Thoughts From The Corner

This blog was created by two private tutors from Stoke On Trent.

When we were asked why we offered private Sociology tuition in Stoke or private lessons in English we had to stop to re-assess.

On a practical level all the usual boxes were ticked – we enjoy our subjects: Theatre Studies | Child Development | Study Skills | Research Methods, we enjoy the one to one contact and we enjoy being able to pay the bills.

It was on the sub-conscious levels – the ‘why we are where we are’ dilemma, that proved more problematic to get to grips with.

Then one day the answer materialised. Dean was pondering the ‘Unseen Poetry’ section of the G.C.S.E. AQA English examination. There it was – the answer. In 1916 Robert Frost had the following poem published:

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveller, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

      Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

      And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

      I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I –

I took the one less travelled by,

And that has made all the difference.

The appropriate G.C.S.E. question would be something like, ‘What do you think the poet is saying about choice?’

However, this is not an English private tuition lesson so you must re-read the poem (as any good examination candidate would do!), sit down with a nice hot cuppa and mull over, ‘why you are where you are on this path we call “life” ‘.

Answers on a postcard to. . .