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| Me and David in primary school in 1967, though the following tale happened in secondary circa '72/'73 |
It was in one of the annexed huts at the far end of the school one day that the following event occurred. The subject was music and this particular hut was used as the 'music hut' on a permanent basis. As we took our seats, the teacher decided to 'take' the register, and began calling out each pupil's name and ticking them off in turn upon receipt of a "here" in response to the announced appellation.
Jimmy Riddle - "here". Billy Bigballs - "here". Johnny Jumpstart - "here". And so it went, until she got to DAVID DRUMMOND's name. Now, I should mention that David was a quiet, studious boy, who never got into any kind of trouble as far as I was aware. The teacher must have known this, so her reaction to what happened next was completely unjustified in regard to poor Davey.
When she called his name - David Drummond - David replied "here", but he wasn't the only pupil to do so. As his "here" ended, suddenly another one sounded from somewhere in the room - "here" - and then another - and another - until it was echoing all around the class. It went like this - David Drummond - "here", "here", "here", "here", "here", "here" - about a dozen or more times from various points in the room in a 'living stereo surround-sound' effect that was truly impressive.
Teacher was incandescent with rage. "Drummond - you're the ringleader - get out here now!" Bewildered, Davey trudged out to her desk, whereupon, if I recall correctly, she belted him with the tawse and sent him back to his seat in abject shame for something he hadn't done. Naturally, we felt bad for him - his fate was utterly undeserved - but it'd been funny to hear the word "here" bounce around the room and to see the teacher take an apoplectic fit over it, even if she had belted an innocent boy.
Teacher was incandescent with rage. "Drummond - you're the ringleader - get out here now!" Bewildered, Davey trudged out to her desk, whereupon, if I recall correctly, she belted him with the tawse and sent him back to his seat in abject shame for something he hadn't done. Naturally, we felt bad for him - his fate was utterly undeserved - but it'd been funny to hear the word "here" bounce around the room and to see the teacher take an apoplectic fit over it, even if she had belted an innocent boy.
I thought the result of each individual "here" in close succession to one another sounded extremely musical - very King's Singers in effect, so I'm not sure why Teacher reacted in the way she did. You'd think she'd have been proud of our daring initiative in forming a class 'band' - even if it was only for a short, one-off performance.
Teachers, eh?! I just hope David can look back and laugh about it now. It was a classic moment that deserves to be remembered, though I guess you had to actually be there to appreciate it in the same way that I do. (Which I probably wouldn't had I been the one belted.)
Today teacher would have been dismissed, taken to court,had her teachers certificate removed, finished up on the the evening news, and made to pay compensation to the victim. Other than that David Drummond I suspect happened to be the unlucky person at the time Teacher had a bad start to the day,
ReplyDeleteShe had a bad start, but Davey had a worse one I suppose, LH. If teachers only knew the imprint they made on their pupils by behaving like that. Back in our day (typing that makes me feel soooo old), I think it's a safe bet to say that there was a high percentage of teachers who just weren't fit for the job. Perhaps they were academically qualified, but they certainly weren't 'people (or pupil) persons'.
DeleteTeachers were banned from hitting pupils when I was in Primary 1 (the belt had been banned by then, but teachers were still allowed to hit you with their hand). For the next few years, I had some teachers who were seriously strange people, individuals who seemed determined to wage psychological warfare on pupils with threats and comments that seemed to have been calculated to promote fear in young minds. For example, a teacher (let's call her Mrs Lee)told a boy in my class who was swinging on his chair that if there was a fire alarm and he fell off his chair, she'd leave him there to burn (Mrs Lee would also scream 'hideous creature' at kids from close range if they were caught whispering to the person at the next desk).
DeleteI was in her class one day looking at a globe of the world that sat on a cabinet at the side of the room. Fascinated, I gently touched it to spin it and the globe fell off the stand- it obviously hadn't been attached properly, but fell to the floor undamaged. Mrs Lee stormed toward me, face contorted like the Hulk, snail-shell hairdo quivering in rage, and ranted at the top of her voice about my vandalism, how my family would be made to pay for the 'damage' and how she would be speaking to the headmistress. It was all threats of course, she only wanted to scare me, and she did- I can still remember going home from school that day and seeing my mum standing at the kitchen sink and being too scared to tell her what had happened (I really believed that I had inadvertently caused some terrible damage to school property and felt ashamed). Nothing came of it, of course, and I've often wondered what made Mrs Lee act like that- a few years ago, it all clicked into place. This was a woman with no people skills, who had relied entirely on the belt and hitting kids to maintain discipline. When those were banned, she had no empathy or interpersonal skills to fall back on- intimidation and bullying were all she had, and she wasn't the only teacher I encountered like this.
The saddest thing about this, I think, is that when she was behaving calmly and sanely, she was actually a really good teacher. I still remember how she explained how commas are used in a sentence more clearly than any other teacher that ever taught me, and how she showed me that adding 10 to a number and subtracting 1 was an easy way of adding 9 (I had a blindspot with adding 9 to a number in arithmetic and could never get it right, til she told me that- I still do that now).
This was back in the very early 80s, I wouldn't imagine there was any retraining given to teachers back then to help them deal with the ban on corporal punishment, but there really should have been.
Traumatic though some of those times were, I do find it funny to think back on some of those days now- we had a teacher called Mr Allan who had very prominent front-teeth. When he was annoyed, like the time he caught me running in a corridor, he would scream into your face then suddenly pause and just stare wild-eyed at you, buck teeth pressing on his lower lip for about 10 seconds. I don't know if it was supposed to intimidate, but I used to stand there desperately trying not to laugh at him.
That's curious - my earlier answer seems to have disappeared. I said something about teachers probably not being allowed to hit pupils, even with their hand, but probably did it anyway. I also mentioned Mr. Ross (who we called 'Woss' because he had a lisp) who fitted the description of your Mr. Allan, and was useless with pupils. He tried to belt someone one day, and as he brought down his arm, the belt slipped from his grasp and skidded along the floor 'til it hit the skirting board. He was eventually promoted and moved to another school (I think). I wonder where the first version of this answer disappeared to?
DeleteI know a teacher hit me when I was in Primary 1, so I'm assuming it was allowed- someone had poured out their dirty painting water into one of the spaces on the paint pallet, the teacher was furious at this and shouted 'How did this happen?' I thought she literally didn't know how it had happened, so trying to be helpful I said 'It must have been like this', picked up my own water and poured it over the pallet. She didn't appreciate my effort to clarify the mystery!
ReplyDeleteI also forgot to mention Mr Downey earlier, a strange gnome of a PE teacher with a Morrissey style quiff who made you shoup 'strumpet' instead of 'here' when he was calling the register, and who once physically picked up a classmate of mine on a wet football pitch and threw him into a puddle for talking over him. I saw him a few years ago at a football game and he spent the entire game shouting at the the referee in a Robert DeNiro type of voice. As I said, a deeply strange person.
Alas, too many teachers in our day were deeply strange, DS, and they probably passed that quality on to quite a number of pupils. Of course, I'M perfectly normal. (Fwubble.)
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