Have you ever heard the phrase “now the student has become the teacher”? I’m sure you have. It’s in all sorts of poorly dubbed martial arts movies and stuff.
Anyways, I was thinking: what happens to the teacher once the student has become the teacher? Is there room for two teachers? I would think not. So where does that leave the original teacher? Is he out of a job?
- It seems that there are three options for the poor bastard:
- The teacher dies. This one pretty much sucks for the teacher. Sometimes, it’s probably the student that kills the teacher. Sort of like the son overtaking the father in one of those Oedipal Greek tragedies or something, but this is not necessarily the case. The teacher might just be overwhelmed by losing his “teacher-ness”, and subsequently drop dead.
- After the student becomes the teacher, the teacher becomes the student. It’s cyclical. This could get boring after a while, but I mean, it’s what these guys do. They’re students and teachers. What do you want?
- The teacher symbolically “dies”. Basically, this means he gets to pass on his powers of teaching to the next generation. He then moves to Florida, buys lots of white shoes, hikes his pants up to his nipples and plays golf.
So there you have it. Extensive research has yielded these three options for the overthrown teacher. Not surprisingly, most choose number 3 and are quite happy.
Maybe one day I can be a former teacher…