Anton Chekhov and the Catastrophes of Teaching
Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: In this essay, Ross Collin offers ethics‐focused readings of Anton Chekhov's popular short stories “The Schoolmistress” and “The Teacher of Literature.” Chekhov shows in the two stories how teaching can inhibit teachers' flourishing. That is to say, teaching under bad conditions can draw teachers into moral “catastrophe,” to use Cornel West's term for an idea central to Chekhov's work. In “The Schoolmistress” and “The Teacher of Literature,” Chekhov compares the catastrophes of teachers' lives to the catastrophes of the lives of nonhuman animals trapped in an eternal present of toil or display. Confined in lives they do not control, the teachers in Chekhov's two stories cannot link their pasts, presents, and futures into narratives they might live out and steer in different directions. Here, Collin shows how works of art can attend to particularities of moral experience, including teachers' moral experience, that are difficult to recognize and address productively using general concepts in philosophy.
Source: Educational Theory
DOI: 10.1111/edth.70002
Author: Ross Collin
Institution: Virginia Commonwealth University
Language: English
Subfield: Philosophy
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
SDG: Quality education
Open Access status: hybrid
Estimated APC paid: $2,760
OpenAlex ID: W4408768791