La crème de la crème The Teacher’s Role in Muriel Spark’s The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie And Mitch Albom’s Tuesdays with Morrie

Examining The Prime of Miss Brodie and Tuesdays with Morrie reveals that we are before two rich texts which, short as they are, yet raise many important political, social and humanitarian issues. Through Brodie, Spark presents a playful yet a profound critique of dictatorship in different forms and levels, in a teaching context- through Brodie- and on a global level, referring to Franco and Mussolini and the deluding effect of their war propaganda. The consequent downfall of the teacher can be symbolic of the fall of these dictators and even of the once great British Empire itself.  Through Morrie, we have a critique of the capitalist society and its obsessive/possessive materialism and consumerism, deluding the Americans into a happy life while enslaving them and bringing about misery in different ways.
However, this paper mainly focused on the characters of the two protagonists, their effective roles as teachers and their immeasurable, at times, dangerous influence. Both fit in Paulo Freire’s discussion of education in its two forms, the banking education reflective of the pedagogy of the oppressed versus the liberating and empowering problem-posing education. Brodie and Morrie create dialogical relationships with their students, teach them in unconventional methods and widen their horizon by opening the gate of knowledge to them. Yet, on the one hand, the former’s dominating and possessive character makes her a controversial teacher since she ends up being oppressive like the conventional educators criticised by Freire and herself. On the other hand, the latter represents the positive empowering example advocated by Freire. In all cases they make clear Freire’s belief that “authority must be on the side of freedom, not against it” and that teaching ought to be a shared experience between both teachers and learners: “People teach each other, mediated by the world, by the cognizable objects which in banking education are ‘owned’ by the teacher”.
The two characters win their students’ love and admiration, and continue to live and be remembered long after their deaths. Both prove how every one of us had a teacher who has contributed to our making, which, to quote Candia McWilliam when speaking of Spark’s masterpiece, explains “the power of” these two books which can be read “by all nationalities;” for despite the Scotsness of the former, and the Americanness of the latter, their “themes …[are], in their concrete specific evocation of the commonplace, wonderfully transfigured, unforgettable and universal” (xii). Through Brodie and Morrie, Henry Adams’ epigram regarding the teacher’s affecting eternity is fulfilled, but the kind of influence created by the two differs. Interestingly Albom quotes Adams’ words in reference to his favourite teacher. The two teachers redirect the paths of their students, but whereas Brodie imposes or indoctrinates, Morrie teaches by example. Whereas one is naively impressed by fascism and inflicts this poisoning ideology into the minds of her pupils, bringing about the death of one of them, Morrie is a life saver to Albom by helping him to transform his world and life and by kindling his humanistic spirit, love and compassion for others. In this regard, using Fromm’s terminology, we can regard the first as creating a necrophilous effect - due to her “overwhelming control” which ends up with the death of a pupil- and the second as generating a biophilous one, installing the love of life and actually saving a life.
In both works poetic justice is fulfilled: while Brodie’s prime is gone when forced to retire, Morrie keeps his and continues to teach despite the deterioration of his body. However, despite their contradictory attitudes and fates, what I find interesting and ironic at the same time is that the fictitious character of Brodie (though containing elements of reality from Spark’s real life teacher) is more elusive and complicated than the real flesh and blood Morrie. Whereas the first puzzles us and eludes any attempt to categorize her, the second is much easier to assess and label. Is fiction more complicated or truer than real life? Apparently a difficult question to answer, but the fact remains that they continue to enchant readers of different generations and places; and the two texts leave us with two characters that keep haunting us long after reading them, two of la crème de la crème characters who inspire us, for good or bad, regarding education and the indelible role of teachers.