक बनाना चाहती थी। उसने फिर कहा कि माता-पिता बच्चों को उसके स्कूल में खुशी से भेजते थे। उसने तब लेखक को खिड़की से बाहर देखने को कहा। .

लेखक ने खिड़की से बाहर देखा। उसने एक बड़ा बाग़ और खेल का मैदान देखा। बहुत से बच्चे वहीं खेल रहे थे। लेखक ने मिस बीम को बताया कि उसे इन अपंग बच्चों से हमदर्दी है। मिस बीम हंस पड़ी। उसने बताया कि वे अपंग बच्चे नहीं थे। कुछ बच्चों के लिए यह ‘अन्धा रहने का दिन था’ और कुछ के लिए बहरा रहने का दिन था। कुछ बच्चों के लिए यह लंगड़ा रहने का दिन था। फिर मिस बीम ने शिक्षा प्रणाली समझाई।

विपत्ति से पीड़ित मनुष्य की भावनाओं का अनुभव कराने के लिए बच्चों को विपत्ति में भागीदार बनाया जाता था। शिक्षा के दौरान हर बच्चे को एक दिन अन्धा, एक दिन बहरा, एक दिन लंगड़ा और एक दिन गूंगा रहना पड़ता था। अन्धे रहने वाले दिन उसकी आंखों पर पट्टी बांध दी जाती थी। वे हर काम दूसरे बच्चों की सहायता से करते थे।

यह अन्धे लड़के और उसके सहायक दोनों के लिए शिक्षाप्रद होता था। मिस बीम ने लेखक को कहा कि अन्धा रहने वाला दिन बच्चों के लिए कठिन होता था। किन्तु कुछ बच्चे गूंगे रहने वाले दिन से डरते थे। गूंगे रहने वाले बच्चे को इच्छा शक्ति प्रयोग करनी पड़ती थी क्योंकि मुंह पर

पट्टी नहीं बांधी जाती थी। मिस बीम ने लेखक को एक अन्धी लड़की से मिलवाया। उसकी आंखों पर पट्टी बन्धी थी। लड़की और लेखक अकेले रह गए। लेखक ने पूछा क्या वह कभी पट्टी में से झांकती है। लड़की ने बताया यह धोखा होगा। उसने यह भी बताया कि अन्धे मनुष्य की कठिनाइयों का उसे कोई भी अनुमान नहीं था।

उसे हर समय यही डर लगा रहता था वह किसी चीज़ से टकराने वाली थी। लेखक ने पूछा क्या उसके सहायक उसके प्रति अच्छे थे। उसने उत्तर दिया कि वे काफ़ी अच्छे थे। उसने लेखक को यह भी बताया कि जो सहायक पहले अन्धे रह चुके थे वे सबसे बढ़िया थे।

लेखक लड़की को खेल के मैदान तक ले आया। उस अन्धी लड़की ने बताया कि ‘अन्धा दिन’ सबसे बुरा था। उसने ‘लंगड़े दिन’, ‘बहरे दिन’ ऐसा बुरा महसूस नहीं किया था। अन्धी लड़की ने पूछा कि वे इस समय कहां थे। लेखक ने बताया कि वे मकान की ओर जा रहे थे। उसने यह भी बताया कि मिस बीम एक लम्बी लड़की के साथ बरामदे में टहल रही थी। अन्धी लड़की ने पूछा कि उस लम्बी लड़की ने क्या पहना है।

जब लेखक ने लड़की को उसकी वेश-भूषा के विषय में बताया तो अन्धी लड़की एकदम भांप गई कि यह मिल्ली है। लेखक ने लड़की के आस-पड़ोस का वर्णन किया। उसने अनुभव किया कि अन्धे मनुष्य का पथ-प्रदर्शक बनने के लिए विचारवान् बनना पड़ता है। लेखक ने मिस बीम की शिक्षा प्रणाली की बहुत सराहना की। इस शिक्षा प्रणाली से विद्यार्थी हमदर्द और दूसरों के प्रति दयालु बनता था। लेखक स्वयं दस गुना अधिक विचारशील बन गया था।

PSEB 12th Class English Solutions Supplementary Chapter 1 The School for Sympathy 1

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Character Sketch of Miss Beam in the Story The School For Sympathy

In the poignant and insightful short story “The School for Sympathy” by E.V. Lucas, Miss Beam emerges as a central character whose unwavering commitment to her students transcends the conventional boundaries of education. As a compassionate and nurturing teacher, Miss Beam’s character embodies the transformative power of empathy and understanding. Let’s explore the nuances of her character, her role in the story, and the lasting impact she leaves on both her students and readers.

Quick Overview:

  • Name: Miss Beam
  • Occupation: Schoolteacher
  • Setting: Early 20th century, likely England
  • Teaching Philosophy: Emphasis on empathy and understanding
  • Relationship with Students: Nurturing and supportive
  • Influence: Shapes the emotional and moral development of her students
  • Quirks: Wears glasses, displays a compassionate and understanding demeanor
  • Challenges: Navigates the delicate balance between discipline and compassion
  • Legacy: Symbolizes the importance of emotional intelligence in education
  • Key Quote: “It is possible to love our enemies – all the great souls do.”

Introduction to Miss Beam:

Miss Beam, the dedicated schoolteacher in “The School for Sympathy,” captivates readers with her remarkable ability to connect with her students on a profound emotional level. Her character is introduced as the headmistress of the school, and her role extends beyond the traditional boundaries of education. Miss Beam serves as a beacon of compassion, guiding her students not only academically but also emotionally and morally.

Teaching Philosophy:

Miss Beam’s teaching philosophy revolves around the cultivation of empathy and understanding. Unlike the conventional methods of her time, she places a strong emphasis on the emotional and moral development of her students. Her belief in the transformative power of sympathy shapes the narrative, challenging societal norms and advocating for a more compassionate approach to education.

Relationship with Students:

Miss Beam’s relationship with her students is characterized by warmth and genuine concern. She is attuned to their emotional needs and fosters an environment where they feel safe expressing their vulnerabilities. Her nurturing approach creates a sense of trust, allowing students to open up about their struggles and fears. This bond goes beyond the classroom, illustrating the profound impact a caring teacher can have on the lives of their students.

Influence on Emotional and Moral Development:

As the story unfolds, it becomes evident that Miss Beam’s influence extends far beyond academic matters. Through her guidance, students learn valuable lessons about kindness, understanding, and the importance of compassion in their interactions with others. Miss Beam becomes a moral compass, steering her students toward a deeper understanding of themselves and the world around them.

Navigating Discipline and Compassion:

Miss Beam faces the delicate challenge of maintaining discipline while upholding a compassionate environment. She understands the importance of rules and structure, but she also recognizes the significance of approaching discipline with empathy. This nuanced approach distinguishes her as a teacher who not only imparts knowledge but also instills a sense of decency and respect in her students.

Physical Attributes and Quirks:

Physically, Miss Beam is described as wearing glasses, a detail that adds a touch of symbolism to her character. Glasses often represent a clearer vision, both literally and metaphorically. In the context of the story, Miss Beam’s glasses may symbolize her ability to see beyond the surface and perceive the emotional needs of her students. Her overall demeanor reflects a compassionate and understanding presence, further enhanced by her physical appearance.

Championing Emotional Intelligence:

At a time when the emphasis on emotional intelligence in education was not as widespread, Miss Beam emerges as a pioneer. She recognizes the significance of nurturing emotional intelligence in her students, understanding that it is as crucial as academic knowledge. This forward-thinking approach positions her as a trailblazer, advocating for a holistic education that encompasses emotional and moral growth.

Legacy of Compassion:

Miss Beam’s legacy lies in the enduring impact she has on her students. Through her teachings, she instills in them the values of empathy, sympathy, and understanding. Her students carry these lessons with them into adulthood, becoming compassionate individuals who contribute positively to society. Miss Beam’s legacy transcends the confines of the story, serving as a timeless reminder of the profound influence teachers can have on the emotional and moral development of their students.

“It is possible to love our enemies – all the great souls do.” This quote encapsulates Miss Beam’s philosophy and serves as a guiding principle for her students. It reflects her belief in the transformative power of love and empathy, even in the face of challenges.

Conclusion:

In “The School for Sympathy,” Miss Beam emerges as a character who goes beyond the conventional role of a teacher. Her compassionate and nurturing approach to education, emphasis on empathy, and commitment to the emotional and moral development of her students make her a timeless figure. Through Miss Beam, E.V. Lucas invites readers to reflect on the transformative potential of compassionate teaching and the enduring impact it can have on individuals and society as a whole. Miss Beam stands as a testament to the idea that education, when infused with empathy, has the power to shape not only minds but also hearts.

Rahul Kumar

Rahul Kumar is a passionate educator, writer, and subject matter expert in the field of education and professional development. As an author on CoursesXpert, Rahul Kumar’s articles cover a wide range of topics, from various courses, educational and career guidance.

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Summary of “School for Sympathy” by E.V. Lucas

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B.Ed ENGLISH

Saturday 29 december 2018, innovative lesson plan- the school for sympathy.


Teacher creates a good report by engaging in informal talk

Teacher shows the picture of the author E V Lucas using a slide


Teacher introduce the topic clearly and precisely.
The school of sympathy is a story by Edward verrall Lucas. The story describes the theme sharing and caring in our life. In a world of declining values, compassionate deed may make life worth living and noble.. In this lesson, the writer introduces a new concept a school that is a space to teach the need of sympathy

Teacher reads the first two paragraphs of the story with proper stress and pronunciation

Teacher ask the pupils to read the paragraph silently

Teacher of the pupils to share they understood and found

Flower  bed

Teacher clarifies the students doubts

Teacher ask a few questions to the students
1, who is the author of the story
2, whose school is mentioned here
3, what was the characteristics of Miss beam

Teacher give them a question for discussion
Bubbles using the words or phrases which shows quality, parents and personality of MS beam


Teacher edit the products prepared by the group leaders

Teacher ask the students to present their products

teacher recapitulates the paragraphs she has taken

Write a short note on the need of sympathy ?

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Your chance of acceptance, your chancing factors, extracurriculars, writing a college essay about losing a loved one.

Hi everyone, I've dealt with the loss of a very important person in my life and I'm considering writing my college essay about it. However, I don't want to come off as using sympathy for an advantage. Any suggestions on how to approach this topic in a genuine and respectful way?

It's important to approach this topic with sincerity and focus on growth rather than simply evoking sympathy from the readers. Here's a structure that can help you portray your experience genuinely:

1. Introduction: Begin by briefly introducing your relationship with the loved one and the impact they had on your life. You don't have to go into details about their passing at this point, as this isn't the focus of the essay.

2. The turning point: Describe the moment you realized things had changed permanently. This could be the moment you received the news or attended their funeral. Focus on conveying your initial emotions and thoughts at this point in time.

3. Learning and growth: This is the most crucial part of your essay. Reflect on how the loss of your loved one has shaped you as a person. What lessons have you learned? How has it inspired you to grow, change, or take action? Share specific examples of actions you've taken or changes in your perspective that are tied to this experience.

4. Connection to your future: Tie this growth and realization to your goals for college and beyond. Explain how your experiences and newfound understanding will help you contribute to the college community and excel in your future endeavors.

5. Conclusion: Sum up the impact your loved one had on your life and the lasting legacy they leave within you. Emphasize the growth you've experienced and the positive change that's resulted from this challenging experience.

Throughout the essay, maintain a tone of honesty and introspection. Avoid exaggerating or presenting your experience as more tragic than it was. Focus on your personal growth and avoid dwelling on the loss itself. This approach will help you convey a genuine and respectful reflection of your experience without seeming like you're leveraging sympathy for your benefit.

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Psychology Discussion

Essay on sympathy | emotion.

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In this essay we will learn about sympathy. After reading this essay you will learn about:- 1. Meaning and Definition of Sympathy 2. Individual Differences in Sympathy 3. Types of Sympathy 4. Role of Sympathy in Education 5. Limitations of Sympathy.

  • Essay on the Limitations of Sympathy

1. Essay on the Meaning and Definition of Sympathy:

Literally speaking, sympathy means feeling with others. It is the tendency of sharing emotions with others. It works so quickly that it may be termed as unconscious tendency. Sympathy is thus feeling as others feel in the absence of logically adequate grounds for feeling in that manner. When a mother sees her son injured, she instantaneously feels hurt. When a child cries in distress, his other companions at once share his feeling.

Gautama saw an old man, a diseased man and a dead person. His mind became perturbed at the sight so much so that he proceeded to make a life-long search for the solution of the three problems old-age, disease and death. Not only is distress and pain shared, pleasure and delight also is shared by companions.

Telepathy is the extreme case of sympathy. But normally, sympathy is aroused at the perception of a situation. In words of Ross, “Our instincts seem to be organised on the afferent side in such a way that they are unlocked by the perception of instinctive behaviour in another.” Mark Antony said, “I shed tears for Caesar”, and the whole mob felt that way.

The entire Indian population was moved with sympathy when Bhagat Singh was sentenced to death. The perception of the situation may be through sight or through sound. Everybody who listened at the radio-commentary at the departure of Nehru, was moved to tears. We have unconscious sympathy with the hero or the heroine in a drama, novel or a picture.

What is called ‘projection’ in literary criticism is a form of sympathy. Indian experts name it. The entire audience feels in the same way as the principal characters in a play are shown to feel. Without his ‘sympathetic induction’, literature has no charm.

Sympathy has its basis, herd instinct in animals. It is found in birds and animals. When one bird flies in fright, all others follow the suit, without knowing the source of danger. This primitive passive sympathy observed in animals is unwitting. The feeling is induced without the animal realising what is happening.

In human beings, perception of the expressive signs of emotions in others is important to arouse sympathy. Drever says, “the tendency to experience the feelings and emotions of others immediately on perceiving the natural expressive signs of these feelings or emotions is sympathy.”

2. Essay on the Individual Differences in Sympathy:

The degree of sympathy aroused varies from person to person:

(i) Some people are highly sensitive to the distress of others, and some are least sensitive.

(ii) Usually persons are sympathetic towards their own friends and kith and kin, and not towards persons who do not ‘matter’ them.

(iii) Distance lessens sympathy and nearness increases it. Out of sight and out of mind is the old dictum. We may not be moved by the distress of hungry people in our own town or village.

(iv) Sympathy depends upon subjective experience. One who has suffered much is moved by the sufferings of others. One who has suffered in a particular way, is moved by another person’s sufferance in a similar situation. One who remained unemployed for some time sympathises with unemployed persons. A teacher who remembers his own school days when he was maltreated by his teacher, sympathises with his own pupils.

3. Essay on the Types of Sympathy :

There are two types of sympathy:

(a) Passive sympathy, and

(b) Active sympathy.

Passive sympathy is again of two types:

(i) sympathy with pleasure and delight, and

(ii) sympathy with pain, fear and distress.

As is explained in the following diagram:

(a) Passive Sympathy:

This occurs at the sight of the expression of an emotion in others. It is a simple feeling, not accompanied by any impulse to help the other person. A person in our neighbourhood dies young. We are shocked. But what can we do? Most of us experience this passive sympathy, whenever we see others in distress or whenever we read such news. Passive sympathy may be aroused at seeing others in distress, fear or pain. It is also aroused when we join others in merriment and laughter.

Passive sympathy has the following educational significance:

(i) If the teacher reads a poem or a piece of literature thus exhibiting the emotions that are aroused, the pupils will also have induction of the same feelings, and thus enjoy the piece of literature.

(ii) If the teacher, the parents and the elders exhibit their indignation towards any immoral behaviour, the youngsters also begin to feel that way. This will help in strengthening good moral behaviour in them.

(iii) Sympathy is easily aroused in a group. Therefore, all appeals should be made to the group. Poetry or literature should be taught to a group, rather than to individuals.

(b) Active Sympathy:

In passive sympathy, there is only sympathetic induction, and no impulse to help the other person. But when a mother sees her child weeping her active sympathy is aroused, and she wants the child to stop weeping. Suppose a beggar appears before us. If we are not moved to help him, our passive sympathy is aroused. If we actually pay him something our active sympathy is aroused.

When Valmiki, the author of Ramayana, was moved by the distress of the female bird, whose male was shot dead by a hunter, his active sympathy was aroused, and he cursed the hunter. When he found Sita in distress, being abandoned by Rama, he brought her to his hermitage.

Active sympathy thus involves the impulse to help, to protect and to console. Every mother (whether in animal kingdom or in human beings) has this strong tendency to help her kid.

Educationally, active sympathy is very useful. It leads to altruistic conduct. If every member of the society, has a strong active sympathy towards persons in distress, much of the distress can be removed. What is lacking in the modern society is active sympathy. People have become self-centred and egoistic.

The rich and the privileged people hardly care for the persons who are over-powered by ignorance, poverty and disease. Some doctors will charge their fee even from the family of the patient who has died in their treatment. School is a miniature society. If it wants to train the pupils for a new social order, it must inculcate the habit of active sympathy.

The teacher and the parents should inculcate among children the right type of altruistic conduct. Social service should be an important co-curricular activity. Pupil should be trained in home-nursing and first aid, and should be given an opportunity to nurse the needy in the village or in any fair.

4. Essay on the Role of Sympathy in Education:

(i) Role of the teacher:

Sympathy has great educational significance. It leads to altruism and true fellow-feeling. This should be inculcated in children from the very start. The teacher can do this directly or indirectly. Indirectly, while teaching literature, he may express his feelings and sentiments through gestures and words, so that the pupils catch the same feelings.

The teachers teach good moral conduct by showing the worthy feelings about good and bad conduct. He can win the hearts of the pupils through sympathy. Again, he should be sympathetic towards the pupils. If he punishes the pupils, he should punish in a manner that the sympathies of other pupils are with him, and not with the culprit.

(ii) Emotional integration:

Sympathy is the best means of emotional integration. In a class, where there are all types of pupils, coming from different strata of society, the teacher can mould them into one pattern by the powerful weapon of sympathy. He should try o bind them together through common feeling of sympathy, raise their feeling from the lower level of individualism to the higher level of altruism.

(iii) Appreciation of Literature:

Sympathy aids in the appreciation of literature. When the entire group reads a tragedy, all are moved by the same feeling. We sympathise with the hero or heroine. In ordinary course also, we sympathise with the hero or heroine, and feel in the manner they feel. This principle is well-explained in Indian literary criticism. As sympathy helps in the appreciation of literature, the teacher should exploit all the situations while teaching, poetry, play, biography, short story, novel or history, so that sympathy is created amongst all equally. Besides appreciation of literature, aesthetic sensibility also can be taught through sympathy.

(iv) Character Formation:

Sympathy is an asset in the emotional development and character formation. One who has strong active sympathy towards others in distress, dedicates himself to the service of such persons. Fellow-feeling and brotherhood are essentials of character development and social development. Love and Ahinsa are two strong foundational principles of character.

(v) Discipline:

Discipline can be maintained in the class, if the sympathies of all the students are with the teacher. If the majority of the pupils is with the teacher, he can easily control the rebellious pupils and thus maintain the discipline. Sympathy will be helpful in establishing rapport with the adolescents, who may, otherwise, disobey the teacher.

(vi) Method of cultivation:

Sympathy can be cultivated in a number of ways. Firstly, example should be set by the teacher. He should himself be sympathetic towards the pupil. Secondly, the pupils must be made to acquire a practical realization that the other fellow has sensitivity similar to one’s own. Thirdly, anger and aggression must be controlled. A child who can control his anger is in a better position to develop his capacity for sympathising with others. Anger and aggression are just the opposite of sympathy.

5. Essay on the Limitations of Sympathy:

Sympathy is harmful when it is abused or exploited for harmful, selfish or destructive purposes. The teacher may arouse the sympathies of the pupils for a child punished, and thus lead a revolt against the headmaster, with whom he does not have good relations.

A communist teacher may exploit the sympathies of the poor, and thus preach communist ideologies. During the period of sympathetic feeling, a person loses his judgment to some extent. It is therefore, that a mob when aroused to fury may turn to destruction.

Some leaders aroused the sympathies of Hindus for the cows, organised agitations and led the angry mobs to destructive actions. A leader-type student may similarly arouse the sympathies of the pupils through any pretex, and lead strikes and revolts against the school authorities.

It is the duty of the school authorities to guard against the abuse of sympathy. With all the limitations of sympathy, it is a very useful weapon to raise the moral and emotional level of the pupils. Sympathy leads to social service and altruism.

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Essay , Psychology , Emotion , Sympathy , Essay on Sympathy

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The School for Sympathy Summary

The School for Sympathy Summary

The School for Sympathy Summary among its students for the lame, the blind, and the handicapped. It teaches all the subjects taught by other schools but it differs from other schools in one important aspect that is, it makes its students good citizens. Read More  Class 12th English Summaries .

The School for Sympathy Introduction:

In this essay the writer tells us about a new type of school. As the name indicates, its purpose is to create sympathy among its students for the lame, the blind and the handicapped. It teaches all the subjects taught by other schools. But it differs from other schools in one important aspect. It makes its students good citizens.

The School for Sympathy Summary in English

The writer had heard a lot about Miss Beam’s School for Sympathy. One day he got the chance to visit it. He saw a twelve-year old girl. Her eyes were covered with a bandage. An eight-year old boy was leading her carefully between the flower-beds.

After that the author met Miss Beam. She was a middle-aged, kindly and understanding lady. He asked her questions about her way of teaching. She told him that the teaching methods in her school were very simple. The students were taught spelling, arithmetic and writing.

The author told Miss Beam that he had heard a lot about the originality of her teaching method. Miss Beam told him that the real aim of her school was to make the students thoughtful. She wanted to make them helpful and sympathetic citizens. She added that parents sent their children to her school gladly. She then asked the writer to look out of the window.

The author looked out of the window. He saw a large garden and playground. Many children were playing there. He told Miss Beam that he felt sorry for the physically handicapped. Miss Beam laughed at it. She explained to him that they were not really handicapped. It was the blind day for a few while for some it was the deaf day. There were still others for whom it was the lame day. Then she explained the system.

To make the students understand misfortune, they were made to have experience of misfortunes. In the course of the term every child had one blind day, one lame day, one deaf day, one maimed day and one dumb day. On the blind day, their eyes were bandaged. They did everything with the help of other children. It was educative to both the blind and the helpers.

Miss Beam told the author that the blind day was very difficult for the children. But some of the children feared the dumb day. On the dumb day, the child had to exercise willpower because the mouth was not bandaged. Miss Beam introduced the author to a girl whose eyes were bandaged. The author asked her if she ever peeped. She told him that it would be cheating. She also told the author that she had no idea of the difficulties of the blind.

Summary The School for Sympathy

All the time she feared that she was going to be hit by something. The author asked her if her guides were good to her. She replied that they were very good. She also informed the author that those who had been blind already were the best guides. The author walked with the girl leading her to the playground. She told him that the blind day was the worst day.

She didn’t feel so bad on the maimed day, lame day and deaf day. The girl asked the author where they were at the moment. He told her that they were going towards the house. He also told her that Miss Beam was walking up and down the terrace with a tall girl. The blind girl asked what that tall girl was wearing.

When the author told her about the tall girls dress, she at once made out that she was Millie. The author described the surroundings to her. He felt that as a guide to the blind, one had to be thoughtful. He was full of praise for Miss Beam’s system of education which made the student sympathetic and kind. The writer himself had become ten times more thoughtful.

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Kerala Syllabus 8th Standard English Solutions Unit 5 Chapter 1 The School for Sympathy

You can Download From The School for Sympathy Questions and Answers, Summary, Activity, Notes, Kerala Syllabus 8th Standard English Solutions Unit 5 Chapter 1  helps you to revise complete Syllabus and score more marks in your examinations.

Kerala State Syllabus 8th Standard Hindi Solutions Unit 4 Chapter 1 The School for Sympathy (E.V Lucas)

The school for sympathy textbook questions and answers.

The School For Sympathy Question Answer Kerala Syllabus 8th Standard

The School for Sympathy Textbook Activities And Answers

Let’s revisit

Activity 1.

Read the extracts given below and answer the question that follows by choosing the correct option.

Question 1. ‘It pains me, though to see that they are not all so healthy and active looking.’ i. Who speaks these words? a. EV Lucas b. the girl c. Miss Beam d. one of the boys Answer: E.V. Lucas

ii. These words are spoken to a. the blind girl b. the dumb girl c. Miss Beam. d. the author Answer: Miss Beam

iii. How does the listener react to the statement? a. The listener agrees with it. b. The listener becomes sad. c. The listener gets angry. d. The listener laughs and tells the truth. Answer: The listener laughs and tells the truth.

Question 2. And so we walked on. Gradually I discovered that I was ten times more thoughtful than I ever thought I could be.’ i. Who are the Sve’ referred to here? a. the children of Miss Beam’s school b. the author and his friends c. the author and Miss Beam d. the author and the girl the author and the girl Answer: The author and the girl

ii. Who is the ‘I’ in the above sentence? a. the blind girl b. the dumb girl c. the author d. Miss Beam Answer: the author

iii. What change came over the author after his visit to Miss Beam’s school? a. became more careful b. became more helpful c. became more proud d. became more thoughtful Answer: became more thoughtful

Activity 2.

Say whether the following sentence are true or false, if false, rewrite them.

Question 1. The author had been to Miss Beam’s school Several times. Answer: false

Question 2. In Miss Beam’s school, all subjects are taught in detail. Answer: false

Question 3. The children in Miss Beam’s j school are taught to appreciate and understand misfortunes Answer: true

Question 4. The author saw a blind girl being led out by others. Answer: true

Question 5. On the dumb day the mouths of the children are bandaged Answer: false

Question 6. Peter is very old, but not hundreds of years old. Answer: true

Activity 3.

Some of the features of a normal school are given below: Read them. 1. Many subjects are taught. 2. Most parents expect their children to learn subjects like Mathematics, Science, etc. 3. Different methods of teaching are adopted. Now, write about Miss Beam’s school, based on your reading of the text. …………………………………….. …………………………………….. Answer: Miss. Beam’s school is very interesting and the teaching methods are very simple. They teach simple and useful things to pupils like spelling, adding, subtracting, multiplying, writing, etc. All the other things are taught by reading and through interesting tasks. Practically no other lessons are given. The real aim of Miss. Beam’s school is to teach thoughtfulness, humanity, kindness, and citizenship.

The children in this school have to observe a blind day, a lame day, a deaf day and a dumb day. It would help the young minds to appreciate and understand misfortunes. The children learn to be helpful to each other and be compassionate. They learn the necessary values required for a peaceful coexistence.

Let’s enrich our vocabulary

Kerala Syllabus 8th Standard English Solutions Unit 5 Chapter 1 The School for Sympathy 17

Describing Words Physical features / Character
tall, short, medium height
frail, stocky, slim, thin, plump, fatty, skinny, well-built build
young, elderly middle-aged, teenager age
round, oval, square, wrinkled face
grey, straight, hourly, black, blonde, wavy, bushy hair
big, round, small, bright, narrow eyes
cheerful, aggressive, sensitive, serious, energetic, confident Character

Amitabh Bachchan: Amitabh Bachchan is a tall and elderly person with a grey French beard. He has black and wavy hair and an oval-shaped face. He is a well-built man having a serious and energetic appearance. Sachin Tendulkar: Sachin Tendulkar is a short, well-built and middleaged person. He has curly hair and a round face. He is cheerful and energetic. Mohammed Rafi: Mohammed Rafi has a long nose and bright and narrow eyes. He is a bald-headed, elderly man having a cheerful and confident look.

Let’s write

Read the following notice.

THE NIGHTINGALE AND THE ROSE A PLAY PRESENTED BY THE ENGLISH CLUB OF G G H S S, CHALAPURAM

Dear friends,

The English Club of GGHSS Chalapura has decided to stage the one-act play based on the store ‘ The Nightingale and the Rose’ by Oscar Wilde as part of the Annual Day: celebration of the school. The members of the English Club have prepared the script and directed the play. Sri. Kavalam Narayana Panicker, renowned poet and theatre personality has consented to inaugurate the staging of the play. All are welcome.

Secretary English Club GG HSS Chalapuram

Programme Details

Date: 25-1-2016 Time: 04:00 pm Venue: School auditorium Welcome speech: Club Presidential Address: Headmistress Inauguration: Sri. Kavalam Naayana Panicker Felicitations: School Leader, Staff Secretary Vote of thanks: Joint Secretary, English Club

The Health Club of your school has decided to observe the International Day for the Differently Abled on December 3, 2016. As the Convener of the club, you have been asked to prepare a notice including all the relevant details of the programme. Draft the notice. Answer:

GVHSS CALICUT NOTICE Observ ance of International Day for the Differently Abled 28 November 2016

Dear friends, The Health Club of GVHSS Calicut has decided to observe the International Day for the Differently Abled on Decem¬ber 3, in the school auditorium. The Health Inspector Mr. Haridas has con¬sented to inaugurate the function. All are invited. Sd/ Name Convenor Health Club

Prayer: School choir Welcome speech: Secretary Presidential address: Headmaster Inauguration: Mr. Harikumar (Health Inspector) Felicitations: School leader, Staff secretary Vote of thanks: Joint Secretary, Health Club

Most of us take our lives for granted. Despite being physically fit, we keep complaining and making excuses. And here they are – the differently-abled people, who prove thatykm do not need two hands, legs or eyes to e successful in life. All you need is the will power and determination. Here are a few people, who by means of confidence, faith and courage were able to overcome their physical obstacles and achieve success in their lives, which the healthy people find difficult to do. 1. John Milton 2. Nick Vujicic 3. Sudha Chandran 4. Helen Keller 5. Stephen Hawking 6. Mahakavi Vallathol Read books or browse related websites to get more information about them. Prepare their profiles. Answer: John Milton. (1608 – 1674): John Milton, the well-known English poet was born at Bread Street in London on December 9, 1608. He had his education in Christ’s College, Cambridge. He was a poet, writer, and a civil servant. His eyesight had been steadily declining for years, most likely the result of untreated glaucoma. By February 1652, he had gone completely blind. He wrote in English, Latin, French, etc. His best-known poem is Paradise Lost. He passed away on November 8, 1674, and was buried in St.Giles-without-Cripplegale. Nick Vujicic: He is an Australian who is best known for his motivational speech. He was born in Melbourne, Australia. He is a graduate in Accounting and Financial planning. He married Kanal Miyahara in 2012. As a child, he struggled mentally, emotionally and physically. He presents motivational speeches worldwide which focus on life with a disability.

Sudha Chandran (1964) : Sudha Chandran, the famous Indian dancer and actress, was born in Kannur. Kerala on 21 September 1964. She had her M.A. in Economics from Mithibai col-lege, Mumbai. She lost her leg in an accident but overcame the disability with the help of a prosthetic ‘Jaipur Foot’. In 1986 she married Ravi Dang. She is considered one of the most highly acclaimed dancers of the Indian sub-continent. She has won many awards as a dancer as well as an actress. In 1986 she was given the Special Jury Award at the National Film Awards for her performance in Mayuri (Telugu Film).

Helen Keller : Helen Adams Keller(i88o-i968) was an American author, political activist and lecturer. She was the first deafblind person to earn a bachelor of arts degree. The story of how Keller’s teacher, Anne Sullivan, broke through the isolation imposed by a near complete lack of language, allowing the girl to blossom as she learned to communicate, has become widely known through the dramatic depictions of the play and film ‘The Miracle Worker”. Her birthday on June 27 is commemorated as ‘Helen Keller Day’ in U.S. A prolific author, Keller was well-traveled and outspoken in her convictions.

Stephen Hawking (1942) : Stephen Hawking the famous British theoretical physicist, cosmologist and author was born on 8 January 1942 in Oxford, England. He had his B. A degree from the University of Oxford and Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge. He suffers from a disease known as motor neuron disease or Lou Gehrig’s disease which has gradually paralyzed him over decades. He works in the fields of General relativity and quantum gravity. His book ‘A Brief History of Time’ was a best seller.

Mahakavi Vallathol Narayana Menon: Vallathol Narayana Menon was born on 16 October 1878. He was a Malayalam poet. He was one of the triumvirate poets of modern Malayalam, along with Kumaranasan and Ulloor S. Parameswara Iyer. The honorific mahakavi (Great poet) was applied to him in 1913 after the publication of his Mahakavya ‘Chithrayo- ganr. He wrote many poems on various aspects of Indian Freedom Movement. He also wrote against caste restriction, tyrannies, etc. He founded the Kerala Kala Mandalam. He passed away on 13 March 1958 at the age of 79.

Let’s speak

Kerala Syllabus 8th Standard English Solutions Unit 5 Chapter 1 The School for Sympathy 19

  • Miss Beam is very comforting to homesick children.
  • Miss. Beam is a middle-aged woman.
  • Miss. Beam’s hair has begun to turn grey.
  • Miss. Beam is kind to all, especially to her students.
  • She is caring and sympathetic and has an understanding of others’ problems

Miss. Beam: is a middle-aged woman. Her hair shows signs of getting grey. She is kind to all, especially to the students of her school. She is caring and sympathetic towards others. But she has a highly authoritative nature. She is always compassionate to a homesick child

In Activity 2 of ‘Let’s Write’, you prepared profiles of people who in spite of their disabilities were able to achieve success in life. Prepare a presentation about these differently-abled people. Describe their life, contributions, and other details. Use appropriate photos and posters to support your presentation. Present it before the class.

Let’s discover how grammar works

Look at the following sentences. We teach only those things that are simple. The real aim of this school is not to teach thought but thoughtfulness. The verbs in the above sentences are in the simple present tense. Usually, the simple present tense is used to describe actions that are universal or habitual. The earth revolves around the sun. They play cricket every Sunday. Simple present can also be used to show planned future actions. The train from Alappuzha arrives at 5 p.m. Now, identify the functions of the simple present tense in the following sentences. One has been done for you. 1. I use my bike to reach school. habitual 2. It rains a lot in Chirapunjee. 3. Sruthi wakes up early. 4. The president visits Srilanka next week. 5. Iron gets rusted easily. 6. They leave the city tomorrow. Answer: 1. Habitual 2. Factual 3. Habitual 4. Planned future action 5. Universal 6. Planned future action

Look at the following sentences. I am reading a book. Miss Ream is walking up and down the terrace. An old man is plucking roses. They are playing football. He is leaving shortly Are the verbs in the above sentences similar to those given in activity 1? What difference do you notice? These verbs are in the present progressive tense. What are the major functions of the present progressive tense? Frame two sentences each showing any two major functions of the pre-sent progressive. Answer: 1 Action in progress at the time of speaking. 2. Future action that is already planned e.g:- 1. Action in progress at the time of speaking: a. Raghu is driving a car. b. They are waiting for Shyam. 2. Future action a. She is taking her exam next month. b. The Prime Minister is coming tomorrow.

You have already learnt how ahead noun in the noun phrases is expanded by adding certain words/phrases before and after it. You also know the category of words that can be added before and after the head noun, don’t you? Look how a head noun is expanded by adding these categories of words: girl a girl a smart girl a smart girl in the school a smart girl in the school who tied her eyes Now, expand the following nouns in the above manner. a. garden b. teacher Answer: a. garden a garden a beautiful garden a beautiful garden in the school a beautiful garden in the school where we play

b. teacher a teacher a good teacher a good teacher in my village a good teacher in my village who guided me.

Read the following passage written by a student of Class VII. There are some errors in it which are underlined, edit the errors. The writer had hear a lot about Miss Beam’s school. But he had never visit it. One day he got the opportunity to visit it. On entering the campus he see no one except a girl of twelve. Her eyes were covered on a bandage, A little boy of about eight was guiding her between the flower beds in the garden. The girl stopped. She evidently ask her guide about the writer, the boy seemed to describe the writer to her. The writer went into the building and meet the head of the school. Miss Beam was the principal for the school. She was a mother – figure for the young boys and girls in the school. The writer asked Miss Beam some questions of her scholastic methods. Miss Beam said that there was not many scholastic education. The boys were taught spelling, addition, subtraction, multiplication and writing only. The rest was done by reading to them and with lectures. Now, rewrite the passage after editing it. Answer: 1. Heard 2. visited 3. saw 4. with 5. asked 6. the 7. met 8. of 9. about 10. much 11. through

Let’s play with language

Read the following sentence The author went around the school to observe how it functions. In the word ‘observe’, another small word is hidden. The word is ‘see’. Look at the word ‘chicken’. Let us write it as Chicken, and put together the letters in capital what do we get? HEN, So we have a shorter word ‘hen’ within the word ‘chicken’.

You have seen the picture of a kangaroo, haven’t you? Have you seen its baby? Where does the mother kangaroo carry its baby? in a pouch in its body. ‘Kangaroo words’ are like this animal. They are marsupial words that carry smaller versions of themselves (joey words) within their spellings. They are words that contain other smaller words within them that have the same meaning.

Look at the word ‘Exhilaration’ which means ‘to make someone feel very happy and excited’. Elation is a word that can be formed from this word. What does the word ‘elation’ mean?

Kerala Syllabus 8th Standard English Solutions Unit 5 Chapter 1 The School for Sympathy 21

The School for Sympathy Additional Questions & Answers

Questions 1 to 5: Read the excerpt from the story ‘ The School for Sympathy’ and answer the questions that follow.

I had heard a lot about Miss Beam’s School, but I did not get the chance to visit it till last week. When I arrived at the school, I saw a girl of about twelve with her eyes covered with a bandage being led carefully between the flowerbeds by a little boy of eight. She stopped and asked who it was that had come in and he seemed to be describing me to her. Then they passed on. Miss Beam was all that I had expected middle-aged, authoritative, kind and understanding. Her hair was beginning to turn grey, and her round figure was likely to be comforting to a homesick child. We chatted for a while, and when I asked her some questions about her teaching methods, which I heard were simple, she said : ‘,… We teach only those things that are simple and useful to pupils- spelling, adding, subtracting, multiplying, writing, etc. The rest is done by reading to them and giving them interesting tasks. There are practically no other lessons.’ 1. On arriving at Miss Beam’s School whom did the author see? 2. Give a short description about Miss Beam. 3. Do you think Miss Beam’s school is different from other schools? 4. Why do you think, the writer wanted to visit Miss Beam’s School? 5. Pick out the word from the passage which means ‘ to make one feel calmer’. Answer: 1. Miss Beam saw a girl of about twelve with her eyes covered with a bandage being led carefully between the flowerbeds by a little boy of eight. 2. Miss Beam was a middle-aged, authoritative, kind and understanding lady. Her was beginning to turn grey and her round figure was likely to be comforting to a homesick child. 3. Yes, their teaching methods were quite different They taught only those tilings that are simple and useful to the pupils by giving them interesting tasks. 4. Because he had heard a lot about miss Beam’s School. 5. Comforting

Question 6. The narrator of ‘The School For Sympathy’ returns from Miss Beam’s school with fresh thoughts and ideas. He narrates his experience to his family. Prepare the likely narrative.

(Hints: reached Miss Beam’s school – girl’s eyes bandaged- met Miss Beam- authoritative but comforting- aim of school- to teach thoughtfulness and humanity- share misfortunes- child have one blind day- one dumb day- one lame day) Answer: Today I visited Miss Beam’s school. When I entered the school saw a girl of twelve with a bandage covering her eyes guided by a little boy of eight in the | garden. The girl asked the little boy about me. He described me to the girl and they went away. I went in and met Miss Beam. I asked her some questions about her style of teaching. She told me that there was no scholastic education. The students were taught spelling, adding, subtracting, multiplying and writing only. She said that the goal of her system was to sow the seeds of humanity and citizenship in the children.

I noticed that the children there were not healthy. When I told Miss Beam about the girl I had seen earlier she laughed and told me that that the girl was not really blind. It was just a part of her system. The practice made the children empathized with the differentially abled and appreciate the gift of life. Then she introduced me to the girl and left the place. I asked the little girl if she tried to peep. The girl replied that peeping would be cheating. She described her experience acting blind and how she realized the struggle a blind person had to face. She told me that the blind day was the worst day for her. I guided her for a ‘ walk and described the surroundings to her. I noticed that the girl had become much more thoughtful and sensitive. I left Miss Beam’s school as a wiser man.

Question 7. Complete the passage given below using appropriate phrasal verbs from those given in the brackets. When E.V Lucas …….. a ……….. at Miss Beam’s school, he …………. b …………. a strange sight. A girl whose eyes were bandaged was being led by another girl. He could not ……….. c ………… what he saw. ( make out, came across, turn up, call at) Answer: a. turned up b. came across c. make out

The School for Sympathy Summary in English

The writer once got a chance to visit Miss Beam’s school about which he had heard a lot before. When he entered the school, he just saw a girl of twelve with a bandage covering her eyes. A little boy of about eight was guiding her between the flower beds in the garden. The girl asked the boy about the writer. The boy seemed to describe the writer to her and they went away. Then the writer went in and met Miss Beam. He asked her some questions about her style of teaching. Miss Beam said there was not much scholastic education. The students were taught spelling, adding, subtracting, multiplying and writing only. She said that the goal of her system was to sow the seeds ‘ of humanity and citizenship in the children. He noticed that the children there were not healthy. He mentioned about the girl he had seen before to Miss Beam.

She laughed and said that she was not really blind. The ones with eyes covered in bandages were not really blind and those with a crutch was not lame either. It was just a part of her system. This practice made the children empathized with the differently-abled and appreciate the gift of life. Then she introduced the writer to the girl and left the place. He asked her if she tried to peep. She replied that peeping would be cheating. She described her experience acting blind and how she realized the struggle a blind person had to face. She said that the ‘blind day’ was the worst day for her. She was guided by the writer for a walk. The writer described the surrounding to her. The writer noticed that the girl had become much more thoughtful and sensitive. Miss Beam came to see him off on his leaving.

The School for Sympathy Summary in Malayalam

Kerala Syllabus 8th Standard English Solutions Unit 5 Chapter 1 The School for Sympathy 23

The School for Sympathy Glossary

Kerala Syllabus 8th Standard English Solutions Unit 5 Chapter 1 The School for Sympathy 25

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It’s Mourning in America

By Cody Delistraty

Illustration of a tear

In my childhood home, a modest, low-slung rectangle in eastern Washington, my mother was a bedroom away from me when she experienced her last moment. I remember standing in front of her, just after, feeling that I was watching a show or a movie, that this up-close experience was somehow false.

I had never seen death in person before. I had, however, seen it frequently on my phone’s screen, on my laptop, on TV, in movie theatres. So what was I looking at here? At my mother’s bedside, having never had the chance to confront serious loss in any substantive way, I was without comparison. In the following weeks, I struggled to accord what I’d seen with the world beyond our home. Looking around, it sometimes seemed loss and grief hardly existed at all.

Today, in the U.S. and the U.K., death is largely banished from the visual landscape. A century ago, approximately eighty-five per cent of Brits died at home; these days, it’s closer to twenty-five per cent, and around thirty per cent in America. Many of those deaths have moved to the hospital, an often sterile environment where, as during the pandemic, loved ones are sometimes restricted from visiting. When individual bodies show up in newspapers, magazines, and social media, they tend to be exoticized, people not like us . When they are familiar, they have “their faces turned away,” as Susan Sontag wrote ; their identity is eroded, reduced, until they are more concept than person. We see this form of not quite death so often that one can be forgiven for mistaking, as I did, the curated depiction for the actual event.

And then there is the stigma of grief—the idea, now rampant in American life, of closure. Most people are loath to linger in loss. We are expected to get back to work, back to normal. According to a recent survey, U.S. companies offer, on average, five days of bereavement leave, a remarkably brief amount of time to grapple with a death. (For the death of a “close friend/chosen family,” the number drops to a single day.) Typical mourning rites can seem to take closure to an extreme: at a funeral, loved ones may surround and console you for an afternoon, but we have few widespread customs that continue in the aftermath. This is in stark contrast to practices elsewhere—the Day of the Dead in Mexico; the Japanese Buddhist festival of Obon, which honors ancestral spirits—that prepare grievers to carry a loss for their entire lives.

In America, the appeal of closure may be traced to “ On Death and Dying ,” the 1969 best-seller, by the Swiss-American psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, that outlined the “five stages” of grief, ending with acceptance. Kübler-Ross has been widely misread by the public: her original research was on how people coped with the prospect of their own death, not with the loss of another. As the social scientist Pauline Boss has pointed out, closure is a construct, something that can never fully be attained; even if we grieve in stages, there is no prescription for how to grieve, much less for how to neatly overcome a loss. Boss suggests that closure’s popularity is a product of America’s “mastery-oriented culture,” in which “we believe in fixing things, finding cures.” With my own grief, too, I imagined a solution. I wanted to mourn quietly, persistently, toward a goal, until the pain, even the death itself, was nearly forgotten.

Loss wasn’t always obscured or seen as a trial to overcome. Throughout the eighteenth century, in much of Western Europe, death was witnessed directly and with little fanfare, according to the French historian Philippe Ariès. Ariès was well known for “ Western Attitudes Toward Death: From the Middle Ages to the Present ,” his 1974 history of how the social construction of death changed over time. Observing an era in which mortality rates were much higher, he identified four distinguishing characteristics. The dying person was typically in his own bed. He usually had some awareness of his situation; he “presided over it and knew its protocol.” His family, sometimes even his neighbors, would join him at his bedside. And, while he was dying, emotions were relatively measured, the death being expected, to some degree already mourned, and broadly understood as part of the flow of time.

Although Ariès has been criticized, sometimes fairly, for an overreliance on literary sources and an idealization of the past, his core conclusion holds true: there was a social regularity—and nearness—to death that’s largely foreign to many today. (Ariès used the term “tamed death,” nodding to how mortality was at the forefront of public consciousness.) Even the trappings of mourning evinced this openness. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, grieving women generally wore heavy black outfits that included veils and bonnets; sometimes there were necklaces, or bits of jewelry that contained the hair of the deceased. Both male and female mourners often used special stationery with black borders for correspondence. (Over time, the borders would narrow, to show readers that the bereaved party was slowly recovering.) And “death portraits,” although creepy to contemporary eyes, were popular memorials, further elevating death’s presence in the cultural psyche.

In the nineteen-hundreds, though, our relationship to grief seemed to change, transforming from a public, integrated phenomenon to a personal and repressed one. Some of this may have been prompted by the First and Second World Wars, which resulted in such multitudes of dead—men whose bodies were often unrecoverable—that the old rituals were no longer tenable. Other reasons were political, serving the needs of power. During the First World War, for instance, American suffragists marched against the prospect of U.S. involvement, noting the immense loss of life and the struggle it would create for women left alone at home or widowed. The protest’s goal, per one suffragette, was to stretch “out hands of sympathy across the sea to the women and children who suffer and to the men who are forced into the ranks to die.” In the heat of August, 1914, women paraded through Manhattan in traditional black mourning clothes.

President Woodrow Wilson had run on an isolationist platform, but by 1917 the United States had joined the fray, and such demonstrations threatened his agenda. In 1918, conscious of the public’s perception of the war, he wrote to Anna Howard Shaw, the former president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, asking that the suffragettes encourage women across the country to reframe their mourning as patriotism. Instead of mourning clothes, he suggested, women could wear badges bearing white stars, which “upon the occurrence of a death be changed into stars of gold.” At the time, the Nineteenth Amendment was in the balance, and Shaw, who understood the importance of Wilson’s support, obliged, asking her followers to dial back their public grief and change their dress. “Instead of giving away to depression, it is our duty to display the same courage and spirit that they do,” she said. “If they can die nobly, we must show that we can live nobly.” On July 7, 1918, the Times ran an article entitled “Insignia, Not Black Gowns, as War Mourning: Women of America Asked to Forego Gloomy Evidences of Grief.” (The article was pinned between two stories about the terrors of the war: “Mustard Gas Warfare” and “Need of Still Larger Armies.”) The Nineteenth Amendment passed the next year, with Wilson’s endorsement.

Across the Atlantic, Freud was rethinking mourning as a private pursuit. Perhaps grief was actually a form of “work,” he wrote in “Mourning and Melancholia”—and only upon that work’s completion could the ego become “free and uninhibited again.” Death continued to recede from the public square: Walter Benjamin, in his 1936 essay “ The Storyteller ,” notes how it had been relegated to the corridors of the hospital, where the ill and dying were “stowed away.” Silence, individualism, and stoicism became valorized, and talk of death and grief no longer belonged in daily interactions. “Should they speak of the loss, or no?” the anthropologist Geoffrey Gorer wondered in his 1965 book “Death, Grief, and Mourning in Contemporary Britain.” “Will the mourner welcome expressions of sympathy, or prefer a pretence that nothing has really happened?” In his book, which drew from a survey of about sixteen hundred British citizens, Gorer suggested that people who chose pretense were less likely to sleep well and have strong social connections.

Gorer, like Ariès, attributed this shift to “the pursuit of happiness” having been “turned into an obligation”: the challenging aspects of life were now framed as individual burdens, rather than shared setbacks. The quest for happiness has long been baked into the American psyche, but one can see its distortion in quasi-therapeutic concepts such as “putting yourself first” and “emotional bandwidth”—the notion that an uncomfortable emotion is an undesirable one, and that we should set firm limits on certain discussions of hardship, even with intimate friends. Add to that “self-care”—arguably the greatest marketing success of the twenty-first century, in which consumption is repackaged as a path toward well-being—and Ariès’s claim that we live in the era of “forbidden death” continues to resonate. “The choking back of sorrow, the forbidding of its public manifestation, the obligation to suffer alone and secretly, has aggravated the trauma stemming from the loss of a dear one,” Ariès wrote, citing Gorer. “A single person is missing for you, and the whole world is empty. But one no longer has the right to say so aloud.”

After my mother’s memorial, after we scattered her ashes, I decided to run a marathon. I was still looking for proxies for grief, situations where an external accomplishment could solve my inner turmoil. Needless to say, it didn’t work. Not the running, not the hiking, not the strength-training regimen. Grief was a different beast, one that couldn’t be overcome through will power alone.

The historian Michel Vovelle challenged Ariès’s idea that “forbidden death” defined the West’s attitude toward loss, or that death had even become taboo by the mid-twentieth century. Vovelle believed that the historian’s job wasn’t merely to look at shifts in the past. “Why not look for these turning points in the present?” he wrote. Indeed, to look at the current moment is to see an unusual evolution, in which grief’s privatization has given way to the blossoming of a new hybrid form.

On social media, one often finds public grief that’s rooted in private interests. When a statesman or a celebrity passes away, or when videos of a distant tragedy circulate, expressions of mourning can sometimes seem to be a mix of sincerity and performance, an opportunity less to confront death than to strategically display one’s sympathies. Corporations issue statements of solidarity which are, at bottom, advertisements. (After the Boston Marathon bombing, the food site Epicurious tweeted, “In honor of Boston and New England, may we suggest: whole-grain cranberry scones!”) Crystal Abidin, an ethnographer of Internet culture, calls this phenomenon “publicity grieving”; it returns grief to the public square, but in strange, vaguely unnerving forms. When millennials began taking “funeral selfies” around 2013, the trend sparked a minor media frenzy, eliciting think pieces and advice articles, including one from a casket-making company.

The exploitative aspect of publicity grieving is obvious. Still, it’s notable that collective mourning is once again part of the texture of daily life. The sociologist Margaret Gibson is clear-eyed about the turn—death mediated by the Internet, she notes, is not the same as death being intimately known and accepted—but she also recognizes the ways in which grief has been normalized, its effects allowed to emerge once more in social interaction. One of her studies focussed on YouTube bereavement vlogs—videos, posted by young people in the days and months after they’d lost a parent, in which they forge apparently genuine bonds with the strangers watching, sharing their pain and showing how “mourning continues across a lifetime.” Elsewhere, initiatives such as The Dinner Party, a predominately online meetup for people who have experienced a variety of losses, provide a kind of “second space” for grief, somewhere between “normal” life and the formalized privacy of a therapist’s office. Even the funeral-selfie-takers seem—to me, at least—to possess motives more benevolent than voyeuristic self-promotion. Perhaps they wanted to share their sense of loss, but were unsure how to do so, in person, without feeling like they were an encumbrance. A frivolous form of photography may not seem commensurate with the gravity of death, but approaching the subject with some amount of levity and candor may be precisely what we need.

A decade on, I’m still figuring out my own grief. After completing the Paris Marathon, soon after my mom died, I didn’t run for several years. Lately, I’ve taken it up again, cutting curling circles through the park near my home. The point I’ve begun to look forward to is no longer the finish line, but the moment when I begin to hit a psychic and physiological wall. In the past, I might have stopped, gone home, downed some Gatorade. It was painful. Now I’ve found some satisfaction in the unease, in living within the feeling rather than blasting past it. I see that my feet continue to move, that my breath persists. Sometimes it overwhelms me, but then I look up and see, all around the park, others running, just as winded as I am, experiencing something of the same. ♦

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Experts Call for “Reimagining” Public Health in the United States

Ross Brownson

The public health system in the United States needs an immediate “transformation,” two of the nation’s leading health experts write in a new appeal for change driven by the COVID-19 pandemic, climate change, and the politicization of public health.

The essay is the lead article in “Reimagining Public Health,” a new  special issue  of  Health Affairs , one of the nation’s foremost health policy journals. The authors are Ross C. Brownson , the Steven H. and Susan U. Lipstein Distinguished Professor at the Brown School and founder of the Prevention Research Center ; and Jonathan Samet , a professor and the former dean of the Colorado School of Public Health.

“No matter what label we attach to this effort, the past several years have made one thing clear: Transformation of the US public health system is needed, and needed now,” the authors conclude in their essay,  “Reimagining Public Health: Mapping a Path Forward.”   Brownson and Samet were co-authors four years ago of a missive in the  American Journal of Public Health  that called for public health change as the nation grappled with the pandemic. The current version builds on their thinking and provides more specifics, said Brownson, who hosted a  podcast  on the subject.

“COVID demonstrated not only the value of public health, but also how it has been politicized, and the need for focused change,” he said. He and Samet talked with nine public health leaders about their ideas on the path forward.  Brownson said they were encouraged by the positive views of those leaders, even in states where criticism of public health has been substantial.  “One of the things we found inspiring was how optimistic they are,” he said. “That gave us reassurance this thing can be done with focused effort, political will, leadership, and funding incentives.”

In their essay, Brownson and Samet note that the decentralized public health system in the U.S. is administrated and distributed across approximately 3,000 state and local health departments, encompassing governmental public health; community-based organizations; the health care sector; and the education, training, and research of academic public health and medical enterprises. While that far-flung group offers opportunities for using local data in policy and practice, it also can result in an uneven allocation of resources and decision-making.

Public-health experts had been calling for a revamping of the American system even before COVID, but the pandemic “laid bare the deficiencies of the existing public health system and heightened the politicization of public health along partisan lines to an unworkable level in some jurisdictions,” the authors wrote, and highlighted the need for global collaboration.

The essay makes recommendations in seven areas of focus to guide public health transformation:

  • Accountability:  Provide as much transparency as possible in government actions, and share decisionmaking, budgeting and communication with community members.
  • Politicization and polarization:  Identify areas where there is consensus/common ground, make better use of local data and messengers, and establish legal protections from violence against public health workers.
  • Climate change:  Make climate change a core priority, develop ways to track its effects, and advocate for policies to address the root causes.
  • Equity:  Make health equity a core value of public health agencies, build skills among staff, fully engage the public and policymakers and address health and social needs in marginalized populations.
  • Data sciences:  Support the harmonization of data sets and repositories, enhance capacity, engage communities and develop real-time surveillance system to detect and monitor threats to public health.
  • Workforce:  Develop training in new areas, including resilience, communication, systems thinking and entrepreneurship.
  • Communication:   Identify distinct audiences, create messages that are positive and show benefits, translate evidence into easily understood stories, and identify “superspreaders” of misinformation.
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2 Russian Women Put on a Play. Then the State Came for Them.

The prosecution of a prominent playwright and a director in Russia over their work is a chilling sign of increased repression, cultural figures say.

Yevgenia Berkovich, left, and Svetlana Petriychuk stand behind a clear wall with two bars across.

By Valerie Hopkins

They wrote and staged their play as an indictment of terrorism, examining the deception and depravity of violent extremists and the people whose lives they ruin.

But now the two women behind the production of “Finist the Brave Falcon” are standing trial in a Moscow courtroom, charged with justifying the kind of acts they meant to condemn.

The director, Yevgenia Berkovich, 39, and the playwright, Svetlana Petriychuk, 44, two highly decorated fixtures of contemporary Russian theater, have been in custody for more than a year. They face up to seven years in prison if convicted.

One of their lawyers and people in the Russian cultural community contend that the prosecution is one of the clearest examples of the accelerating crackdown on freedom of expression since Russia attacked Ukraine in February 2022.

Cultural figures supporting the women say this is the first time in Russia’s post-Soviet era that a work of art is effectively being put on trial. The prosecution has been condemned by some of Russia’s best known intellectuals, including the Nobel Peace Prize laureate Dmitri A. Muratov and the director Kirill Serebrennikov, under whom Ms. Berkovich studied, as well as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and other rights groups.

“Finist the Brave Falcon,” interweaves a classic Russian fairy tale with the personal tragedy of a woman who falls in love online with a radical extremist, who deceives her into coming to Syria to join the Islamic State. But there is no happy ending; instead, feeling horrified and betrayed, she returns home to Russia, where she is convicted as a terrorist.

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July 18, 2024

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A Story of His Own

July 18, 2024 issue

Percival Everett; illustration by Zack Rosebrugh

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The character Mark Twain named Jim first appears in the second chapter of Huckleberry Finn , “setting in the kitchen door” of the woman who owns him, nervously stretching his neck at a sound at the back of the garden and calling out in worry, “Whar is you? Dog my cats ef I didn’ hear sumf’n.” He settles back to listen, only he soon begins to snore, and the sound then creeps out in the shape of Huck and his friend Tom Sawyer. Tom wants to tie the man up “for fun,” a foreshadowing of the novel’s conclusion, but contents himself with taking Jim’s hat off and hanging it on a branch just above his head. As Twain tells it, or rather as he makes his narrator Huck tell it, Jim later claims that his levitating hat is a sure sign of dark magic. How else could it have gotten up that tree? Some witches have cast their spell on him, he holds, and ridden him as far south as New Orleans and beyond, until his back “was all over saddle-boils.”

Well, that’s one way to put it. Here’s another: “Those little bastards were hiding out there in the tall grass.” That’s how the boys are seen by the first-person narrator Percival Everett calls James, who in the opening sentences of this smart and funny and brutal novel sits out on the kitchen steps and scoffs at the job Huck and Tom are making of it all; the not-quite-full moon is behind them and “I could see them as plain as day.” Still, James knows that it “always pays to give white folks what they want,” and so he puts on the right voice and asks, “Who dat dere.” He hears the boys giggle, pretends to sleep, and feels Tom lift his hat. Then the little bastards run off noisily, and Miss Watson, James’s enslaver, steps out and hands him a pan of cornbread.

Did Twain’s Jim have such thoughts? Was he actually afraid of that sound in the dark, or did he too feign sleep and spin that tale about the witches as a way to please the white folks? Does he have thoughts and plans that the novel doesn’t recognize? Impossible to say. Twain’s Jim is a fictional creation, limited by the words on the page, and we’re never allowed to step inside his mind or to see him without Huck’s mediating presence. But if my questions seem nonsensical, they are also pressing, and there’s something more to Jim’s unknowability, something Everett makes us revisit and resee. We do recognize that Jim understands a great deal that Huck doesn’t, and we watch as he teaches the boy about kindness and honesty; Twain lets us see too that he’s much quicker in spotting the fakers and charlatans they encounter as their raft drifts down the Mississippi. Still, Huck’s limitations are for Twain a function of his age, and Jim’s biggest job is to help him grow up; he plays at best a supporting role in someone else’s life.

James is very different. Everett’s white characters still call him “Jim,” but he is James to himself and to every other Black person. He’s a man with a story of his own, one that immediately makes us aware of everything Huck does not and cannot know about the world around them. It shows us, that is, what James knows by virtue of being Black, and what Huck doesn’t see precisely because he is what’s called white. Though not only Huck, for it may be that Twain doesn’t see it either.

We’ve long since gotten used to revisions—rewritings, retellings—of classic novels. Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea has become a classic of its own in providing a kind of backstory to Jane Eyre , and more recently both Michael Cunningham and Barbara Kingsolver have won Pulitzers for recasting Mrs. Dalloway and David Copperfield , respectively. I do not, however, know any such book that treats its source material so faithfully and yet so freely. James challenges Twain’s right to his own creation. It reminds us that he told “some stretchers,” and it gives its characters a life that seems to lift off the page.

Huckleberry Finn depends on Huck’s own voice, so knowing and ingenuous at once, and so fresh in its departure from the standard written English of its day. “Well, I catched my breath and most fainted,” Huck says, when he realizes that he and Jim are stuck on a wrecked steamboat with a gang of thieves, “but it warn’t no time to be sentimenteering.” James doesn’t chase that particular brilliance. It’s after something else, and its own linguistic conceit takes its readers behind the veil, showing them a world hidden from the novel’s pale-skinned characters. For when there’s no one white around to listen, Everett’s Black characters all speak the standard literary language that Twain avoids. Its register lies somewhere between Hawthorne and Howells, and it’s rendered without any orthographic attempt to capture an accent or idiosyncrasy of vocabulary or idiom, “little bastards” aside. You might even say they “talk white,” all of them, though James is the only one who can read, having taught himself while cleaning the local judge’s library. But when white people are around they speak in a deliberately parodic version of the language the semiliterate Huck might use himself.

Take that cornbread. Miss Watson has gotten the recipe from James’s wife, Sadie, but the old woman has added a few improving twists of her own that make it inedible. “I swear,” Sadie says, “that woman has a talent for not cooking,” and after a bite tells their daughter, Elizabeth, that she doesn’t have to finish it. Miss Watson is sure to ask her about it, though, and so the girl must be coached in what to say. She needs to master what James describes as the “correct incorrect grammar.” Dat be sum of conebread lak neva I et . She’ll tell the truth but tell it slant; Elizabeth has not in fact eaten such cornbread before, and the old lady will never know that the girl is laughing at her. But it would be dangerous for Elizabeth to employ her own language, and in one of Everett’s early chapters James holds school for the town’s enslaved children, showing them how to translate a complex thought into the simple terms that white people expect them to use. “Mumble sometimes,” he says, and remember that “the more they choose to not want to listen, the more we can say to one another around them.”

For many pages James tracks the course of Twain’s novel. James hears that Miss Watson plans to sell him and runs off, hiding on one of the Mississippi’s many islands while deciding what to do next. That’s where he teams up with Huck, who’s feigned his own death to escape the monstrous Pap Finn. Then comes their discovery of a house with a body in it floating downriver after a storm, and he tells Huck to “get on back in dat boat” and don’t look. A few pages later James gets bitten by a rattlesnake—here on the hand, in Twain on the heel—and quickly grows delirious, but he knows he won’t die of it, though “it was unclear whether I would be pleased about that fact.” Eventually they build a raft and set off downriver, meeting wrecks and steamboats as they go, and fetching up in the classic backcountry feud between the Grangerfords and the Shepherdsons. Later there’s the long (in Twain, overlong) encounter with two con men, one of whom claims to be an English duke and the other the long-lost French dauphin, the son of Marie Antoinette. James recognizes them for what they are but plays along, knowing that his safety depends on their finding him useful. Twain’s Huck, in contrast, believes that Jim pities them “ever so much,” and he describes Jim’s eyes as bugging out at their tales—in wonder, of course.

Yet no matter how closely James sticks to its source, there are differences on every page. Some are simple enough. Jim is offstage during Huck’s stay with the Grangerfords, and so in James those twenty-odd pages shrink to three. Or maybe I should say that there are moments in James when Huck is off on some other business, some job that Twain has set for him. At one point in Huckleberry Finn he dresses as a girl and goes looking for news; the corresponding moment in Everett shows James sharpening a stick and using some paper and ink from that floating house to write out the alphabet and then, slowly, his first words: “I am called Jim. I have yet to choose a name.” But even Huck can’t be trusted to know he can read and write, though there are moments when James does need to educate his companion as a way to protect himself. Early on Huck has rather enjoyed playing dead, with their whole town searching for his body. He’s stunned to realize that the coincidence of James’s disappearance and his own means that the man will be blamed for his death and lynched if he’s caught. That’s why they take to the river; the boy’s lark is the man’s necessity. He’s stunned as well to learn that James can be sold. “But you got a family,” he says—a fact that means everything, and nothing at all.

Even the famous scene in which a riverboat runs down their raft and the two are briefly separated reads differently here. In both books Huck pretends, once they are reunited, that his companion has only dreamed of that disaster. Then he feels guilty about it, but in Twain he has to work himself up to apologize, unable at first to accept that he has to “humble myself” to a slave. James, in contrast, knows that he’s fooling but plays the expected role, while wondering if he should feel guilty in turn for stringing the boy along and forcing an apology. Then he rejects his qualms. “When you are a slave, you claim choice where you can,” and the jokes of white people are an all-too-common occurrence. It’s a big moment for Huck in the novel that carries his name. In Everett it doesn’t have the same weight, and that’s precisely the point.

And James itself is without any sense of pleasure in the journey. I don’t mean the reader’s pleasure. That it offers in buckets, page after page of thrills and excitements, surprises too, right up until the end. No, it’s that James himself takes no pleasure in either the raft or the river. In both books they travel mostly by night, but there’s nothing in James’s story like Huck’s ecstatic account, in Twain’s chapter 19, of the dawn opening upon a long and lazy day. The two have landed, made camp, and set some trotlines for the fish that keep them plentifully fed; they’ve had a swim and then sit on the river’s edge to watch the daylight come:

Not a sound anywheres—perfectly still—just like the whole world was asleep, only sometimes the bull-frogs a-cluttering, maybe. The first thing to see, looking away over the water, was a kind of dull line—that was the woods on t’other side—you couldn’t make nothing else out; then a pale place in the sky; then more paleness, spreading around; then the river softened up, away off…and you see the mist curl up off of the water, and the east reddens up…and next you’ve got the full day, and everything smiling in the sun.

Nothing like that—but how could there be? The journey means something different to each of them. For James those days on the river are marked by the fear of being seen by the wrong person or saying the wrong thing, fears to which Huckleberry Finn gives little weight. He wants to get to freedom—he wants it for himself, and also in the hopes of buying Sadie and Elizabeth out of slavery. Twain scants that side of his character, and we don’t even know that he has a family until we are deep into the novel. In Everett’s book it’s one of the first things we learn. James is always conscious of the people he’s left behind, and he runs off in the first place because it still gives them a better chance of some future reunion, however unlikely, than they’d have if he were sold. But at every point, every deciding moment, James and Huck are forced to turn their raft downstream, to head farther south on what the historian Walter Johnson has called the “river of dark dreams.” 1

Everett sees his predecessor’s limitations, the things Twain “was not capable of rendering.” Nevertheless he has spoken about how much he admires and even loves Huckleberry Finn , and says that in preparing to write he read it “some fourteen to fifteen times in a row. And I mean nonstop: I would finish the last page and go back to the beginning.” Then he put it away and didn’t look at it again. Its language was inside him—or rather an echo of its language. After I finished reading James I opened my own Twain and began to compare the dialogue, moments in each book when the man and the boy are both present and would presumably have heard the same thing. But they never really do. When they first meet the Duke and the Dauphin—we don’t learn their actual names—the former says, in Huck’s narration, that he’s been “selling an article to take the tartar off the teeth—and it does take it off, too, and generly the enamel along with it.” James hears it differently: “I was sellin’ this paste what takes the tartar off’n yer teeth. Works real good, too.” Then the man sighs and ruefully admits that it removes the enamel as well. And James is all the better, more psychologically acute, because it doesn’t simply reproduce such moments. For how often do any two people remember the exact same thing?

That faithful imprecision allows Everett to make this material his own, and soon after the Duke and the Dauphin show up James takes a hard turn away from the events of Huckleberry Finn . Some of its changes are simply an improvement. Those con artists are much more vicious here than they seem to Huck, but I still laughed harder with Everett at their attempt to do Shakespeare than I ever have with Twain. Much of James , though, takes us deeper into the capricious yet certain violence of American slavery. James asks a man called Young George to steal a pencil from his master, with which he continues to write out the story of his life, having found an earlier slave narrative in a pile of river-salvaged books and realized that such accounts are possible. Later he learns that Young George has been lynched for that theft. The price of his own freedom, even the freedom of his imagination, will be death for others. Then the Duke and the Dauphin have James chained up for the night, over Huck’s protests, and at that point the two are separated, in a way they never quite are in Huckleberry Finn . They will meet again and have much to say. But their real companionship is over.

Instead James is subjected to a series of masters, a picaresque journey in which he works for a blacksmith and then at a sawmill. He meets a slave who delights in getting other Black men whipped and a coal-heaver whose work has made him an automaton. He is beaten and blown up, almost drowned, and then moved to violence himself. As indeed is the country around him, for Everett has moved the action forward from Twain’s 1840s setting and made James ’s last chapters coincide with the start of the Civil War.

The most intriguing of these episodes comes when he is acquired by the leader of the Virginia Minstrels, who needs a tenor and has heard James singing as he tries to hammer out a horseshoe. No matter that he is actually Black: they can white him up before they black him up, and he can even choose between shoe polish, soot, or burnt cork. Nobody in the audience will be the wiser, or so they think, until a white girl falls for his voice, and her father wants to touch his hair. The Virginia Minstrels were a real troupe, one of the first in which the entire company wore blackface, and its Ohio-born leader, Daniel Decatur Emmett, later wrote music for the Union Army. But one of his earlier songs was “Dixie.”

James’s stay with the Virginia Minstrels is short, and when he leaves them behind he steals the notebook in which Emmett has written down his songs. He wants it for its paper, to set down his own tale, and yet the tunes themselves stay with him, ones whose names many readers will recognize, like “Turkey in the Straw” or “The Blue-Tail Fly”—the minstrel past of the American songbook. Part of what makes James so much fun is the way Everett toys with such intertexts or allusions, as though challenging us to spot his sources. Huckleberry Finn isn’t the only one of Twain’s books in play here; I caught echoes of both Life on the Mississippi and Pudd’nhead Wilson , along with his quasi-autobiographical “Private History of a Campaign That Failed.” There are bits of Faulkner too, especially Go Down, Moses , in which a character is called Tennie’s Jim by the white people of Yoknapatawpha County and James Beauchamp when he moves north and founds a family. I heard the historian Edward Baptist’s impassioned The Half Has Never Been Told (2014) in some of the details of James’s enslavement, and also Shelley Fisher Fishkin’s Was Huck Black? (1993), her classic account of the way Twain used African American voices in crafting his novel’s language.

Still, let’s stick with “Dixie.” Years later Emmett reportedly said that if he’d known the uses to which the Confederacy would put it, he’d “be damned if I’d have written it.” Everett has picked at the song before, in a 1996 story called “The Appropriation of Cultures,” in which a guitarist in his native South Carolina, challenged to play it by some drunken fraternity boys, decides to do so slowly, tunefully, and as if from the heart. Pretty soon it is from the heart. That land is his too; he takes a stand and makes the song his own, and then he plays it for a Black audience as well; he starts driving a pickup with a Confederate flag in the window, and in short order both the flag and the song have lost their totemic power. The master’s tools have taken down the master’s house, just as James will write his own story on Emmett’s pages.

For some of Everett’s characters, though, that can backfire. He has always been interested in the performative aspect of race, and until now his best-known book was Erasure (2001), the source of the Oscar-winning film American Fiction , in which a little-read and conventionally bourgeois Black novelist decides, in a rage, to give the white publishing world what it wants. So he writes a tale of ghetto life, about which he knows nothing at all, assembling it out of clichés and contempt. Nobody will publish such a deliberately provocative piece of trash, he thinks, but the result confirms his own worst fears: the advance and the sales are huge, and the reviews strong. The joke is on him even more than it is on the editors who fall for his shtick and can’t tell one Black voice from another; I laughed at them all, and yet couldn’t stop thinking that my own amusement meant that the joke was on me as well.

But that’s how Everett rolls. He fools around with genre, and James is among other things both a neo–slave narrative and a historical novel, two forms that have characterized a lot of recent African American writing. There are also westerns and thrillers among his thirty-odd books, and none of them gives you much sense of what to expect from the next; most are in the first person, but that’s about all they have in common. So Much Blue (2017) combines meditations on art and adultery with a shaggy-dog road novel that recalls Charles Portis. Dr. No (2022) pays homage to Bond movies, but its title character is a mathematician who specializes in the concept of nothingness, and the book gives grammar a workout, with one double negative after another. Everett writes fast— James is his fourth novel this decade—and with a kind of furious bemusement. A small-press chapbook purports to be a manual for the management of slaves, with notes by John C. Calhoun, and the pastiche is all too believable. 2

The Trees (2021) is atypically in the third person but entirely characteristic in its effrontery and nerve: a gruesomely funny and strangely fruitful revenge fantasy in which the descendants of Emmett Till’s murderers are slaughtered in turn, with the corpse of a mutilated Black man left beside their bodies in Money, Mississippi. A pair of Black detectives starts to investigate; cue Chester Himes, and also Charles Chesnutt when they seek the help of an old root doctor. They solve the case, but then copycat killings start up around the country, with ever-larger massacres of the children and grandchildren of the guilty. A comedy about lynching? Yes. But The Trees is also a twisted parable about writing, in which typing out the name of a victim is enough to ensure redress, as though poetry could indeed make something happen. Not that, for Everett, we’d be better off if it did.

Some of his earlier books fizzle before they finish, their premises unsustainable at novel length. James is different. In some ways it’s more conventional than many of them, with their deliberate dead ends and moments of purposeful irresolution. Even The Trees winds up with the detectives waiting for something to happen—they don’t know what, only that it will be bad. But Huckleberry Finn gives Everett an ending to work toward, and to avoid. Nobody is happy with Twain’s conclusion, the dull but jerky chapters in which his characters leave the river, and Huck is mistaken for Tom Sawyer and Tom for somebody else, and Jim is locked up as a runaway, and the boys hatch a plan to spring him—for the fun of it, because Tom knows all along that Jim has already been freed by the will of the now-dead Miss Watson. Some scholars have tried, it’s true, to make a case for that ending, seeing it as a satire on the self-serving intentions of do-good reformers, the kind who hope above all to be admired. Maybe, and Huck does have his doubts about Tom’s plan. Still, nobody ever looks forward to reading those lifeless pages. Nobody has ever quite made them fit the book’s earlier journey, and Jim in particular loses whatever depth Twain has worked to give him.

James solves that problem by ignoring it, by refusing to take its characters to the farm where Twain set his book’s conclusion. Late in the novel James stows away on a steamboat, having run from his latest master; then its boiler builds up too much pressure, the boat explodes, and he finds Huck in the water as well. Soon after he sends the boy off into his future, telling him, “You can be what you want to be.” Huck has the tools he needs to survive. James has other business, and it is time at last to turn back to the town where the book began, and to the wife and daughter he left behind.

His path will be long, his success improbable, and “it pained me to think that without a white person with me…I could not travel safely through the light of the world.” Travel he does, however, though he will not find Sadie and Elizabeth where he hopes to. There are deaths along the way, the graphically described killing of those who need killing, and then the kidnapping of old Judge Thatcher, a benign figure in Twain. He’s still a slaveholder, though, and what really scares him isn’t the fact that James now has a pistol but rather that his diction has changed. For James has stopped translating. He no longer speaks like a slave, and his command of English, with its thousand shades of irony, is more than a match for this feeble old man. We don’t know at the end of this book if Huck will light out for the territory, as the boy plans to in Twain. But that’s not where James himself is headed, and James gives him the conclusion he deserves.

Agreeing to Our Harm

“Ami Police”: A Story

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In The Pole , J. M. Coetzee returns to the novelist’s ethical and aesthetic imperative: to attempt to understand others for whom we may not, at first, feel much sympathy.

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Michael Gorra is the author of Portrait of a Novel: Henry James and the Making of an American Masterpiece and The Saddest Words: William Faulkner’s Civil War , among other books. He teaches at Smith. (July 2024)

River of Dark Dreams: Slavery and Empire in the Cotton Kingdom (Belknap Press/Harvard University Press, 2013).   ↩

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Two Easy Techniques to Restore (or at Least Affirm) Academic Honesty

write an essay on the school for sympathy

In reading social media posts by philosophers and speaking with colleagues around the country, there seem to be four faculty responses to the academic dishonesty made possible by large language models (LLMs), like ChatGPT : 

  • I don’t want to be in a policing relationship with my students; the teacher-student relationship requires trust, and I trust my students. 
  • The students who are using artificial intelligence to complete their assignments don’t understand the purpose of education; that’s their loss, not my business. 
  • ChatGPT is the new calculator; we will adjust eventually to how artificial intelligence systems make our work easier. 
  • ChatGPT, if used to replace challenging intellectual processes, like essay composition, will rob students of valuable educational experiences; as educators, we should do everything we can to clarify and regulate the proper use of LLMs.

The first three responses do not require any action on the part of overworked professors, which is convenient. The last response, 4, demands that we take active steps to uphold whatever virtue remains in the U.S. system of higher education. Collegiate structures are supposed to reward hard work and talent, in contrast, perhaps, to corporate structures, which reward gameplay, appearance, identity, success, and connection. But students are struggling lately to discern the difference. 

  • Because the number of meritorious candidates for admission at selective colleges fully eclipses the number of open spots, getting into any particular selective college has become a matter of luck, at best, and academically irrelevant factors, like wealth, legacy status, and athletic ability, at worst. 
  • Once you get into college, students utilize shortcuts, whenever possible, to complete homework assignments. Many students will do anything they can to avoid difficult reading—reading with dense, antiquated, technical, or translated language. Instead of slogging through the text, they will hunt for Wifi videos , Quizlets , or Wikipedia and other internet encyclopedia entries, which have more familiar and accessible formats. About to make matters worse, Google has just introduced Illuminate, https://illuminate.withgoogle.com/ , which will generate audio summaries of academic papers.
  • Cheating is prevalent, even at schools that tout their culture-defining honor codes. A survey of 2024 graduates of Princeton University by The Daily Princetonian , for example, found that 28.8% of students report cheating “ on an assignment or exam in violation of the Honor Code .” Almost half of students there ( 42% ) report having knowledge of a peer violating the Honor Code and choosing not to report the transgression, which itself violates the Code. This is not to pick on Princeton, which, first, should be recognized for the honest and open spirit with which it continues to study the issue. Second, one can imagine that the situation is much worse at institutions without honor codes, given that studies estimate 60-80% of students cheat in high school .
  • Beyond the fact that virtue will not get you into college or to the top of an assignment curve, students are wise to the many other arenas in which virtuous behavior goes unrewarded in academia. 

All of this has students considering what the collegiate experience is really about. College begins with a tuition payment and ends with a credential. That much is clear; that message is sent. Thus, students are wondering, as long as the terms of this transaction are fulfilled, as long as people are stamped as qualified for graduate schools and employers, does it matter to anyone what happens in between? Is college a sham?

No, college is not a sham. All four of the above responses to ChatGPT seem minimally reasonable. But 4 holds special urgency because it foregrounds our faculty’s interest in teaching and learning. 

This past year, I made two changes in my courses with the hope of preventing cheating, reinforcing the importance of virtue, and signaling that the learning of each student matters to me. In philosophy courses in which essays were assigned, I required ChatGPT usage reports. In my logic courses, I conducted in-person final exams broken into stages to improve accessibility while still supporting academic honesty.

When writing essays for my courses, students are required to use a Google doc, save that doc as a .pdf file, and upload the pdf to our learning management system. Students then have to complete the ChatGPT table shown in Appendix 1 below, which indicates the extent to which ChatGPT was used for the assignment. Given my secondary sympathy for response 3 above and my recognition of our new reality, I allow students to use ChatGPT as a tool in their writing. International students, especially, use ChatGPT to streamline and polish their English prose. But all students must document the extent of that usage.

The table in Appendix 1 below is a modified version of one originated by John Bartucz , a Teaching Specialist in the University of Minnesota’s Department of Curriculum and Instruction . At the bottom of the table, students enter the address of their Google Docs. If I suspect more ChatGPT usage than what was reported by the student, I can turn to the version history and last edit features within Google Docs to get a detailed look at the student’s writing and editing process. If I see a large cut-and-paste or very few revisions, I can call the student in to discuss the content of the paper as a further check.

Throughout the year, students seemed to honestly report the extent of their ChatGPT use, in that not all students exclusively circled the left-hand column of the table. I had one underreported use of ChatGPT, and I was able to use Google’s version history feature to confirm that the student did not craft the essay bit by bit. Several students mentioned the system to their other professors and in their student evaluations as an effective way to address LLMs. 

In the future, I would like to see the advent of cheap, simple, internet-disabled, laptop-like, word-processing, electric typewriters that can either print or send student files to an instructor. Writing labs with this equipment could be established for philosophy courses. Students would schedule a time to enter the lab and write, print, or submit their work at the end of the time period. If this seems too cruel for paper writing, which benefits from revisitation, I believe it would be ideal, at least, for in-person essay exams.

Turning to logic courses, these more quantitative courses typically involve several in-person exams. Professors used to require students to remain in the testing room throughout an exam. But the current thinking is that people have bodies with different needs and should be able to serve those needs. Unfortunately, some students take advantage of this new openness by using their phones outside the testing room to look up answers or by leaving notes to themselves in restroom stalls. 

In order to enable students to take whatever kind of break they need, physical or mental, I divide my logic exams into 30-minute chunks and allow students to leave the room at any time, as long as they turn in to me the portions of the exam that they already have completed. All students begin with the first 30-minute portion of the exam and a checklist enumerating each portion of the exam with a short description, like “test the validity of six categorical syllogisms” or “identify 15 fallacies,” so they know what is coming and can plan accordingly. A sample checklist appears in Appendix 3 below.

After completing the first 30-minute portion of an exam, students are free to come up to the front of the room and grab whatever 30-minute portion of the exam they wish to work on next. (Please see the photo below in Appendix 4.) If they want to leave the room to visit the restroom, get coffee, or just take a mental break, they can, as long as they finally submit to me their completed exam portions. In other words, students who decide to leave the testing room cannot get back the portions of the exam that they have submitted to leave the room. I hold the exam portions at the front of the room until the end of the allotted time. As students finish the exam, they come up to the front with their checklists, reunite their just-finished portions with their earlier submitted portions, review the checklist, to ensure that every portion is complete, and submit the whole stack.

The system involves a bit of chaos, as students wander up to the front at different times to pick up exam parts, stand by my desk assemble their final stack, and complete their checklist. It’s best to set the instructor’s desk as far away as you can from the area in which the students are working and ensure that students with accommodations for silence have those needs met. 

There is still room to game this system. Students recently asked me if it would be okay to break after portion 1 to study more for portion 2. I found myself having to say “yes.” It would be possible for two students to meet on a break, with one conveying to the other the content of some earlier portion of the exam. But I believe the risk, along with the added testing room hubbub and instructor effort, is worth it, because honest students appreciate the system and the thought behind the system. 

An additional way to promote academic honesty in logic is to give oral exams. I began doing this during the COVID-19 pandemic and have a video presentation on the pedagogy here . Students were required to take me through two proofs, one easy and one difficult, within a 30-minute one-on-one meeting.

I prepare my classes for these unique logic exam and paper submission systems by explaining the procedures and delivering a little speech on the first day of class: 

Maintaining an academically honest climate is about turning off intrusive voices that plague the minds of honest strivers. In an environment where cheating on tests and copying papers is widespread, students who resist those temptations and put in the work often find themselves with lower grades than the students who have gained an unfair advantage. Honest students have less time to spend on other courses and cannot submit assignments that are as polished as the machine versions. Are such students fools? Strivers often second-guess themselves and their costly decisions with worries like, ‘Am I a dupe to spend six hours on this paper, when I could have generated something instantly with ChatGPT?’ ‘Am I a chump for not writing the probability formulas under my sleeve?’ 

I just can’t have good students punishing themselves for having the maturity to think beyond the tuition-diploma transaction—for going after the learning, in addition to the credential. The two small changes discussed here say to the genuinely engaged learners, “You’re not a fool. What you’re doing is virtuous, and I am going to support your efforts.”

Picture of Author

  • Alexandra Bradner

Alexandra Bradner is an adjunct philosopher of explanation and understanding, care, and pedagogy who has taught more than 90 sections of 27 courses at institutions including Northwestern University, University of Michigan, Marshall University, Denison University, University of Kentucky, Bluegrass Community and Technical College, the Fayette County Public Schools (k-12), Eastern Kentucky University, Capital University, and Kenyon College. She served on the APA Board of Officers from 2014-18 as the chair of the APA Committee on the Teaching of Philosophy, and she presently serves as the Executive Director of the American Association of Philosophy Teachers.

  • Academic Honesty
  • Academic pressure
  • Editor: Smrutipriya Pattnaik
  • Professor Reflection Series
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We do indeed need something like typewriters in the classroom! Handwriting is another alternative, but many students have trouble writing legibly by hand. Electronic typewriters are unfortunately on the expensive side (around $300). The AlphaSmart is a now-discontinued minimal word processor that could serve as a model for a new device, or one can buy used AlphaSmarts for a song on eBay.

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    Writing labs with this equipment could be established for philosophy courses. Students would schedule a time to enter the lab and write, print, or submit their work at the end of the time period. If this seems too cruel for paper writing, which benefits from revisitation, I believe it would be ideal, at least, for in-person essay exams.