The Course of Love. A novel pdfdrive com

base—the pupil’s problem. Tempers remain in check because individual students
do not have very much power over their teachers’ lives; they don’t control their
integrity and are not the chief determinants of their sense of contentment. An
ability not to care too much is a critical aspect of unruffled and successful
pedagogy.
But calm is precisely what is absent from love’s classroom. There is simply
too much on the line. The “student” isn’t merely a passing responsibility; he or
she is a lifelong commitment. Failure will ruin existence. No wonder we may be
prone to lose control and deliver cack-handed, hasty speeches which bear no
faith in the legitimacy or even the nobility of the act of imparting advice.
And no wonder, too, if we end up achieving the very opposite of our goals,
because increasing levels of humiliation, anger, and threat have seldom
hastened anyone’s development. Few of us ever grow more reasonable or more

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insightful about our own characters for having had our self-esteem taken down a
notch, our pride wounded, and our ego subjected to a succession of pointed
insults. We simply grow defensive and brittle in the face of suggestions which
sound like mean-minded and senseless assaults on our nature rather than caring
attempts to address troublesome aspects of our personality.
Had Rabih picked up some better teaching habits, his lesson might have
unfolded very differently. For a start, he would have made sure both of them
went straight to bed and were well rested before anything was tackled. The next
morning he might have suggested a walk, perhaps to King George V Park, after
they’d picked up a coffee and a pastry to have on a bench. Looking out at the
large oak trees, he would have complimented Kirsten on the dinner and on a
couple of other things, too: perhaps her skill at dealing with the politics in her
office or her kindness to him over a package she’d posted for him the day before.
Then, rather than accuse her, he would have implicated himself in the behavior
he wished to focus on. “Teckle, I find myself getting so jealous of some of those
types we know,” he would have started. “If I hadn’t gone into architecture, we
could have had a summer villa, and I would have loved it in a lot of ways. I’m
the first one to adore the sun and the Mediterranean. I dream of cool limestone
floors and the smell of jasmine and thyme in the garden. I’m so sorry for letting
us both down.” Then, like a doctor lulling the patient before jabbing the needle:
“What I also want to say though—and it’s probably a lesson for both of us—is
that we’re very lucky in a host of other ways that we should at least try not to
forget. We’re lucky that we have one another, that we enjoy our jobs on a good
day, and that we know how to have a lot of fun on our rain-sodden summer
holidays in the Outer Hebrides in a crofter’s cottage that smells a little of sheep
dung. For my part, so long as I’m with you, I’d quite frankly be happy living on
this bench.”
But it isn’t just Rabih who is a terrible teacher. Kirsten isn’t a star student,
either. Throughout their relationship, the two of them fail conclusively at both
tasks: teaching and learning. At the first sign that either one of them is adopting
a pedagogical tone, the other assumes that they are under attack, which in turn
causes them to close their ears to instruction and to react with sarcasm and
aggression to suggestions, thereby generating further irritation and weariness in
the mind of the fragile “instructing” party.
“Rabih, no one has ever in my life said anything to me about my being