The Village School Master

Summary 1 

The Village School Master

            "The Village Schoolmaster" by Oliver Goldsmith is an extract from  “The Deserted Village”. The poet returns to the village and finds it deserted. This poem is a lighthearted reflection of his village school master Mr. Thomas Paddy Byrne. As the poet himself was a pupil of this school master, he is able to create an authentic picture of him.

            The village school master’s little school was situated next to the damaged fence. Goldsmith recalls the characteristics of the master with a mixed feeling of fear, respect and humour. He was known as a strict person. He was familiar to all the truants in the village because they had endured the master’s rage. When he cracks jokes, the children used to burst out in “counterfeited” laughter in order to avoid punishment.

            The trembling pupils were curious to know the day’s misfortunes on his face. If they observe a frown, they circulate the gloomy news throughout the class. Though he was stern, he was kind hearted too. He had an intense love for learning also.

            The villagers admired the school master’s knowledge. He was able to read and write well. He was good at arithmetic also. He could also survey land, forecast weather and tides. The village parson approved of his skills in debate. He was able to continue his argument even after losing a debate. He won the arguments with his thundering voice.

            The poem ends on a note of humour. The villagers gaze at him whenever they pass the school. They wonder how his small head could keep that enormous hoard of knowledge. Thus the poet describes the characteristics of the village school master.

Simple Questions 

1. What made the villagers look at the village school master in awe and wonder?

v  The people of the village have admiration for his vast knowledge and they would firmly say that he knows many things.

v  There is even a story that he could measure quantities of rains.

v  The village master is also skilled in arguing.

v  He would continue to argue even after he is defeated sometimes and he would use very high sounding and lengthy words.

v  The people wonder how such a small head could carry so much knowledge.

v  Sketch the character of the village school master.

2. The schoolmaster is a strict and serious looking man that makes the children tremble with fear.

v  The school was noisy but the school master knows how to handle them.

v  He would not allow the boys who were absent go unpunished.

v  The truants knew it well.

v  When he came to the school in the morning, the children could guess the troubles of the day from his face what would be their experience that day.

v  He has a sense of humour as well many jokes with him.

v  The students pretend to enjoy his jokes and laugh at all his jokes to please him. When his mood changes and looks serious it is bad for the pupils, they will be so afraid of him but actually he is kind at heart.

v  His severity is only due to his love of learning.

ESSAY:

1. Explain the roll of the village school master as a teacher and as a villager.

Introduction:

v  ‘The Village Schoolmaster’ is an extract from ‘The Deserted Village’ by Oliver Goldsmith, a versatile genius.

v  Goldsmith visits his native village after a long gap that is desolate.

v  He recollects his past memories and remembers his schoolmaster.

v  The master has run his school in his house that stood near a fence that bordered along the road.

v  The fence is broken and irregular and overgrown with furze.

v  The furze is blossoming bright and cheerful but there is no one to see and admire its beauty because the people of the village have long deserted the village.

Village Schoolmaster as a strict and serious man:

v  The schoolmaster is a strict and serious looking man that makes the children tremble with fear.

v  The school was noisy but the school master knows how to handle them.

v  He would not allow the boys who were absent go unpunished.

v  The truants knew it well.

v  When he came to the school in the morning, the children could guess the troubles of the day from his face what would be their experience that day.

Sense of Humour:

v  He has a sense of humour as well many jokes with him.

v  The students pretend to enjoy his jokes and laugh at all his jokes to please him. When his mood changes and looks serious it is bad for the pupils, they will be so afraid of him but actually he is kind at heart.

v  His severity is only due to his love of learning.

Abilities of the Schoolmaster:

v  The people of the village have admiration for his vast knowledge and they would firmly say that he knows many things.

v  There is even a story that he could measure quantities of rains. The village master is also skilled in arguing.

v  He would continue to argue even after he is defeated sometimes and he would use very high sounding and lengthy words.

v  The people wonder how such a small head could carry so much knowledge.

Conclusion:

v  This poem is highly humorous and at the same time touching.

v  That the Schoolmaster was an empty vessel making noise is indirectly hinted by Oliver Goldsmith.

Summary 2

            ‘The Village School Master’ is an extract from Goldsmith’s famous long poem ‘The Deserted Village’ in which he describes the decline of a village in Ireland in the nineteenth century. The extract describing the school master is said to have been inspired by one Thomas Byrne, an ex-soldier, who taught Goldsmith when he was a boy. The village school master ran his little school in a small village. It was situated next to the irregular fence that fringed the village path with full blossomed, beautiful but ornamental furze.’ He was a very strict disciplinarian. He was familiar to the poet and all other truants because they had endured the master’s rage. His face was a thing of careful scrutiny. The students were afraid of him and would gaze at his face to sense his present frame of mind. The day’s misfortunes were written on his forehead or in between the eyebrows. The school master was a contradiction. Although he was stern, he was kind-hearted and good-humoured. He had a store of jokes. When he told them, the children burst out in fake laughter, under the pretext that the jokes were awfully hilarious. If the children observed a frown on his forehead, they circulated the gloomy news throughout the classroom in an undertone. But he was in essence a kind man. If at all he had any fault, it was his intense love for learning. He wanted his pupils to become genuine scholars and hence, he had to be demanding with them. The villagers were unanimous in their opinion that he really was an erudite man. He, without doubt, could write and also work out sums in arithmetic. He could also survey land, forecast weather and tides. Besides, he was able to measure the content of a vessel. He was master at argument, too. Even the parson approved of his skill in debate. Even if defeated, the school master would keep on arguing. He would become more fervent and would fling booming words at his adversary. The uncomprehending villagers would be convinced that the school master was establishing his standpoint very thoroughly. They stood round the two debaters and witnessed the verbal duel. They were awestruck when they heard the high-sounding and incomprehensible words used by the school master. They stared at him and wondered how his small head could hold such an enormous hoard of knowledge.

THE VILLAGE SCHOOLMASTER – OLIVER GOLDSMITH

Oliver Goldsmith, poet, dramatist and essayist, was born on 10 November 1728 at Pallasmore in Ireland. At eight, he had a severe attack of smallpox which disfigured him for life. In Spite of repeated interruptions in his studies, he managed to take his B. A. degree in 1746. After several avocations he took to writing as his means of livelihood, but with little success. He died on 4 April 1774.

Among his works The Traveller (Poem), The Deserted Village (poem), She Stoops to Conquer (play), and The Vicar of Wakefield (novel) are accepted classics.

‘The Village Schoolmaster’ is taken from his most famous poem The Deserted Village. It is one of the most endearing pen-portraits in the whole of English Literature.  The original of the Schoolmaster is supposed to be Thomas Byrne a retired soldier who opened a school at Lissoy. Goldsmith was at Byrne’s schools for two years.

Oliver Goldsmith, poet, dramatist and essayist, was born on 10 November 1728 at Pallasmore in Ireland. At eight, he had a severe attack of smallpox, which disfigured him for life. In spite of repeated interruption in his studies, he managed to take his B.A. degree in 1746. After several avocations he took to writing as his means of livelihood, but with little success. He died on 4 April 1774.

Summary 3:

‘The Village Schoolmaster’ is taken from his most famous poem The Deserted Village. It is one of the most endearing pen-portraits in the whole of English literature. The original of the Schoolmaster is supposed to be Thomas Byrne a retired soldier who opened a school at Lissoy. Goldsmith was at Byrne’s school for two years.

The original of the Schoolmaster is supposed to be Thomas Byrne who taught Goldsmith for two years. The schoolmaster was a serious looking man; but he was really very kind at heart. His severity arose from his love of learning. When he came to school in the morning, by looking at his face, the children were able to guess at their experiences of the day.

The schoolmaster had a few stale jokes. Whenever he cracked a joke the children pretended to enjoy it and laughed liberally. This they did only to please him. When he frowned they knew that trouble was coming and the sad news was communicated among themselves through whisper.

The extent of his learning was known to one and all in the village. He could work out simple arithmetical problems and calculate the area of a piece of land. He could also make the necessary calculations and say when the seasons would start or when movable feasts like Easter would occur.

His skill in arguing was admitted by no less a person than the parson of the village. When he was defeated in an argument he would start using high sounding words, to the merriment of all the rustics who were seated around. As a matter of the fact the rustics wondered how a small head could contain all he knew.Thus the pen-portrait of the village schoolmaster is humorous and at the same time endearing. 

Summary 4

Oliver Goldsmith’s “The Village Schoolmaster” depicts the memory of an educated schoolmaster who occupies a position of reverence and awe in a rural village. The poem was written as part of a larger work, The Deserted Village, in which Goldsmith describes an imaginary ideal village called Auburn, a composite of several villages Goldsmith had himself observed. Returning to the village after many years, now in its decline, the narrator remembers the village as it had once been, idealised through the lens of time and memory. Goldsmith’s portrait of the schoolmaster is written from a position of nostalgia, and the affectionate and humorous portrait of the schoolmaster reflects a respected figure from an idealised past. Through a humorous and reflective portrait of the archetypical village schoolmaster as well as through a stylised poetic form, Goldsmith expresses a concern for the uncertain future of the country life in a time of growing commerce and industry.

Goldsmith’s belief in the superiority of the rural life finds expression in poetic style as well as subject. The poem’s structure is in rhyming pentameter couplets, a form featured prominently in the eighteenth century’s heroic poems. The heroic couplet, used by poetic giants from Chaucer to Dryden, evokes a history of an English poetic tradition and contributes to a nostalgia for the past which Goldsmith expresses in his portrait of the schoolmaster. The language is simple and far from the lofty language expected of the heroic couplet; although Goldsmith uses an elevated diction, employing poetically conventionally words such as “rustics” in place of the more colloquial “peasant” or “clodhopper”. Word order is inverted to maintain the rhythm and rhyme scheme in ‘Well had the boding tremblers learn’d the trace’ and ‘Lands he could measure, terms and tides presage’ (7, 17), effectively elevating the verse from its common subject and in the process elevating the image of the schoolmaster himself from a country teacher to an important and respected figure in provincial life.

The elevated poetic form and idealisation of the pastoral landscape in The Deserted Village reveals a profound nostalgia for a now lost past for which the poet yearns. “The Village Schoolmaster” is, therefore, a portrait of a figure who is eulogized and becomes representative himself of a lost past. The poem begins with a pastoral description of the schoolhouse and its master:

Beside yon straggling fence that skirts the way

With blossom’d furze unprofitably gay,

There, in his mansion, skill’d to rule,

The village master taught his little school (1-4)

The portrait of the village is one of natural beauty, the blooming flowers unconcerned with the commerce and industry which define the later age. The schoolmaster resides inside his ‘mansion’, and ironic reference to the simple building of the schoolhouse. This figures the schoolmaster as lord over his domain of young pupils and an imposing figure of intellectual prowess in the village. The figure which Goldsmith chooses for his portrait, like the pastor who also features in The Deserted Village, spans generations of the community, communicating the kind of knowledge that enriches both his life and those around him. The heroic form and pastoral imagery suggest a eulogy for a disappearing rural culture in which roles such as that of the schoolmaster were vital.

Writing in the late eighteenth century, when education comprised a broad spectrum of subjects rather than the specialised education of modern times, Goldsmith portrays the schoolmaster as a respected figure of learning in a rural village in which basic reading and writing skills were the highest education many villagers attained. The figure of the schoolmaster, therefore, is an awesome presence, a man deserving of respect and admiration. He is described thus: ‘A man severe he was, and stern to view’ (5) who commands respect from his pupils. The children ‘laugh’d with counterfeited glee’ (9) at his many jokes, whether they were funny or not. Yet the schoolmaster is not a fearsome figure as the narrator is quick to point out: ‘Yet he was kind; or if severe in aught, / The love he bore to learning was in fault’ (13-14). His faults, if any, are due to his dedication to education and learning rather than as character defects.

The villagers are impressed with his ability to read and write, measure lands, do complex calculations, and mark the cycle of religious holy days. Adults and children alike hold his learning in awe; but this is an ironic passage which emphasises the ignorance of the villages rather than the learnedness of the schoolmaster. In arguments with the parson, the schoolmaster does not always triumph, but uses ‘words of learned length and thund’ring sound’ to further the argument, gaining respect from the audience of villagers as well.

While words of learned length and thund’ring sound

Amazed the gaxing rustics rang’d around

And still they gaz’d and still the wonder grew,

That one small head could carry all he knew (21-24)

 His basic knowledge and ability to read make him seem knowledgeable to the ‘gazing rustics’ (22), but he is not the intellectual god he is held up to be. His importance is relative only to their own ignorance. However, this is not a satirical portrait meant to reveal weakness or fault; the poet’s admiration of the schoolmaster is clear. He is the source of education to the village, at times ruled by the ‘love he bore to learning’ (14) but doing a good deed in bring education to the common people and fulfilling a vital role in village life. In eulogizing the passing the schoolmaster, Goldsmith is mourning the passing of the community of which the schoolmaster was central.

Goldsmith’s poem is more than a wistful nostalgia of his own childhood experience. His message is an explicit criticism of the decline of rural life in favour of urban centres. The revered figure of the schoolmaster is lost and forgotten, his value and respect is no more. ‘But past is all his fame’ the poet laments, ‘The very spot / Where many a time he triumph’d is forgot’ (25-6). Goldsmith stands against the ideals of the modern world: industrialism, commerce and materialism. The portrait of the schoolmaster is a tribute to that part of the world, the rural countryside, which is fading away to make room for capitalist enterprise.