Having intimately known a number of instructors—teachers, professors, a principal or two—in my travels and relationships, I approached “Teacher...” with a heavy sigh of ennui.

Although I had never been a teacher, I felt I knew more than enough abut the miseries of being a teacher. I imagine that, were I put to the test, my presumptuous attitude would have received a C-, at best.

Author Scott-Coe wastes no time in taking the reader into the pit of despair, humiliation and absurdity that is a teacher’s existence—and that’s what happens before the figurative first bell rings. The politics that require subjugation, being a whipping boy for incompetent parents, serving as an excuse for shadowy administrators and ultimately being offered as a sacrifice for overpaid politicians, is all in a day’s work for the typical teacher. One wonders why anyone would go into teaching.

Nevertheless, and perhaps in spite of it, the utter horror of a teacher’s milieu is well conveyed in this fine title. The book is a page-turner, even in this world of reality shows, YouTube atrocities and bizarre on-line pornography. Were it adapted properly, this book would make a great film.

The stoic subtitle suggests that there is much to endure and little to gain from the world of teaching, but Scott-Coe proves otherwise—if at least that she brought to the fore a fantastic book that is a fascinating read even as it divulges the dreadful occupation. Drawing on well- penned pieces about the parallels between teaching and motherhood, whereby the virgin-whore complex is invoked by way of the teaching profession inviting “sentimentality on on hand and harsh judgements on the other, Scott-Coe deftly exhibits many anecdotes whereby the public measures a teacher’s success “by degrees of sacrifice to the idol of childhood” even as the work is too often regarded by the parents as “glorified day care.”

Sinclair Lewis would be greatly appreciative that Jo Scott-Coe has picked up the torch.

($16.95 from Aunt Lute Books, P.O. Box 410687, San Francisco CA 94141 www.auntlute.com)