Professor Anthony Esolen reminds us of that great paean to a great fictional teacher, Mr. Chips. Go here to read his post.
Two very good films were made on the 1934 novella Goodbye Mr. Chips, which looked at the impact of classics instructor Charles Chipping on generations of boys at a boarding school, in British parlance a public school, where he spends nearly all of his adult life. Chips, as he is called by the schoolboys, has the unenviable task of teaching Latin and Greek to bored students, but he approaches his task with diligence and sternness, leavened by dry humor and his fondness, usually very well concealed, for his charges.
The 1939 film culminates with World War I and the pain Mr. Chips endures as many of his pupils die in battle:
The 1969 film, a musical starring Peter O’Toole and Petula Clark culminates with World War II with Chipping becoming war time headmaster on the same day that his wife dies in a V-2 bombing.
Both films are fairly sentimental, but they worked because most people could recall dedicated teachers like Mr. Chips, unheralded, who spent their lives imparting knowledge and often had a major impact on the lives of some of their students.
Mr. Chips is fated to not have any children of his own, but he is content due to his hundreds of boys:
Teaching is a noble profession which has been hijacked by Left wing ideologues. We need to take it back.
I’ve only seen the 2002 tv version with Martin Clunes. Pretty good. In that version his wife dies in childbirth and the child dies too.
That is what happened in the 1939 film. I can’t imagine such grief.