Читать книгу Grumpy Old Men: New Year, Same Old Crap - David Quantick - Страница 23

There are as many different kinds of teacher as there are people, which is no coincidence as many teachers are people. But for general purposes, teachers can be divided into the following groups:

1. LIBERAL TEACHERS. These are the teachers who started out with the best intentions – to change the world through education, to bring out the best in young people, and to instil values like fairness and equality in new generations. Time has not been kind to these teachers, and they spend breaktime behind the staff room smoking like murderers and taking large gulps from the school hipflask. Despite being on exactly the same wages as their colleagues, they somehow manage to look poorer than everyone else. Even the strange kid who lives in a skip with his grandparents and goes to school in a coal sack points at these teachers and says, ‘Him be poor! I ate a bogie pie.’

2. STRICT TEACHERS. Once upon a time strict teachers ruled the world. They bestrode the plains of academe snorting great balls of flame from their hairy nostrils and giving detentions to everyone they met. They were even allowed to hit children, something that only other children are allowed to do nowadays. This seems astonishing now, but until the European Court of No Fun abolished corporal punishment, strict teachers were the caning, whacking, ear-twisting, Chinese-burning kings of school.

Now, however, they are, figuratively speaking, the castrati of education. Left weaponless in charge of a class full of future serial killers, their only weapon is sarcasm. Which is sadly only effective on the more sensitive and emotional pupils. All the other kids are immune to sarcasm, and will later burn down the teacher’s house.

3. ARTS TEACHERS. These aren’t really teachers, because no maths teacher ever said, ‘Okay, kids, everyone just, like, do some maths until the bell goes, dig?’ No French teacher ever invited the class to pretend to be an ant for half an hour. But this is what the people who teach drama and painting and sculpture and musical appreciation do. How can they stand the boredom? Because they’ve had some smack, that’s how.

4. GAMES TEACHERS. Again, not really teachers. Not really people either. Just sort of machines for standing in fields shouting. And then, later, standing in changing rooms shouting. Sometimes, when all the children have gone home, games teachers can be seen running round the sports pitch, shouting at themselves.

5. HEAD TEACHERS. Once they were teachers, but now they’re sort of managers, like the round bald man at Asda who spends all day telling off the checkout girls and staring wanly at the canned-goods section. Heads fill their lonely hours by standing at the window looking at the empty playground, going on conferences where they fail to cop off with other heads, and making long, incoherent speeches at assembly.

Heads like to pretend that they’re modern, efficient figures who wear power suits and stride meaningfully down corridors both real and metaphorical. In fact, they secretly hanker for days of old, when they were called headmasters and headmistresses, and would stand in front of a Union Jack, dressed like Will Hay, and say things like, ‘Some boy has been chewing in the fives court. If the culprit does not own up, the lower fifth will be hanged.’