Daft Old Duffer returns. Guest opinion articles do not necessarily reflect the views of the publication. Ed
School, for me, was a grey fog of boredom through which floated various disciplinary figures called teachers.
Throughout my primary school years these figures remained largely anonymous, distinguished only as those who were a bit scary and those that were not.
At Grammar School they took on more definition. All them were doubtless perfectly ordinary, perfectly decent souls with wives and gardens and almost certainly squeaky bikes. But we learned to distinguish one from another by some peculiar quirk of speech, or appearance, or habit.
An unsurprising lack of interest
One was quite proud of a hole in his head, result of trench life in World War One. And another threw frequent bouts of such mad hysterical rage (egged on by cocky snots like me of course) that if there hadn’t been a wartime shortage, he would have been led off to somewhere secure.
A third mumbled a lot and oh so politely knocked on classroom doors before leaving the room; while another sported a very strange nose through which he hummed before every sentence.
What none of them had was sufficient personality beyond these idiosyncrasies to inspire in any one of their pupils the slightest modicum of interest in the subject they taught.
And crucially, they could never tell us why.
Just because …
Why history? some asked. Why English grammar? demanded others. And in one persistent, overall, groaning chorus, why Latin?
In reply they could only waffle, mutter platitudes, change the subject. And we knew they taught their subject not because it was useful, but for no other reason than that it had been taught to them.
Real world experience
Then I moved on to Technical College. And in an instant everything changed. The lecturers were guys who had been recruited not from university and Teacher Training College but from the whole wide world out there.
They knew what they were talking about. They’d been there, done the job, written the report. The chap tasked to explain the maths behind electrical theory had designed the circuitry, installed the circuitry, repaired the circuitry. And the one drumming heat energy facts into us had designed, built, overhauled, the machinery to which his sums were dedicated. He had actually got grease under his fingernails.
You could talk to them, query their statements. And get straight answers from someone who knew he was right because he’d done it – not because someone had told him it was.
The answers came
I became an engineering apprentice without much idea what it was all about (and nobody, least of all the ‘careers master’ at the Grammar School could tell me.) I remained an apprentice and subsequently became a moderately useful engineer because of the enthusiasm the Tech, College lecturers instilled in me. And because they were blokes whose ranks it would be a privilege to join.
Because they inspired me with not only how but why.
Inspire and excite
The moral is it’s no good Teach standing in front of a bunch of kids and expecting them to absorb the knowledge he’s imparting just because the timetable says they should. That sort of attitude may well have sufficed in the days when Sirs most prized possession was his cane. But not now.
No good getting indignant when they don’t pay attention, don’t do their homework, sometimes don’t even bother turning up. Teach has got to somehow convince them the knowledge is useful, not just tell them it is.
If he doesn’t it’s not them that’s failed. It’s him.
Image: Sam Saunders Leeds under CC BY 2.0
