Procrustean Places...
When I was a child, my grandfather (who was a Physics teacher with a repository of mythology!) told me a strange and haunting tale from Greek mythology. It was the story of a man named Procrustes.
Procrustes owned an inn on a lonely road. He promised weary travelers the perfect rest, claiming he had a magical bed that fit everyone exactly. And so, many stepped in; some too tired to question, some too trusting to imagine harm.
But the bed was not magical. It was rigid. Fixed. Unchanging.
If a traveler was too tall, Procrustes would cut off their legs or head to make them fit. If they were too short, he would stretch them (bone and sinew) until they matched the iron length of his standard.
And thus, every traveler "fit the bed."
I remember being horrified at the time, the grotesque violence of it. The injustice. The cruelty masked as hospitality. It was, I thought, only a story. But now, as an adult, and more specifically, as a teacher I realize I have seen this story unfold again and again. Except now the inn is an institution. Or, many!
The bed is a set of arbitrary standards, undefined rubrics, contradictory policies, and a maddening demand for uniformity. And the travelers?
They are us. Teachers.
We enter institutions with hope. We carry experience, ideas, love for our subjects, and dreams of making a difference. But then the reshaping begins. You must teach this way, not that way. Your assessment must fit this format, even if it doesn't suit your discipline. You are too passionate—tone it down. You're too quiet—speak up. You're not using enough tech. You're using too much tech. Your class is too lively. Your class is too quiet. Just follow the policy. What policy? Oh, the one we haven’t written yet.
And slowly, subtly, insidiously, we are reshaped. Not physically (though the stress takes its toll), but intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually. The stretch and squeeze of policy, the chop of micromanagement, the daily erosion of professional dignity; all to make us fit a bed we never asked to lie in.
The result? Stunted professional growth, because innovation is risk, and risk is punished. A disconnect from our subjects, because the joy of learning has been buried beneath administrative clutter. And a deep, aching loss of the teacher as a thinking individual, a creative soul, and a social being with a voice that once mattered.
The myth of Procrustes was a warning. Let us recognize the modern Procrustean beds in our institutions; not to fear them, but to challenge them. Because education should never be a place of conformity through mutilation. It should be a place of growth, where no one has to shrink, or stretch, to fit.
Manu (2025, June 17)
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