The Teacher, the Child, and the Art of Discipline
This Blog is a part of Thinking Activity assigned by Dr. Megha Trivedi Ma'am regarding the short story Crime and Punishment by R.K Narayan where I will ponder up on my thoughts and observations.
R. K. Narayan’s short story “Crime and Punishment” turns this apparently simple question into a humorous exploration of education, discipline, childhood, authority, and power. At the centre of the story is a teacher employed to tutor a young boy whose parents are wealthy, protective, and deeply influenced by modern ideas of child psychology. The teacher is expected to educate the child, but gradually discovers that the conventional relationship between teacher and student is not as straightforward as it appears.
The story is particularly interesting because the roles of teacher and student constantly shift. The teacher begins as the authority figure, but after he slaps the boy, the balance of power changes. The boy discovers that he can use the threat of informing his parents to control the teacher. The teacher consequently becomes the one who obeys, while the student becomes the one who gives instructions. Narayan turns this reversal into comedy, but beneath the humour lies a serious question: Who possesses authority in education—the person who teaches, the child who learns, or the family that pays for the teaching?
Narayan's story has consequently been discussed as a humorous treatment of teacher-student relations, parental attitudes, discipline, and corporal punishment.
The Classroom as a Space of Power
A classroom is never merely a place where information is transferred. It is also a space in which authority is negotiated.
At the beginning of Crime and Punishment, the teacher possesses conventional authority. He asks questions, expects answers, corrects mistakes, and attempts to prepare the child for his examination. The boy, however, deliberately gives incorrect answers and refuses to cooperate.
The teacher eventually loses his patience and slaps the boy.
This moment is crucial because it exposes the contradiction within the teacher's position. He believes discipline is necessary, but he also knows that the boy's parents strongly oppose physical punishment. His economic dependence on the family makes his authority fragile. He is not simply a teacher; he is also an employee whose livelihood depends upon satisfying his employers.
The boy immediately understands this weakness.
Once the child threatens to reveal the teacher's action to his parents, the traditional hierarchy is overturned. The teacher becomes afraid of the student, and the student begins to exercise power over the teacher.
The story therefore creates an ironic reversal:
Teacher → disciplines student → student gains power → teacher becomes dependent on student.
The "crime" does not remain confined to the child. The teacher's physical punishment becomes another kind of crime, and the child responds by effectively punishing the teacher through manipulation and blackmail. This reversal is one reason the title itself becomes humorous and ironic.
The Teacher: Authority, Frustration and Vulnerability
Narayan does not present the teacher as a simple villain.
He is certainly impatient. His decision to slap the child is ethically problematic, and the story exposes the consequences of losing control. However, Narayan also shows the difficult circumstances surrounding the teacher.
He has to teach the child according to the parents' instructions, tolerate the child's behaviour, and continue working because he needs the money.
His position is therefore contradictory:
- He is professionally an authority figure.
- Economically, he is dependent on the child's parents.
- Psychologically, he is intimidated by the child.
- Pedagogically, he believes that discipline is necessary.
- Emotionally, he eventually develops sympathy for the boy.
This makes the teacher a much more complicated character than the conventional "strict teacher."
The story also anticipates an important issue in educational theory: teacher authority is not absolute. Research on teacher-pupil relationships has shown that authority can be fragile and can depend upon institutional structures, personal relationships, social expectations, and disciplinary practices.
The Student: From Learner to Manipulator
The boy initially appears to be simply naughty and unwilling to study. Yet his behaviour reveals something more interesting.
He understands the adults around him extremely well.
He knows:
- His parents adore him.
- His parents dislike punishment.
- The teacher needs the tuition money.
- The teacher is afraid of losing his position.
- Therefore, the teacher can be controlled through the threat of disclosure.
The child's intelligence is therefore not academic intelligence. He demonstrates social and psychological intelligence.
He turns his knowledge of the adult world into power.
The comic scenes in which the teacher is forced to participate in the child's games—including playing the station master and responding to his demands—represent the complete reversal of the conventional teacher-student hierarchy. The student effectively becomes the teacher and the teacher becomes the student.
This raises an important question:
Does education always mean that the adult teaches and the child learns?
Narayan's answer appears to be more complicated. The teacher teaches arithmetic, but the child teaches the teacher something about power, fear, negotiation, and human behaviour.
Over-Parenting and the Problem of Authority
The parents play a crucial role even though the story focuses primarily on the teacher and child.
Their affection becomes excessive. They want their child to develop freely and oppose harsh discipline. Their approach is based on contemporary ideas about child psychology, but Narayan presents the situation humorously by showing what happens when parental protection becomes so extensive that the child learns how to exploit it.
The story therefore does not simply attack modern child psychology. Rather, it satirizes the extreme application of permissiveness.
The parents want to protect the child from authoritarian discipline, but in doing so they unintentionally weaken the teacher's authority.
This produces a three-way conflict:
Parents → Child → Teacher
The teacher wants discipline.
The child wants freedom.
The parents want freedom for the child.
The result is an educational environment in which nobody possesses stable authority.
This question remains relevant today because debates about discipline continue to ask how teachers can maintain classroom order without relying on physical punishment. Historical scholarship has documented how corporal punishment could become a source of tension between pupils and teachers, particularly when students experienced it as arbitrary or unjust.
The Major Themes of the Story
1. Teacher-Student Relationship
The central theme is the unstable relationship between teacher and student.
Narayan refuses to present teaching as a one-directional process. The teacher may possess knowledge, but the student can possess other forms of power.
The story therefore transforms the conventional:
Teacher → Student
into:
Teacher ↔ Student
The relationship becomes reciprocal, although not necessarily harmonious.
2. Power and Role Reversal
Perhaps the most entertaining aspect of the story is its reversal of authority.
The teacher initially controls the lesson.
After the slap, however, the boy controls the teacher.
The boy orders him to stop teaching, play games, tell stories, and follow his instructions. The teacher's fear of the parents makes him comply.
Narayan uses comedy to expose how fragile social power can be.
3. Corporal Punishment
The story also invites readers to question physical punishment.
The teacher believes that discipline requires firmness, but the slap immediately produces another problem: instead of becoming obedient, the child discovers a new method of controlling the teacher.
Historically, corporal punishment has been a significant subject in educational history. Research based on children's autobiographical accounts has found that such punishment was sometimes experienced as arbitrary or unjust and could become a source of conflict between teachers and pupils.
Narayan's story does not turn into a theoretical essay on corporal punishment. Instead, he makes the consequences visible through comedy.
4. Childhood and Mischief
The child is not merely a passive victim.
He is mischievous, imaginative, clever and manipulative. His desire to play instead of studying represents a familiar conflict between childhood freedom and institutional expectations.
The teacher sees the child primarily as a student who must prepare for examinations.
The child sees himself as a child who wants to play.
This difference in perspective produces much of the story's humour.
5. Education versus Examination
The story also indirectly questions an education system centred on performance.
The teacher is expected to prepare the boy for an examination and even for accelerated academic progress. Education consequently becomes associated with marks, promotion, preparation, and achievement rather than curiosity.
This issue has parallels in Dead Poets Society, where the rigid educational system at Welton Academy prioritizes institutional values and conventional academic discipline, while John Keating encourages students to think differently. A 2024 scholarly study compares Dead Poets Society and Mona Lisa Smile precisely in relation to educational paradigms and students' movement toward greater intellectual independence.
From Narayan to Dead Poets Society: Two Very Different Teachers
Scholarly studies of Dead Poets Society have examined Keating as a teacher who acts as facilitator, model, and delegator rather than simply transmitting information.
Another study specifically examines the film through the concepts of power and leadership, noting the relationship between Keating and his students as less strictly vertical than traditional teacher-student relationships.
Thus, where Narayan shows the collapse of teacher authority, Dead Poets Society explores a teacher who deliberately transforms the meaning of authority.
Roald Dahl's Matilda: When the Child Challenges Adult Authority
Roald Dahl's Matilda offers another useful comparison.
Matilda exists within a world where adults frequently underestimate children. Miss Honey, however, becomes a supportive teacher who recognizes Matilda's abilities, while Miss Trunchbull represents an extreme authoritarian model.
The contrast helps illuminate Narayan's story.
The question is not simply:
Should teachers be strict or kind?
Instead, the more interesting question is:
What kind of authority allows a child to learn?
Scholarship on the film adaptation of Matilda identifies two contrasting teacher archetypes: the supportive, loving teacher and the authoritarian, threatening teacher.
Narayan's teacher falls somewhere between these extremes. He wants to maintain discipline, but he also eventually sympathizes with the child and protects him from the consequences of his own behaviour.
Toni Cade Bambara's “The Lesson”: Education Beyond the Classroom
Toni Cade Bambara's short story “The Lesson” is another valuable comparison.
Miss Moore takes a group of children from a poor neighbourhood to an expensive toy store. Her lesson is not conventional classroom teaching. Instead, she wants the children to confront questions of class, inequality, education, and social privilege.
The connection with Narayan is interesting because both stories question what constitutes a "lesson."
In Narayan:
The teacher tries to teach mathematics, but the child teaches the teacher about power.
In Bambara:
Miss Moore tries to teach economics and inequality, while the children experience the lesson through the world around them.
A recent scholarly discussion of Bambara's “The Lesson” alongside Dickens's Great Expectations emphasizes the relationship between education, class, moral growth, and identity.
Thus, both stories expand education beyond textbooks.
Frank McCourt's Teacher Man: Teaching as a Reciprocal Experience
Frank McCourt's Teacher Man provides another useful comparison.
McCourt's memoir explores the experience of being a teacher and the complicated process through which teachers learn from their students.
A scholarly article comparing Teacher Man with Dead Poets Society argues that both works can be understood through the relationship between school, home, discourse, and students' meaning-making. The study particularly emphasizes how teachers can make classrooms more engaging by connecting educational material with students' experiences.
This idea helps us reconsider Narayan's story: the teacher is not simply an instructor imposing knowledge on a child. He is also constantly being forced to respond to the child's personality.
A Wider Literary Connection: Great Expectations
Charles Dickens's Great Expectations offers another perspective on education and social formation.
Pip's development is shaped by teachers, guardians, social expectations, and class structures. Like Narayan's child, Pip exists within a network of adults who attempt to shape his future.
But the difference is important:
- Narayan concentrates the conflict into a humorous tutoring relationship.
- Dickens expands educational and social formation across an entire coming-of-age narrative.
Both demonstrate that education is never completely separate from class, family, ambition, and social power.
The Story's Humour Is More Serious Than It Appears
One of Narayan's greatest achievements is his ability to turn a potentially serious subject into comedy.
The situation is absurd:
The teacher is supposed to control the child.
Instead, the child controls the teacher.
The teacher is supposed to punish the student.
Instead, the student effectively punishes the teacher.
The teacher is supposed to teach.
Instead, he becomes a playmate, storyteller and station master.
The humour therefore comes from role reversal.
But the laughter encourages the reader to think about serious questions:
- How much authority should a teacher possess?
- Can discipline become abuse?
- Can excessive parental protection weaken a child's development?
- Can children manipulate adults?
- Is education about obedience or independent thought?
- What happens when economic dependence interferes with professional authority?
This mixture of comedy and social observation is characteristic of Narayan's narrative method.
From Crime and Punishment to the Contemporary Classroom
Although Narayan's story belongs to a different historical context, its questions remain recognizable.
Contemporary educational research continues to examine the relationship between teacher authority, student discipline, and alternative approaches to punishment. For example, a 2026 study of teachers in Ghana examines the difficulties of maintaining student discipline after the banning of corporal punishment and considers alternative disciplinary approaches.
This does not mean that Narayan's story provides a ready-made educational policy. Rather, it demonstrates why literature is useful: fiction allows us to experience the emotional and social consequences of educational practices through characters and situations.
Conclusion: Who Is Really Being Educated?
R. K. Narayan's Crime and Punishment ultimately challenges the idea that education is a one-way process in which an adult teaches and a child learns.
The story presents education as a relationship of negotiation.
Its teacher is neither simply authoritarian nor completely compassionate. Its student is neither innocent victim nor straightforward villain. Its parents are neither entirely wrong nor entirely right. Instead, Narayan places all of them within an unstable system in which affection, money, discipline and authority constantly collide.
When read alongside Dead Poets Society, Matilda, The Lesson, Teacher Man, Great Expectations, and contemporary scholarship on teacher authority and corporal punishment, Narayan's story becomes part of a much larger literary conversation about what education should accomplish and who gets to decide how a child should be educated.
References
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