Chekhov

CHEKHOV:  HIS  LAMENT FOR POOR TEACHERS

By Stephen Wilson

Please don't whistle, Masha. How can you ? {pause.} It is being at school all

day and then teaching in the evenings that gives me those constant headaches

and makes me feel like an old woman. And these four years that I have been

teaching at the school I really have felt my youth and strength draining out of

me, drop by drop .And my one dream growing stronger all the time ' laments the

school teacher Olga in Chekhov's play 'The Three Sisters'. And in another play,

The Seagull, the schoolmaster Semyon Medvedenko states, 'I have a much

harder life than you. I earn a miserable twenty-three rubles a month before

superannuation is deducted.' In many of Chekhov's plays and some short

stories, Chekhov depicts the life of Russian teachers before the revolution as

one of not only  relentless poverty, misery, and ill health, but a largely thankless

job where he is constantly anxious about losing his job. He has no job security and

can be dismissed on a whim. Despite some misleading impressions that

Chekhov's plays expressed a sentimental yearning for a golden rural way of

life, his works are a subtle satire on the constant boredom, meaningless and

lack of purpose which ran through the villages even among the Gentry.

I asked a teacher if there was a patron saint of teachers that they appealed to .

In an instant, my colleague conjured up an icon from her bag and thrust it on me

saying that Saint Sergei of Radonezhki is their saint. He defends teachers. But

why not also Chekhov? If anyone deserves to qualify as a patron saint of teachers

it ought to be Chekhov. Chekhov was a passionate and ardent advocate of better

conditions for the Russian school teacher. He thought that the way teachers were

treated in Russia was a sheer disgrace. One only needs to quote a memoir of Maxim

Gorky when he listened to Chekhov ranting on about the plight of teachers and even

kindly listening to one who visited him. Chekhov told Gorky:

"If I had lots of money I would build a sanatorium here for sick village teachers. A

building full of light, you know, very light, with big windows and high ceilings. I'd

have a splendid library, all sorts of musical instruments, an apiary, a vegetable

garden, an orchard. I'd have lectures on agronomy, meteorology, and so on .

Teachers ought to know everything, old man, everything . If you only knew the

absolute necessity for the Russian countryside of good, clever , educated teachers.

In Russia we have simply got to create exceptional conditions for teachers, and

that as soon as possible, since we realize that unless the people get an all-round

education the state will collapse like a house built from insufficiently baked bricks.'

He further adds that "Our teachers are navies , half educated individuals who go

to the village to teach children as willingly as they would go into exile.They are

famished, down trodden, they live in perpetual fear of losing their livelihood......

It is absurd to pay a niggardly pittance to one who is called upon to educate the

people. It is intolerable that such a one should go about in rags, shiver in a damp,

dilapidated school, be poisoned by fumes from badly ventilated stoves and by the

age of thirty be a mass of disease, laryngitis, rheumatism , tuberculosis. It is a

disgrace to us!  For nine or ten months in the year our teachers live the lives of

hermits, without a soul to speak to, they grow stupid, from loneliness, without

books or amusements......... All this is quite disgusting... a kind of mockery of

human beings doing a great and terribly important work. I tell you, when I meet

a teacher I feel quite awkward in front of him - for his timidity, and for his shabbiness.

I feel as if I myself were somehow to blame for the teacher's wretched state - I do

really."

It is striking to compare the acute empathy and humility of Chekhov to how many

present day Russian officials, parents, and the wider public view see teachers. In

a word, there is no comparison. Somethings never change. The poverty of many

rural teachers is met with much contempt. Despite the rash claim that the prestige

of school teachers has increased due to salary increase to 105,000 rubles a month,

in Moscow, the conditions of rural teachers still remain abysmal. Just like in

Chekhov's time, they have no real job security and constantly worry about losing

their posts. They also tend to be so overworked they need someone like Chekhov

to build them a sanatorium.

Chekhov did not just lament but lived out his words. He never quite gave up his

job as a doctor. Despite suffering from illness , Chekhov decided to embark on

a special tour to Sakhalin where he would investigate the conditions of Russian

prisoners, and write a report to draw attention to the urgent need for reform. On

the island, Chekhov interviewed thousands of prisoners working 18 hours a day.

The result was his great work 'The Island of Sakhalin', !893-4.' It has been argued

that Chekhov's powerful and moving description of corporal punishment in prisons

played a part in the abolition of it for female prisoners in 1897 and then male ones

in 1904. Chekhov's motives for his mission were clear. He wrote with a note of

sarcasm that: "From the books I have read, it is clear that we have allowed

millions of people to rot in prisons, to rot  for no purpose, without any care, and

in a barbarous way. All of us are guilty, but none of this has anything to do with

us, it is not just interesting." But the plight of the rural teacher and prisoner was

of keen interest to Chekhov. And Chekhov deserves our gratitude!