The Teacher
Mr Parkhill is the point-of-view character in the stories, a staid, kind-hearted, mild-mannered teacher with a tendency to think of his pupils in terms of classical literature. Mr Parkhill is rigorously fair-minded, often to his own detriment when faced with Mr Kaplan's very individual brand of logic. He is also a lonely and rather tragic character: when the class present him with a new briefcase with the initials "M.P." on it as a birthday present, he is at first puzzled since his first name does not begin with M; then realizes that the letters stand for "Mr Parkhill" and that he cannot remember the last time anyone addressed him by his first name.
Read more about this topic: Hyman Kaplan
Famous quotes containing the word teacher:
“Parents do not give up their children to strangers lightly. They wait in uncertain anticipation for an expression of awareness and interest in their children that is as genuine as their own. They are subject to ambivalent feelings of trust and competitiveness toward a teacher their child loves and to feelings of resentment and anger when their child suffers at her hands. They place high hopes in their children and struggle with themselves to cope with their children’s failures.”
—Dorothy H. Cohen (20th century)
“When a bachelor of philosophy from the Antilles refuses to apply for certification as a teacher on the grounds of his color I say that philosophy has never saved anyone. When someone else strives and strains to prove to me that black men are as intelligent as white men I say that intelligence has never saved anyone: and that is true, for, if philosophy and intelligence are invoked to proclaim the equality of men, they have also been employed to justify the extermination of men.”
—Frantz Fanon (1925–1961)