Try To Be Acceptable

Being encouraged to learn, was always the way I judged my teachers. Some, as mentioned, did nothing to improve what you were there for; to learn. In some classes even, you were told to be quiet (The nuns were particularly good at that). Or told to wait until spoken to (that was often a phrase heard from my mother as well). They did not want you interrupting with some question, simply because, as they put it, you were ‘too stupid’ to understand (That was said to me on several occasions). The real difference was how often did a great teacher ask me to ask further questions? Rather than simply stopping at the first answer I found. The great teachers ‘wanted’ you to search and cross reference. They saw the search for knowledge as crucial, the answers interesting, but questing for true information, was encouraged by them. They wanted you to make an effort and study, or improve.

Yes, there was also occasionally that ‘crush’ on some of the female teachers (at least in my case and preference) as I grew older, well some of them (Some were more like my mother, so definitely no ‘crush’ with them). They were the ones you tried extra hard to please, for the sake of a favourable smile or moment of singular attention. Even one or two of the nuns captured the heart a little (but it never became a habit…ha ha). Unfortunately others of that ‘sisterhood’, preferred the terror over the praise and kind words. Certainly didn’t get the best out of their students. Some years later it was lovely Mrs Prince at High school, who was definitely a favourite, but she was also enthusiastic about teaching biology too. 

Then, another particularly interesting teacher in another one of my High Schools, was a Mr West. This was the second Mr West I’d had as a teacher, not the first Mr West. The first, had appeared throughout the entire year to be nothing but a very, very angry man. I don’t recall ever seeing him smile, except when a thrown piece of chalk, or worse, a thrown blackboard duster (the old wooden backed ones, not the light weight plastic ones) hit a student full on. He even walked angry, around the school ground and outside of school. This second Mr West however was the absolute reverse. He made real efforts with us in trying to interest us in Science, and was interested in us as growing minds, whom could be encouraged to ask questions of the world. Unfortunately, through most of the year, he was battling a group of the arrogant ‘Capitalist format’ trained kids, who were not interested in science at all. By then, ‘they’ already had decided (assumed really) they would be working in much higher income earning jobs (like their parents), than something in the drab world of science (or so they classed it), which most of them looked down on. There were a few of us very interested in the subject, but it was difficult having to cope with the attitude of these spoilt few.

(Continued tomorrow)