Friday 12 December 2014

Terrifying Teachers by Tanya Landman


Things were different in my day.  Teachers were seriously scary creatures. They shouted, turned purple, threw chalk, whacked rulers over your knuckles.  It was a common occurrence for disruptive students to be sent to the headmaster for the cane or the slipper.  Corporal punishment was a perfectly acceptable way to maintain discipline.  (Of course, they weren’t all like that, but it’s the shouty violent ones I remember most clearly.)

When I was in what’s now called Year 6 I had a truly terrifying teacher.  She had a vast, jutting bosom, a towering beehive that tapered into a point and Catwoman style spiky glasses  (think Mrs.Ribble in Dav Pilkey’s Captain Underpants series). Her wardrobe consisted of nylon blouses and crimplene tunics so she crackled with static when she walked. She exuded hostility to children.  I remember one occasion when she literally washed a boy’s mouth out with soap and water because she’d heard him swearing. The sight of this tough, streetwise lad reduced to tears, foaming at the mouth and retching was something I’ll never forget.


I was petrified of her – so petrified that one day I ran away, out of the classroom, out of the school all the way home where I had to climb in through an open window because no one was at home.

Things have changed.  My own children have lovely teachers:  caring, nurturing, creative professionals who want their pupils to achieve their full potential and who go to enormous lengths to see it happen, but who also want the students in their care to be happy.

Yet when my youngest child started at the local secondary I realised with something of a jolt that both my boys had passed through the whole of primary school without ever once reading a whole book in class.  The focus of reading was on extracts and comprehension exercises. They rarely – if ever -  wrote a story or a poem.  If they did any ‘creative’ writing it was all recounts of things they’d done or seen.  I had two bright, articulate children who loved stories and yet Literacy was their least favourite subject.

And it wasn’t just them.  I recently did a talk at a primary school and mentioned Charlotte’s Web (as I often do).  To my delight, the children knew it.  But when I asked if the teacher had been able to read THAT bit aloud without choking or crying they cheerfully said, ‘Oh, we didn’t finish it.’  They’d just had an extract read to them. And then had to answer a list of comprehension questions.

Now it’s not the teachers’ fault of course – I’m well aware of that.  Yet I’m sad that this state of affairs exists because when I was a child every teacher I ever had read to us.  It was part of the school routine that – at the end of the day - for ten or twenty minutes a teacher would read aloud.  And, surprisingly, that seriously scary teacher read very well.  It was the one time of day when you could guarantee that the whole class was engaged and focussed.  Through her I  first encountered Emil and the Detectives, Elidor, Tom’s Midnight Garden  and other  wonderful classics.  The real world dissolved and the class was carried away to another time and place.

It was magical, and what’s more it made me realise that no one is all bad – that even the scariest of grown-ups could have redeeming features.  I still can’t forgive her for the soap and water incident, but I will always be grateful for those stories.



10 comments:

Spade and Dagger said...

School was also where I got to listen to a wide range of books, and lots that I would not have heard at home. It was the best part of the day, sitting cross-legged on the floor, enthralled by the story until the bell rang to go home. Strangely, I too remember some of the most dragon-like teachers being the best at reading aloud. I also asked my parents for copies of any unfinished school books as Christmas presents, so it definitely shaped my early literacy.

Lydia Syson said...

Oh yes…similarly pained by having children who love reading coming home from primary school saying they 'hate Literacy'… because of what it's become. I loved the image of your static-crackling teacher.

Tortie said...

Even in the 60's (a long, long time ago when I was at school) reading for pleasure wasn't encouraged much beyond primary school - in my experience, anyway. Having to analyse Austin and Shakespeare for O levels put me off both for life, and although I've always loved words I chose sciences from then on.
But you're right, it's deeply depressing that now children as young as 7 are being asked to analyse books rather than reading for pleasure. I've been on several school visits where the teacher has wanted to discuss "authorial intent" and sentence structure (eek on both counts, as I haven't a clue about either) rather than things I can talk about e.g. why I love stories.
PS Thanks for introducing me to Charlotte's Web, Tanya. I'd never read it until you enthused about it so much that I felt I had to!

Sally Zigmond said...

I attended primary school in the late 1950s. Friday afternoon was when the teacher read a book to us, chapter by chapter. As it was an all-girl's primary school, in the senior classes anyway, when she read books ranging from Anne of Green Gables to A Tale of Two Cities and many in between. In addition, every week we would write out a poem we found in the many poetry books in the classroom bookshelves in our poetry books, illustrate it on the blank page opposite and then learn it to recite the following week. How many we heard! We recited times-tables daily,weekly spelling tests, painting, dancing and P.E as well. I remember building a castle out of cardboard plus a medieval village out of straw. We kept a cage of mice that kept escaping! A local cat would come and join us sometimes. We had a nature table and went on nature-walks. How on earth did we have time?

Sue Bursztynski said...

You know, I had some lovely teachers, but I don't remember being read to. Ever. Maybe it's my memory that's at fault. I do recall being at the theatre once to see a wonderful performance of The Hobbit, with puppets. I turned to ask the child behind me if she could see okay and we chatted. She said she was looking forward to the show because her teacher had read them the book. Lovely teacher!

I teach a literacy subject at secondary school(we had to set it up, our kids were reading at very low levels). We read to them once a week, for pleasure, and in hopes the students will ask to read it themselves. This year I read, chapter by chapter, The Invention Of Hugo Chabret, on which the film was based, and they loved it! It looks huge but is a children's book with lots of drawings, which are part of the story, and they lean forward as I say, "and here's Hugo running down the corridor, opening the door..." We got nearly to the end when the entire class was promoted to a higher reading level, so never finished it. I do let kids take books home as long as we've finished with term.

Becca McCallum said...

I can remember reading The Desperate Journey and doing a project on it. I think we also read Elidor, but I don't know if we had time to finish it before we moved class. I read it in my own time anyway. I was always rubbish at class reading together because I read faster than everyone else, and read ahead when others were (oh so slowly....!) reading aloud, so that when it came to my turn I was engrossed in the story pages ahead and got told off for not following the story...

I loved reading and writing at primary, and loved (most of) the texts that we did at secondary school. Unfortunately, doing Higher English and the way it was taught put me right off 'English' and I never did it at uni because of that - which is a terrible shame, because I'm following a friend's university English course with great glee and interest. (she gets to write about fairy stories for her dissertation...!).

Sue Purkiss said...

This is interesting, isn't it? I don't actually remember being read to, either - not books like that. I read masses of books from the school library, but that's different. At junior school, as far as I remember, English was about grammar, spelling (spelling and mental arithmetic tests every Friday morning), compositions, comprehension... stuff like that. Primary school - lots of patterns and handwriting practice. We had reading books - Janet and John - but I don't actually remember being read to.

Penny Dolan said...

I recall Mr Stevenson, a distinguished looking teacher, possibly past retiring age, who read us "top juniors" wonderful stories like The Monkey's Paw and more. We were always entranced by these unexpected story sessions. He had silvery white hair and eye brows, a trim white moustache and neat pointy beard, and wore a dark three piece suit - the waistcoat beneath looped with his silver watch chains. Think of Derek Jacobi as a severe, military man. I often think of the power and life he put into his readings when trying to read or tell stories in primary schools. A nicer thought than the reduction of literature to bite size analysis pieces.

Ann Turnbull said...

From the age of 13, in the 1950s, I went to a technical school. These schools were set up to teach useful skills such as (in my class) shorthand-typing and accounts to those who had failed to get to grammar school, so we had a lot of lessons and exams in these subjects - which must have reduced the time for other things. Despite this we had a wonderful history teacher who encouraged us to do our own research, and an English teacher who spent one whole session a week simply reading stories to us. She read Great Expectations, David Copperfield, Uncle Tom's Cabin and many other classics. As we approached 'O' levels she also read us the set books and discussed them with us as literature, not as stuff to be analysed and processed for exams. It's so sad that children nowadays can't be given the time in school to listen to stories and think about them as we did then.

Leslie Wilson said...

I can remember being read to in primary, but not secondary. The really rather horrible headmaster, in whose class I (in a tiny country school) spent my last year at primary before going to secondary school aged just 10, this man, as I say, read 'White Fang' to us, and 'Carcajou' in a droning voice, which did however make me want to read the books for myself and find out what had been going on while my mind was wandering. So I guess I owe him something...though he used to force me to eat tongue at school dinner whenever it was served, in the full knowledge that I would then have to go and sick up my entire lunch in the outside toilet. And tried to con me that fat was 'white meat'.