Short Stories About Teachers and Students: 10 Classics Explained
Quick answer: Ten classic short stories about teachers and students, from The Last Lesson and Bade Bhai Sahab to The Schartz-Metterklume Method and Paul's Case, summarised and compared.
Everyone has had a teacher and most people have been one, which is why these stories are read with such partisanship. The writers here split evenly between the classroom seen from the desk and from the front of the room, and neither view is flattering for long.
The collection begins with a lesson that is also a farewell, moves through the frauds and the pedants, and ends with a boy who learned everything from a mountain. Each title links to a page that summarises the story and explains its ending.
The stories
The Last Lesson by Alphonse Daudet. Little Franz, late and unprepared, finds the schoolroom silent and the village elders sitting at the back, because Monsieur Hamel is teaching his last lesson in French before the order from Berlin takes effect. Hamel writes on the board and dismisses them with a gesture.
Bade Bhai Sahab by Premchand. The younger brother learns nothing and passes; the elder learns everything and fails, and lectures him each year on the dangers of pride. The final lecture, after a second failure, is the story's real lesson.
The Schartz-Metterklume Method by Saki. A bored aristocrat, mistaken at a railway station for the new governess, decides to keep the job for an afternoon and teaches history by having the children act it out. The lodge-keeper's daughters are recruited as Sabine women.
The Student by Anton Chekhov. A seminary student, cold and doubting on Good Friday, stops at a fire and finds himself teaching two widows a story they already know, about Peter and the cock's crow. Their tears teach him something back.
The Man in a Case by Anton Chekhov. Belikov, who teaches Greek and wears galoshes in all weathers, terrorises a whole school and town with his anxiety that something might come of anything. A colleague's sister laughs at him on a staircase.
The Storyteller by Saki. An aunt on a train tries to improve three children with a story about a good girl, and fails; a bachelor opposite offers one about a girl who was horribly good and what happened to her. The children want it again.
The Sculptor's Funeral by Willa Cather. Henry Steavens, the dead sculptor's pupil, brings his master's body home to Kansas and sits with it through a night of the town's contempt. What he learns about where his teacher came from is the story.
A Wagner Matinee by Willa Cather. Clark, who was taught Latin and scales by his aunt on a Nebraska farm, repays her with an afternoon of music in Boston. She was his first teacher, and the concert reverses their roles.
Paul's Case by Willa Cather. The story opens with Paul's teachers gathered to decide whether to readmit him, and they cannot say what is wrong except that he smiles in class. His drawing master remembers seeing him asleep and thinking he looked old.
The Great Stone Face by Nathaniel Hawthorne. A boy named Ernest grows up under a cliff shaped like a noble face, and a prophecy says a man will come who looks like it. He measures every famous visitor against it and finds them wanting, while a poet watches him.
Reading them together
The collection's argument is that teaching in fiction is shown by what gets learned when the lesson is over. Hamel's last words and Belikov's fall down the stairs are both lessons no syllabus contained; Saki's bachelor and Lady Carlotta teach by refusing to be improving. Cather's three stories are about what a student owes a teacher, and each pays the debt in a different currency: a night watch, an afternoon, a week.
The Student and The Great Stone Face are the two where the pupil turns out to be the teacher, and neither Chekhov nor Hawthorne lets the character notice.
If you want to write about teachers and students
What writers can take from this
- Read The Last Lesson first; it is short and every other story here is a footnote to its last gesture.
- Saki's two are the comic pair and both fit in twenty minutes.
- Bade Bhai Sahab pairs with Paul's Case for two boys the system could not read.
- The Man in a Case is a frame story; notice who is telling it and where they are lying.
- The Great Stone Face is slow and old-fashioned; read it for the ending, which is not what the prophecy promised.
Try it yourself
Write a story in which a teacher delivers a lesson they know will be their last, without telling the class, and one student understands halfway through.
Questions
What is the best short story about a teacher?
The Last Lesson is the most read worldwide, and The Man in a Case the most admired. Bade Bhai Sahab holds the same place in Hindi and Urdu.
Which short stories about teachers and students are good for students?
The Last Lesson, Bade Bhai Sahab, The Storyteller and The Schartz-Metterklume Method are short and much taught. Paul's Case suits older classes.
Which classic story about teachers is the shortest?
The Last Lesson, at about fifteen hundred words. The Storyteller and The Schartz-Metterklume Method are each around two thousand.
By the Writory editorial team, reviewed by working writers. Updated September 2026.
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