What Were Your Teachers Like At School ?

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Location
London
the bad ones more as they had a psychological effect on you. In my primary school we had a teacher who I modern times would be locked up for a very, very long time. She ruined kids and that's not an understatement. Kids she picked on carried the damage into adulthood. She made turned them from bright and confident kids to victims. I don't mean victims of hers but victims right through school years. She put the target on them and it stuck to them.
Out of interest how did she do this? What techniques?
sounds sophisticated.
 

numbnuts

Legendary Member
Gestapo and the Spanish inquisition comes to mind and the games teacher went to prision
 
I think it was an era where teachers were expected to be stern and strict to maintain discipline. It did help to keep focus on the subject being taught. It was also no different to parents then doing the same thing in name of discipline and nurturing.

There was no doubt however that some were truly incompetent and some were sadistic with the instrument at hand or with their mouth.

There was also some goodness - bullies were either humiliated in front of the glass or had their behinds whipped. They could only operate outside the school.

Now days parents are prepared to take or more than one job to move to a neighbourhood where school discipline exist to save their child's future.

By the way I got whipped when I was 12 years old just for talking. And the teacher in question always took sickie one day after pay day due to being blind drunk
 

gbb

Squire
Location
Peterborough
Pretty benign for me, as a quiet kid who didn't really push any boundaries I probably stayed under the radar. PE teacher was pretty nuts, very macho but that was about it. My wife went to the same school, couple years under ours and she said a couple teachers were 'creepy' with some of the girls...but generally OK. Comprehensive school, early 1970s.
 

swee'pea99

Legendary Member
Miss Heron - headmistress of my primary school - was great, and loved by all. She would tell miscreants to hit themselves because she was too old and decrepit to do a proper job. "Harder!", she'd say.

Mr Whitwam was always entertaining. One day he'd be a Gestapo officer, conducting the entire lesson in a gutteral German accent; another day he'd appear as Clint Eastwood, moseying his way through the lesson, fixing us with narrowed eyes.

Mr Reddish insisted we call him 'Iain'. He called us by our first names - fair's fair. He also let kids smoke in his class, claiming he couldn't be expected to get through 70 minutes without a fag, and if he was going to smoke he didn't see why we shouldn't be able to. (Fags were hid under desks if the Head appeared at the window.)

Miss Bromwich was so sweet that even the bad boys behaved, and all she had to do to regain order was look hurt.

Mostly my teachers were nice - and good teachers toboot. Lucky me, by the sounds of things...
 
I only heard of one instance when a teacher’s violent behaviour got him into trouble, he had thrown a board rubber at a pupil who ducked and it smashed the window. He was in trouble for damaging school property, not for his violence.
 
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I won't say that the teachers I had were bad at what they did - it was a top notch school on the actual education front, and certainly in the lower years, I did enjoy being taught by some really engaging teachers. English, geography, chemistry and physics spring to mind.

But when you didn't conform to what they envisaged a City Girl should be, that's when the trouble started. It was subtle, like ignoring you in class when you had a perfectly valid question, not clamping down on the bullying (when you're the short, bookish geek who speaks with a funny accent and has unusual interests, you're a target), not giving you the right careers information or any pastoral support etc...

It was only when I went off to uni to read engineering (I did a foundation year as well, which I wish I'd been told about, as it was one of the most worthwhile things I've ever done) that I really found out that I was perfectly normal. That is wasn't wrong to have a mechanical bent or be mad about cars or like motor racing.
 

Brads

Senior Member
Most were lunatics
Geography teacher used to tease boys with sexual inuendo and behaviour. She was very fit mind.
Maths teacher was an ex brickie who belted people so hard he must have caused permanent damage.
A few narcissistic psychos
A head teacher you wouldn’t trust with young boys nowadays , a metal work teacher who used to make me smoke the fags he gave me in a cupboard so no one would see lol.
Lunatics
 

swee'pea99

Legendary Member
Geography teacher used to tease boys with sexual inuendo and behaviour. She was very fit mind.
You remind me - one of our music teachers used to make outrageous sexual 'jokes' directed at the girls. They complained and he got the boot. He was a very striking character: very tall, very black, and incredibly posh, with a pure home counties accent. I was delighted a couple of years later to bump into him at Customs, by pure chance, just in time to hear a Customs officer ask his nationality: "British, my man - British!" he declared in his best cut-glass foghorn...
 

byegad

Legendary Member
Location
NE England
We had a psychopath for French, he was German and we were convinced he'd taught Hitler about persecution. A History teacher was suffering from shell-shock, having been blown up in a tank in the Western Desert. One PE teacher told lies about himself, claiming to have dived from the top of the Transporter bridge into the Tees we called him 'The Bull'.
Mr Polack was our music teacher and taught me to enjoy Jazz and Classical, music and I'm forever grateful to him. He retired the year we left and after the final assembly he was surrounded by pupils, including me, wishing him well.
 

oldwheels

Legendary Member
Location
Isle of Mull
Nothing really outstanding that I remember except perhaps for Chunky Chalmers a girls PE teacher who stood out in all the right places.
I did not get on with the last headmaster as I tended to talk back and defend myself.
My wife had been a primary teacher and one headmaster stood out but he was well liked by his staff as he defended them against parent complaints. He kept a bottle of whisky handy for random consumption and during music classes he sometimes appeared and took over conducting while standing on a desk somewhat unsteadily and shouting faster, faster as the kids sang.
 

Ian H

Ancient randonneur
I remember the various nicknames of teachers at my grammar school: Doc, Gob, Pug, The Tube, Bunny, Monty, and others I've forgotten.
I could relate the amusing stories about the psychotic, paraplegic maths teacher, but Paul Burke has done it better in Untorn Tickets.
Mrs Griffiths (always known as Ma'am) instilled in me a love of literature & poetry (and gently took the mickey out of us little Catholic boys). Pete Dobson did similarly for art.
Paul Staines is one of several infamous ex-pupils.
There is an unofficial website & email group for those who consider they were psychologically damaged by their time there.
 
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