While the educational project privileges signifying speech, the psychical significance of the "voice" has become an institutional "vanishing mediator." Against the commonplace assumption that the voice functions as a benign vehicle for conscious meaning-making, this article examines the sublimated privilege and function of the voice in the context of pedagogy, analyzing the relationship of the voice to the ideal ego of the teacher and, further, the ways in which the voice functions to enjoin the subject to the symbolic law. The author asks whether teachers are not "guided by voices," affected by the everyday cadences and tonalities that play a significant part in teaching and learning. He cites Derrida's declaration that the voice occupies a position of privilege in the socioeducational apparatus. Through an examination of popular culture and didactic children's narrative, the author draws upon Lacanian psychoanalytic theory to articulate the underlying fantasies that "frame" the voices of both student and teacher. Throughout, he attempts to articulate the paradox of the voice and its inconsolable problematics for the project of education. (Contains 3 notes.)