The Water is Wide

I dislike poor teachers. They are criminals to me. I’ve seen so much cruelty toward children. I’ve seen so many children not given the opportunity to live up to their potential as human beings.

No man or woman has the right to humiliate children, even in the sacrosanct name of education. No one has the right to beat children with leather straps, even under the sacred auspices of all school boards in the world.

And in that instant was born the terrible awareness that life eventually broke every man, but in different ways and at different times.

Lightning flashed around the island; thunder played its favorite game of scaring the crap out of all the shivering mortals on the earth below.

the forlorn appearance assumed by all houses that have lost their people.

It was funny how we thought education to be the great gilded key which would solve all problems, eliminate all poverty and disease, eradicate differences between social classes, and bring the children of okra-planters up to par with the children of emperors.

One noteworthy thing about South Carolina is the quality of school-bus drivers in the state. To qualify for a bus license one must have reached puberty and be able to recite the alphabet without stuttering.

I learned that politicians are not supposed to help people. They simply listen to people, nod their heads painfully, commiserate at proper intervals, promise to do all they can, and then do nothing. It was very instructive. I could probably have enlisted more action from a bleached jellyfish washed ashore in a seasonal storm.

Christ must do a lot of puking when he reflects upon the good works done in his name.

Christ must do a lot of puking when he reflects upon the good works done in his name. Anyway,

Unlike most women I have known, she placed no value on shallow pretensions or hypocritical displays of gentility.

life was good, but it was hard; we would prepare to meet it head on, but we would enjoy the preparation.

I reveled in class discussion and the Socratic method of drawing substance out of calcified minds untrained to think.

The teacher must always be on the attack, looking for new ideas, changing worn-out tactics, and never, ever falling into patterns that lead to student ennui.

We Shall Overcome” by Pete Seeger. I remember that moment with crystal clarity and I comprehend it as a turning point in my life: a moment terrible in its illumination of a toad in my soul, an ugliness so pervasive that it seemed my insides were vomit.

You the white teacher. I thought you one of the boys.” Then she paused. “You gonna drink it?” “Yep.” “Teachers drink?” “Yep.” “That’s good. Oh Gawd, that’s so good. I got some gin in that there paper bag when you finish.

My pre-Yamacraw theory of teaching held several sacred tenets, among these being that the teacher must always maintain an air of insanity, or of eccentricity out of control, if he is to catch and hold the attention of his students. The teacher must always be on the attack, looking for new ideas, changing worn-out tactics, and never, ever falling into patterns that lead to student ennui.

Everyone was surprised and enraged by the usurpation of this inalienable Caucasian right to park one’s ass on a leather stool and drink a Coke.

Son, you can do more good at Yamacraw than you could ever do in the Peace Corps. And you would be helping Americans, Pat. And I, for one, think it’s very important to help Americans.

My poor boat poked along the waterway with the blinding speed of a manatee.

Among the peoples of the world I am not universally admired for the bell-like clarity of my diction. Words slide out of my mouth like fat fish. Having lived my life in various parts of Georgia, Virginia, and the Carolinas and having been sired by a gruff-talking Marine from Chicago and a grits-and-gravy honey from Rome, Georgia, what has remained is an indefinable nonspeech, flavored subtly with a nonaccent, and decipherable to no one, black or white, on the American continent.

Bernie could talk a Baptist into burning a Bible,

I was becoming convinced that the world was a colorful, variegated grab bag full of bastards. But

that life was good, but it was hard; we would prepare to meet it head on, but we would enjoy the preparation.

Think instead about children. People. Human beings. Feel for once that education is about people—not figures.

Mrs. Brown, whose primary job on the island

Teaching is a record of failures. But the glory of teaching is in the attempt.

pervasive part of the island culture