The Word Necessary: assimetria da atenção em sala (C2)
She was not, I think now, an exceptional woman. She had a habit of pausing before answering, which we took for wisdom and which may have been fatigue, and a way of writing a word on the board and then standing aside from it, as if the word were now the class's problem and no longer hers. Thirty of us watched her for a year at an intensity we have never since directed at anyone, and she watched thirty of us, which is a different and much thinner form of attention. This asymmetry is the whole condition of the profession and is almost never described. We were, each of us, receiving an education; she was conducting one. The proportions could not be equal. What I retain is accordingly useless as biography: the chalk held like a cigarette, a sentence about the subjunctive delivered with an irritation that seemed personal, the day she said something about her mother and then, visibly, decided not to continue. I have no idea whether she was happy. I know precisely how she said the word necessary. Somewhere she may have a memory of me; if so, it will be shorter than a shopping list, and she will have the better claim to accuracy.
Fonte: English for ALL (texto original).
A assimetria que o narrador identifica como condição da profissão docente consiste em
- A) a professora dispor de autoridade institucional sobre a turma sem receber, em contrapartida, o reconhecimento profissional que seu trabalho mereceria.
- B) os alunos observarem a professora com uma intensidade concentrada que retém detalhes inúteis para conhecê-la, enquanto ela distribui por muitos uma atenção necessariamente rarefeita.
- C) o narrador recordar com nitidez os conteúdos gramaticais ensinados e ter esquecido por completo as circunstâncias em que os aprendeu.
- D) a experiência escolar ser vivida pelos alunos como um acontecimento único, ao passo que a professora repetia, ano após ano, as mesmas lições.
- E) a memória afetiva do narrador deformar a figura da professora, atribuindo-lhe uma sabedoria que ele mesmo termina por desmentir como fadiga.