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| Nah, she wasn't this hot - almost |
Her name was Miss Dale, and she was seriously sexy. Small, blonde (update: nope - redhead actually, the ol' memory was playing tricks), early 20s, she usually wore a blue denim mini-skirt and also indulged in some serious sadism that too many teachers of the period were prone to. She had a nasty habit of punching your arm several times to emphasise whatever point she was making, and I certainly wasn't the only kid who suffered from a bruised upper limb in her class. Where did such rage come from?
One day, she decided to test our spelling by reading out words to the class, so that we could then write them in our jotters to be marked by her diminutive, angry self. One of the words she uttered was 'yawn', which, due to my familiarity with the Shakespearean-style of speech in MARVEL's THOR, I took to be 'yon' and thus wrote it in my jotter accordingly. She then collected our efforts and sat at her desk to evaluate them, while we busied ourselves with something else.
After a while, she called me out to her desk and berated me for seemingly misspelling the word, then belted me with the tawse - solely for what she considered my lack of spelling ability, not because I was cheeky or anything. 50-odd years later, I now know just what an utterly inept teacher she was not to have considered the possibility that I'd been thinking of another, perfectly legitimate, phonetically similar word to the one she'd had in mind.
Her response should surely have been: "There are two words pronounced that way, define the one you mean." Then it would've been a simple case of me explaining exactly what word I'd had in mind, and her then asking me to spell the other, the one she was looking for. The fact was, I'd spelt the word properly, it was just a different word to the one she'd been thinking of. And yet that glaringly obvious possibility never occurred to her. What a thicko.
I did learn a few valuable lessons that day though. Firstly, that teachers weren't always right; secondly, that Miss Dale, though sexy, was a bitch - and thirdly, there's no way clearly hormonal people should ever be tasked with imparting knowledge to any group of children, when their main method of teaching seems to consist of punching and belting them until they 'learn' things.
This was primary school, mind, so we're not talking about teachers having to deal with surly and unruly teenagers - we're talking children of only 8 or 9 years old. What the hell were educationalists thinking of back then? As I've said before, kids today don't have a clue about just how lucky they are compared to ourselves.
As for Miss Dale? I have absolutely no recollection of ever seeing her again after I left primary. Maybe she left before I did. However, it would be nice if she learned how to manage her anger issues and went on to become, at the very least, a competent (and kinder) teacher. The alternative simply doesn't bear thinking about.
Miss Dale will now be in her 70s and has probably been through many divorces
ReplyDeleteAnd maybe even psychiatrists, LH. It wouldn't surprise me.
DeleteThis brings back memories now to 1968..I had a teacher called Miss Davey. She wasn't a bitch, no, the letter to describe her was C. She hated us boys. yet the girls were angels. She lived with another lady called Miss Shirley whom would occasionally pop into class to quickly see Miss Davey. Looking back now they were a couple of Lesbians. Miss Davey the man hater. That was a tough year
ReplyDeleteI had an art teacher called Mrs. Barclay in secondary school. She wasn't a lesbian, but when some brushes went missing one day in art class, she searched all the boys' schoolbags, but not the girls'. Obviously she also thought that all girls were angels. There's more to the story, which can be found in part 4 of Schooltime Scandals - Getting The 'Brush Off'.
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