"I didn't know what to do with myself. I wasn't excited by the teaching of the school. If they'd been intent on really teaching you things, I would have been a little more attentive"
About this Quote
Restlessness and drift rise off the words: a young person at school, unclaimed by what is on offer, unsure where to place her energies. The complaint is not laziness but a mismatch. The phrase "the teaching of the school" points to an institutional style that feels perfunctory, instruction delivered as a duty rather than an invitation. The conditional that follows matters: "If they'd been intent on really teaching you things, I would have been a little more attentive". Attention is presented as a response to genuine intent. The student is not a passive receptacle; she awakens when someone truly tries to awaken her.
That distinction between teaching as delivery and teaching as ignition shaped many mid-century classrooms, with their emphasis on conformity and rote mastery. For a sensibility drawn to the visceral, improvisatory intensity of performance, such an environment can deaden rather than quicken. Diane Cilento, who would become an acclaimed stage and screen actor, demonstrates through her trajectory that the issue was never a lack of appetite for learning. When she encountered a craft that demanded presence, embodied knowledge, and rigorous practice, she found both direction and discipline. The same person who could not focus in a stale lesson could spend years perfecting timing, voice, and movement under the heat of rehearsal rooms.
There is vulnerability here, too. "I didn't know what to do with myself" admits the fog of youth, the frightening openness of unshaped time. Yet the remark also casts a quiet indictment of systems that mistake obedience for education. "Really teaching" suggests depth, relevance, and a teacher’s palpable investment. It is the difference between telling and showing, between covering a syllabus and making a world feel necessary. Cilento’s memory becomes a compact argument for pedagogy that courts attention by deserving it, and for the truth that talent often blooms when someone bothers to meet it halfway.
That distinction between teaching as delivery and teaching as ignition shaped many mid-century classrooms, with their emphasis on conformity and rote mastery. For a sensibility drawn to the visceral, improvisatory intensity of performance, such an environment can deaden rather than quicken. Diane Cilento, who would become an acclaimed stage and screen actor, demonstrates through her trajectory that the issue was never a lack of appetite for learning. When she encountered a craft that demanded presence, embodied knowledge, and rigorous practice, she found both direction and discipline. The same person who could not focus in a stale lesson could spend years perfecting timing, voice, and movement under the heat of rehearsal rooms.
There is vulnerability here, too. "I didn't know what to do with myself" admits the fog of youth, the frightening openness of unshaped time. Yet the remark also casts a quiet indictment of systems that mistake obedience for education. "Really teaching" suggests depth, relevance, and a teacher’s palpable investment. It is the difference between telling and showing, between covering a syllabus and making a world feel necessary. Cilento’s memory becomes a compact argument for pedagogy that courts attention by deserving it, and for the truth that talent often blooms when someone bothers to meet it halfway.
Quote Details
| Topic | Teaching |
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