The boy’s-ear proverb describes anticipatory fear, not where hearing lives

Evidence

But the Egyptian scholar John Williams Tait, and more recently Niv Allon, have argued — I think persuasively — that the metaphor is doing something more specific. The metaphor is about attention. Not where hearing lives. Where hearing is focused. The boy’s attention is on his back. Which is to say: the only part of the boy that is fully present in the schoolroom is the part bracing for the cane. The boy is — the boy in this metaphor is a body listening for the next blow. Not learning. Not absorbing the lesson. The boy is, in this image, constituted entirely by anticipatory fear of the strike. — , The Rod and the Child, 144

Categorization

• DEFINE: Clarifies the correct reading of ‘the ear is on his back’ — attention, not neurology.