You can’t tell a book by its… title.
Spinster. Now, there’s a word you don’t hear much anymore. In fact, it’s a term that’s been out of fashion for my entire lifetime. Even so, it’s the title of a book I first read in 1960 — just a year after it was published by Simon and Schuster. It was recommended reading for one of the post-baccalaureate education classes I took in order to get my teaching credential. It seemed, at the time, to be the most incongruous suggestion I’d ever heard from a college professor.
That’s what I thought then and what I continue to think, even now. It’s the story (fictional) of a teacher among the Maori of New Zealand. It’s long out of print — Timberland Library got it for me through inter-library loan from Western Oregon University in Oregon. My memory of the book is about how, some days, the spinster fortified herself for school with a half a tumbler of brandy.
And I’ve remembered how she captured the hub-bub and enthusiasm of the infant room where she was the only teacher of 70 four-and five-year-olds. And, for all these years, I’ve remembered her firm belief that children come to school chock-a-block full of experiences and wonder and joy and anger. We have only to help them unlock it all and put it into context — that’s the sum total of our job as teachers; The rest will come.
Well, that’s what I remember of the book. That, plus it’s one of the most important books about teaching I’ve ever run across. At first, I wondered why it was so strongly recommended to us fledglings… I was probably stuck on the brandy and a bit horrified by it. Now as I re-read Spinster, I realize that it was Ms. Ashton-Warner who turned my interest toward our youngest learners and that her unconventional thoughts and methods were the underpinnings of my teaching for all those years — though not the brandy part, I hasten to add.
Seen through the broader context of today’s racism and divisiveness, it resonates even more deeply today. It’s a must read, especially for teachers — past, present, future. I urge my readers to track it down and be prepared to see the world differently while you’re reading it — and maybe for the rest of your life. Don’t confuse it with her second book, Teacher, which is also good. But not as.