School memories

Our history teacher used to write all the notes on the board, in a sloping hand, and we then spent the lesson copying them! It was a double black board, and his writing was small....

Oh, and double "A" Level Latin on a Friday afternoon in a small, overheated classroom! We took it in turns to nod off quietly, but there were only six of us, so it didn't work very well.

When I was still training and doing teaching practice, Year 9 lowest set maths pupils would bring bags of sweets to class and have them open on their desks during my maths lessons. This was against school rules. I said nothing but helped myself to the sweets as I passed the desks of those who were trying it on. They were outraged and put the packets away.

I hated school. Bullying was rife and the aim of the teachers seemed to be to belittle anyone who didn't come near the top of the class. I think I've mentioned the Domestic Science teacher who told me I'd better not have a family after I rubbed sugar in with the butter and flour when making pastry!

Sounds as if the teachers were bullies too, kitty . Good thing you ignored her re the family

In the late 50s and early 60s I attended an all girls Sec Mod school, with an all boys Sec Mod next door. At lunch time we had to walk in crocodile formation through the playgrounds to reach the dining rooms which were attached to the boys side. Woe betide any of us if we talked or even looked at any of the boys!!!!
Most of our teachers were a complete and utter waste of space, bullies in the main, unable to control a class and taught (not really) by rote. We had to chant out great chunks of the Bible (why) and copy copius notes from text books!!!!!! The needlework teacher was the worst. She once held up an example of my attempt at a hand sown buttonhole as the worst that she had ever seen and a disgrace to the school????? Hence my hatred of dressmaking and anything involving needles!!!! Except there was one teacher-an English Lit/Language teacher who fired up my love of language and books. She was great and believe it or not I bumped into her a few years ago and she remembered me!!!! We had a coffee and discussed books which we had read! I asked her why she recalled me and she said that it was my love of English and that she was glad that she had done something for at least one pupil and that it had all been worthwhile.

It was one English teacher who inspired me too! I must have been in the second year at grammar school and, having always been a very fast reader, soon finished the set book that the others were ploughing through in a silent reading lessons. She noticed, and gave me the key to the English stock room. Heaven! The first book I found was "The Hobbit"!

Some of the teachers were the worst bullies in the school. Apart from hockey, PE was hell for me and one of the female teachers went out of her way to make sure it stayed that way. Her main motivational technique was to shout loudly about the size of your bum, thighs etc if you were plump and the scrawniness of your bum, thighs etc if you were very thin. She also thought it amusing to make you run around the 400m track a second time if she didn't think you'd tried hard enough the first time which of course was every lesson. One of the science teachers pushed a girl down a flight of stairs and broke her arm.

Then there were the creepy ones who didn't differentiate between sex objects and pupils.

Unlike these days, being a girls school we only had female teachers and other staff. That was, apart from the caretaker, a miserable old sod called Mr. Wolf. Many were the times that he was followed around at lunchtime by a line of girls calling out "What time is it Mr. Wolf?" I t used to make him furious!!

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Ahh! The good old days when education was really excellent! How did we all get so far... honestly some of the teachers I had would be struggling to get employed today and would have been disciplined for the aggressive and bullying behaviour or total lack of care as to whether we did anything or not!

Mad Mrs Madaro the maths teacher who either did not notice or care that I went form 100% failure in homework to 100% success overnight..I had secured a copy of the answer book! Obviously I failed my mock 'O' level as she did not 'teach' anything she just told you stuff and as long as you got an answer right , never mind the working out, she was happy!

Some however were fabulous..the lovely Miss Grey who taught our A level RE group and my American English Lit teacher..he was brill!

Ann Packer (of Olympic fame) wisely let me slope off to bu**er about at the end of the games field pretending to play rounders whilst she coached the girls who enjoyed PE and were already good at it!

Just after the war there was an interesting mix of teachers in the all-boys grammar school I graced with my rather grubby presence... Some of the younger ones were trickling back after being demobbed, others had been brought back out of retirement to fill the vacancies.

Our RI teacher was great, a Welsh novelist who wrote some pretty purple prose - I listened to his [i]Moulded in Earth[/i] on Woman's Hour and gained a new respect... no tweed jacket with leather elbow patches for him - always the bespoke suit. "Tell me boys," he said "how many of you smoke?" - hands rose, hesitantly. "Hmm" he said "smoke a pipe. It's much better for you..." End of subject!

A few years ago I found myself talking to a pleasant lady at a reunion (we had a sister girls school) - only to discover that her father was the teacher I loathed most! One day I had picked up my satchel, and some bread crumbs left from a jam sandwich (!) fell to the floor. He pounced, sent me to the headmaster, with a note - it apparently accused me of 'fouling the classroom'! The headmaster mumbled 'bit much, really' and let me go - obviously it wasn't the first time the man had gone over the top. I didn;t mention it to my new friend... nor did I tell her of the time I saw her father running for his life through the hall, pursued by a fifth form boy with a knife, both chased by the head shouting 'Don't do it, Jack! Don't do it..."
I certainly never saw 'Jack' again - I have no idea how it all turned out. Drama, in Muswell Hill!