Book

Theo Thijssen

The Happy Class

‘A class has its own soul’

‘Don’t let anyone tell you being a schoolmaster isn’t an adventurous job…’ The speaker is Staal, a teacher at an Amsterdam school for poor children in the early twentieth century. There is little prestige attached to the post and his wife thinks he should look for a better job, but Staal sees his work as a calling. He wants to help the forty young individuals in his charge to get on in life. So while pretending to be studying for his French diploma he writes his diary, recording observations, concerns and ideas about education and child-rearing.

Be they smart, sickly or foolish, all children are unique and Staal knows how to make the most of that, although he is often seized by doubt as to whether he is doing the right thing. Theo Thijssen writes beautifully about the class as an organism: ‘You can tease a class, flatter it, make it laugh, tremble, a class has its own soul.’ When a humpbacked boy appears at school the class is understanding, but when another boy shares out stale nuts the teasing is relentless – and there you have it after all, ‘the dreadful wolfish morality of the world of grown ups’. To Staal the class is important as a social unit, as Thijssen makes clear at the end of the novel: ‘My marvellous, sweet, difficult lot, I really know only one thing: the year or so that I have you and you have me we ought simply to be a happy class. The rest is nonsense, believe me, although I’d never tell you that.’

Theo Thijssen’s writing was based on his practical experience as a teacher, and this novel takes the form of a diary. It demonstrates how remarkably good he was at entering into the world of the child, an exceptional achievement for the time. He caused a furore by exposing the deficiencies of generalized methods of teaching and child-rearing and appealing for more respect for the teacher, the ultimate expert on how to approach a class. As a result Thijssen’s message is still relevant today, and his novel provides a joyful if wistful insight into the world of the recent past.

The Happy Class […] forms a highlight of his oeuvre – it is a splendid book about the lost paradise of our childhood.

Simon Carmiggelt

A sprightly and exquisite book. It is a powerful plea in favour of the magnetism between the teacher and his class, the extraordinary community in which much useful knowledge is acquired, and the situation in which people learn to live with one another in a natural manner.

Jan Siebelink

The Happy Class illustrates in an almost Kafkaesque manner the incipient bureaucracy in education: the registers that have to be maintained and the nerves before the school. inspections, which, in turn, lead to unfair punishments to guarantee the obedience of the pupils.

De Volkskrant

Theo Thijssen

Theo Thijssen (1879-1943) was author, teacher and socialist politician. He is best known for his book Kees de jongen (Young Kees, 1923), the story of a working-class boy in Amsterdam that became a classic and on which a film was based. In 2007 the CPNB Foundation (Collective Propaganda for the…

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Details

De gelukkige klas (1926). Fiction, 277 pages.

Publisher

Athenaeum-Polak & Van Gennep

Weteringschans 259
NL - 1017 XJ Amsterdam
Netherlands
Tel: +31 20 760 72 10

E-mail:
[email protected]
Website:
https://www.singeluitgeverije…

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