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The Dim View of Schoolmasters in Arabian Nights
The tales offer some advice for teachers as well as for parents.
by Ari Armstrong, Copyright © 2026
My child did a Brain Quest exercise about Arabian Nights and seemed interested, so I reserved a Penguin volume (Malcolm Lyons) through the library. Due to a cataloguing glitch, I got the second volume first. Anyway, ChatGPT recommended that, within that volume, we start with the tales of Sinbad, the City of Brass, and the Ebony Horse.
Glancing through the list of entries, I noticed that three of the stories pertain to schoolmasters, starting with Night 402.
A man found a schoolmaster "perfectly equipped to deal with any question put to him." The man said, "I said to myself that this was something remarkable in a teacher, as men of intelligence agree that schoolteachers are stupid."
One day the man found the schoolmaster in mourning. When finally the schoolmaster said he mourned his beloved, the man said, "I said to myself that this was the first sign of a lack of intelligence on his part," for he could find another love. (I think this says more about the tale's attitudes toward women.)
But then the man got a "second sign" of the schoolmaster's lack of intelligence, when he said he didn't even know whom he loved. It turns out he schoolmaster fell in love with a woman of poetry upon hearing some lines of verse through the window, then thought his beloved dead when he heard some additional lines of poetry.
Another man found another schoolmaster "cultured, sensible and refined." "This surprised him as he held that teachers in schools were never wholly intelligent." The schoolmaster continued to impress the man, until, thinking his testicles "serve no useful purpose," the schoolmaster cut off his testicles, nearly bleeding to death in the process. "The guest left saying: 'Those who say that no schoolmaster is fully intelligent are right, even if the latter know all that there is to know."
Finally, "one of the hangers-on at a mosque could neither read nor write but used to make his living by trickery. One day, it occurred to him to open a school and teach children to read. He collected and hung up slates and sheets of paper with writing on them, put on a huge turban and sat at the school door. The passers-by, looking at the turban and at the slates and papers, thought that he must be a good teacher and so they brought him their children. He would tell one of them to read and another to write, and the children would teach one another."
These stories, hundreds of years old, are interesting for various reasons. They illustrate that the stereotype of the overeducated person with no common sense is quite old.
The first story illustrates a person so embedded in literature that it pushes real life aside.
The second story I think shows that wisdom involves epistemic caution. Just because you know "all that there is to know" doesn't mean you know everything. Knowledge is inherently limited. The tale reminds me of "Chesterton's Fence," the idea that things of tradition might have some purpose that you simply don't know. Especially when it comes to biology, we should presume that an organ has a purpose, even if we don't know what it is. (However the case of testicles seems more obvious!)
The grim reading of the third story is that people are dazzled by showmanship and so will do things like place their children with charlatans. Some on the left might draw a critique of markets and say that parents are unlikely to choose schools and instructors wisely; I would counter that we seem not to select public-school leaders and teachers very wisely. At least when parents foot the bill directly they're more likely to choose wisely, evaluate results, and make changes if necessary.
The happier reading is that children often are remarkably capable of teaching themselves, so the quality of schools matters less than one might think. However, in cases involving issues such as dyslexia, it really is the case that children need solid intervention by competent adults. Even in usual cases, a competent educator knows when to step in and when to hand a child the reins. A totally hands-off school probably is better than a badly regimented one. But a student will tend to do better with appropriate levels and types of direct instruction.
I'd never paid much attention to Arabian Nights; now I find, quite by accident, that I probably should spend more time with the stories.