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I wonder if Euripides ever met a substitute teacher at a public school
Who is Euripides?
Euripides (/jʊəˈrɪpɪdiːz/; Ancient Greek: Εὐριπίδης, romanized: Eurīpídēs, pronounced [eu̯.riː.pí.dɛːs]; c. 480 – c. 406 BC) was a tragedian of classical Athens. Along with Aeschylus and Sophocles, he is one of the three ancient Greek tragedians for whom any plays have survived in full. Some ancient scholars attributed ninety-five plays to him, but the Suda says it was ninety-two at most. Of these, eighteen or nineteen have survived more or less complete (Rhesus is suspect). There are many fragments (some substantial) of most of his other plays. More of his plays have survived intact than those of Aeschylus and Sophocles together, partly because his popularity grew as theirs declined—he became, in the Hellenistic Age, a cornerstone of ancient literary education, along with Homer, Demosthenes, and Menander.
Euripides is identified with theatrical innovations that have profoundly influenced drama down to modern times, especially in the representation of traditional, mythical heroes as ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances. This new approach led him to pioneer developments that later writers adapted to comedy, some of which are characteristic of romance. He also became “the most tragic of poets”, focusing on the inner lives and motives of his characters in a way previously unknown. He was “the creator of … that cage which is the theatre of Shakespeare’s Othello, Racine’s Phèdre, of Ibsen and Strindberg,” in which “imprisoned men and women destroy each other by the intensity of their loves and hates”. But he was also the literary ancestor of comic dramatists as diverse as Menander and George Bernard Shaw.
His contemporaries associated him with Socrates as a leader of a decadent intellectualism. Both were frequently lampooned by comic poets such as Aristophanes. Socrates was eventually put on trial and executed as a corrupting influence. Ancient biographies hold that Euripides chose a voluntary exile in old age, dying in Macedonia, but recent scholarship casts doubt on these sources.
Substitutes are different because you know they’re not going to be around to enforce any cruel edicts. I can’t remember who said it (no one according to google) but I remember hearing that authority erodes the more you use it. That seems right to me. Sometimes the same message works better just because someone new is saying it.
That’s a really good comment and a really good point (both on subs and on overuse of authority.)
I have this vivid memory of being in 4th or 5th grade. I cannot remember why, but our normal music teacher was gone, so there was a sub named “Mr. Pantalone.” If you’re going to have a name like that, and if you’re going to work as a sub, you can’t be someone who is easily pushed around. However, my peers (I absolve myself) made that dude cry. I think about that guy all the time. Hopefully he had better days after that one.
I remember a couple different substitute crying stories from school, truth be told I was just happy someone else was the target for a while – that having been said a friend of a friend is a sub and she says she has a ball. Either kids are different now or you need to have a certain personality to make it work
I think it’s both, but also probably where you’re teaching. There are some good TikTok/IG accounts from teachers that don’t paint the picture of today’s kids being meeker or nicer than they were in our day. I also know that a lot of schools permit kids to have their cell phones in class, so that probably makes a difference. The trouble maker types of the 80s and 90s are scrolling on the internet in the 2020s.
Good point, why bother bullying people in front of you when you can attack the whole world
Exactly.