Can you forgive your teachers?

[Default to the negative]

My mum wouldn't let me go to the local scheme/estate school. She insisted on sending me to 'good schools' instead. She thought she was doing right by me, but she inadvertently did me wrong. It was not long before I came to realise that there is a sinister underbelly to these places, with unspeakable cruelty occurring behind the scenes and around the corners.

I saw some things which, if they had ever come to light, would completely shatter the reputation of the 'good school'. Not just the things that happened to me personally. Also the things I saw happening to other kids, which were worse. There were some dark days indeed and I hated the teachers because I saw them as the rulers and administrators of this corrupt bedlam. In my immature teenage mind, it seemed to be their fault. They were the ones who had governed and orchestrated this situation, and they were therefore responsible for all that happened within. While at the same time, they sanctimoniously prated about how upstanding and respectable their school was.

Looking back on it now, I think my opinion of the teachers was unfair. Because they always said that if there were problems with bullies or whatever, we should go and tell them, and they would put a stop to it. But I would never tell, because I didn't want to be a 'grass'.

I should have told – I see that now. I should have spilled the beans and grassed them all right up. It was not the fault of the teachers: it was my own fault for maintaining the omerta, when I could have spoken out.

So, I think I forgive my teachers now. Can you forgive yours? Or is the hatred still burning?

[Spoon of Ploff]

I can never forgive my physics teacher for starting every lesson with 'science for the masses.'

I believe this open cynicism eroded my enthusiasm for the subject over time to the point where I could barely scrape a pass grade.

He was proper bald as well.

[Default to the negative]

I can never forgive my physics teacher for

Oh come on, he can't be that bad can h-

bald

Ah, I see.

[holdover]

I can never forgive Mr Campbell my primary 6 teacher who, on the occasion of a visit from David Prowse punished me for some minor infraction and made me sit along in the classroom while the rest of the school got taught how to cross roads properly. I did sneak along to the assembly room and look forlornly through the door but I couldn't see him from that angle.

So fuck Mr Campbell. (Shockingly he later attempted to enter local politics as a Tory)

[Default to the negative]

I can never forgive Mr Campbell my primary 6 teacher who, on the occasion of a visit from David Prowse punished me for some minor infraction and made me sit along in the classroom while the rest of the school got taught how to cross roads properly.

Okay, but what was this so-called 'minor infraction' of yours?

[Replies From View]

Okay, but what was this so-called 'minor infraction' of yours?

He ran across a road during a school outing.  The school did a risk assessment and decided he needed to miss out on all the education that could involve a roadside addendum in case he spontaneously did it again.

Anyway, it was David Prowse.  No kid knew who David Prowse was until he boasted about being in the Darth Vader suit, and then kids didn't go "wow", they went "No you fucking well weren't, you liar".  No child in the history of schooling has ever been sad because they couldn't catch a decent glimpse of David Prowse.


The thing I never forgave my teachers for has a similar theme.  I never learned cycling proficiency because the arbiters decided my bike was too big.  It was too big - it was inherited from my older brother and the tips of my toes couldn't touch the ground at the same time - but it was heartbreaking to be told no I couldn't join in while the other kids were already sitting on their bikes in the playground and beginning to learn.  To add salt to the wound they said in the assembly a few weeks later that everyone in the year had passed their cycling proficiency - WHITEWASHING ME.  I never learned to ride a bike very well after that.  You don't really get a chance, do you.

[holdover]

I think it was giving him a bit of cheek.  I was seldom in any trouble at school as I was a quiet born-again christian nerd. He was just in a really bad mood that day. Bald too.

[Replies From View]

I think it was giving him a bit of cheek.  I was seldom in any trouble at school as I was a quiet born-again christian nerd. He was just in a really bad mood that day. Bald too.

Bald, eh.  Have to forgive him then.

[Attila]

Not a teacher, but my post-grad supervisor: nasty fucker, to put it succinctly. Had zero interest in working with or promoting any of his female students; in my case, he also stole a substantial chunk of my dissertation research and published it himself. Over a period of about 10 years or so, when I was trying to get back in the academic game, I'd try to get some portion of my PhD work published; it's a small world, and either he or one of his toadies would end up getting my attempt quashed.

He'd email me every couple of years or so, after doing a Google search on me, to make sure that I was still unemployed -- he was shocked the first time he discovered that I was attached to a university, but then relieved to find out I was an adjunct. He wrote a series of letters at that point effectively threatening me not to try to get ahead in the profession, and certainly never to tell anyone about what he did with my research. Then a few years went by and I heard nothing from him -- which meant the next time he did the Google thing, I was no longer an adjunct, but a full time senior lecturer over here in the UK, running a dedicated programme within my department, with public talks and a few publications.

Suddenly, I'm back in the fold with him (he was a huge Anglophile, and he's jealous as fuck that I got a permanent position in the UK), and he includes me in his round robin emails now to his other former, successful students. He he, it was all just larks about the research stuff and we just won't talk about it, and oh by the way, I don't know any of the Big Guns in that particular field of my dissertation research, right? [I've moved a bit sideways from the original time period I specialised in as a PG student].

As it happens, I have met a number of them. They all know him. They know what he's like; I've heard other stories of how he's fucked over particular students whom he didn't think would succeed, so he's harvested their work as his own.  I'm currently finalising a book contract with a reputable academic press to produce a work that uses my PhD research; it comes at it from a completely different, but fresh point of view than someone exactly in that field would do. It might take me 25 years to get there, but eventually I'll have a work in my PhD area published. One of my current allies in this project is the guy who would have been my PhD supervisor had I stayed at my first PG university.

It's not a happy ending yet, but I intend to make it one.

[Paul Calf]

He must be a genius. There's no other explanation for his having attained senior academic status while still 8 years old.

[Pijlstaart]

This crazy woman called the carpet the rug. "Come children, sit on the rug", she'd say, gesturing to the carpet. Not even nice carpet, no-one ever took their shoes off for this carpet, durable, tiled carpet. She was wrong and we all knew, but they run their demented little reichs, primary school teachers, they must know better because they're the grown-up. Little transparency to primary school teaching, and if they don't leave a mark they get away with it. My noble heart yearns now for vengeance, want to rub her face in the nursing home carpet, the piss-stained nursing home carpet that she's done her old lady pisses on, cocked-leg old lady dog pisses, rub her face around in it until she knows how to spot a carpet. It's the right thing to do.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

Hope all my teachers die - cheers


Oh no one was my Dad :(

[buttgammon]

Mrs Jones, who taught me for two years in primary school (though she was only my English teacher for the second thank fuck). She was a religious nut who didn't like me - or anyone else - and made a show of me on numerous occasions, particularly the time when she went ballistic with me for saying "oh my God." She lived on the same road as the school, which meant I passed her on the way to school every morning; it was great when I moved up to secondary school and could make obscene gestures with impunity whenever I walked past her house.

[thraxx]

I went to secondary school where there were so many bullies, psychos and weirdos that the teachers - quite understandably - were scared of most of the kids and at one point went on strike refusing to teach our year. Miss Shears a 60 year old RE teacher stood up to the year in a special assembly and told us this, but she believed in us and would teach us. The response was loud jeering and a chant of 'dyke dyke dyke!'. The final straw came when one kid, upon being suspended by Mr Holmes, went home got his dads air rifle and shot Mr Holmes in the face in revenge. Forgive the teachers? I felt sorry for them.

[Icehaven]

I went to a private secondary school which was mostly alright, but there were a few teachers who, because the pupils were bright and largely self-motivated to do well by parental threat, didn't really teach so much as set tasks and report back on what you got wrong or right. At a parent's evening my form tutor even told my Mum it was 'ridiculous' that my English teacher had simply stated that I didn't know certain grammatical rules or something, spluttering "that's what she's supposed to be teaching them!" Another time my French teacher, a hideous slug of a creature, read out something I'd written in French (that was apparently gobbledygook) in a mocking voice, while the rest of the class giggled. I wish to hell I'd had the wherewithal and guts to stand up and yell "If you were a better bloody teacher maybe it'd make more sense, you useless cunt!" But you don't at 14, do you. Anyway my best friend and me found out where he lived and put fake sick through his letterbox. We genuinely did this.

[greencalx]

I wish to hell I'd had the wherewithal and guts to stand up and yell "If you were a better bloody teacher maybe it'd make more sense, you useless cunt!" But you don't at 14, do you.

I said more-or-less this to my German teacher, for not dissimilar reasons. He was a newly-qualified teacher, and I think had taken the elements of his training that promoted facilitating pupils' self-discovery over didactic teaching methods a little too much to heart. (Put another way: if someone asks you if they have the right answer to a question, you are allowed to answer them...)

Apart from odd incidents like this, I had a pretty decent time at school, despite all of them being pretty unremarkable places. (Or what Ofsted would now call "poor"). A few teachers were excellent, most of them alright, and only one or two were actively bad, notably my English teacher, who managed to not teach me any English across the five years of my compulsory secondary education. Matters were not helped by the fact that I went through the system at the time when exams were considered A Bad Thing, and as my English GCSE was 100% coursework, it was around 95% written by my teacher.

[thecuriousorange]

[Tag/] The Best of Morrissey 1988-2018 [Tag]

[Bobtoo]

We had a French teacher called Mr Dobie who picked on me for the three years I was in his class.

I've posted before about the exercise that involved writing a post-Christmas letter to an imaginary French pen friend. I made the mistake of trying to be funny, as I would if I really had been writing to a French pen friend. Among other things, I went through all the presents I had got and how they had ended up broken. I did put a bit of effort into it and I think the French, which was the point of the exercise, was good. I don't know for sure if it was good because the cunt didn't mark it, he just wrote some abuse in red pen and spent an entire period berating me for it.

It wasn't the only time he spent the whole period berating me for some minor transgression. He rarely even told off anybody else in the class. I was actually very good at French, in the top class and near the top of that.

One of my classmates went on to be a teacher himself and he explained to me what had been going on. I didn't really fit in at school, and tended to be the butt of classmates' jokes. Apparently certain teachers will use that to get the cool kids on side, which is a cunt's trick if you ask me.

I don't know if he did the same with other classes. I assume he did because somebody smashed his car headlights and it wasn't me. It's still one of my biggest regrets in life that I didn't go postal on the cunt.

I will never forgive that cunt.

[bgmnts]

When running for head boy of my house in year 6, Mrs Bickerton explicity stated in front of us all not to vote for me or Chris.

Looking back on that now that probably set me on a bad path of self loathing.

[QDRPHNC]

There have been three or four incidents with teachers I don't think I'll forget, or forgive.

Having a son amplifies this. He's 10, easily distracted, sometimes doesnt realise how annoying he's being making a noise over and over again, bright enough for his age, but struggles mightily to understand long term consequences, still has that particular child logic, but he's also bubbly with enthusiasm for everything, unconditionally positive and generally just wants to be happy, make other people laugh, and talk about the things he's into.

The other day I looked at him in all his goofy sincerity and thought, "I was his age when Mr. McCleary grabbed a clump of my hair and violently yanked my head back and forth for a solid minute for not being very good at French."

It's quite shocking, to realize just how small, silly and vulnerable you were at the time. I had a violent upbringing generally. Between home and school, it killed something in me, and left me with a hair trigger when I see an adult being a shit to a kid.

[Sebastian Cobb]

One incident that didn't bother me at the time but annoys me a little now was when I was in primary school one of the 'village fete' type teachers sat us down and told us 'some people say that the world was created by a big explosion that started life, but that's all rubbish' and proceeded to read Genesis to us. It's not so much the teaching of religion so much, more the complete dismissal of reasonably well-accepted science towards young and impressionable minds.

Another thing that annoyed me slightly was my English teacher effectively gave me a passive-aggressive bollocking for doing quite a bit better than she thought I would in my mocks. In not so many words she said she'd written me off as thick rather than lazy and had she known she could've encouraged me more or something. Because that's how it's supposed to work, innit? Help the capable ones and leave the rest to rot.

I think by the time I was in secondary most of the sadists and violent teachers had been gotten rid of. One act of pathetic sadism I saw was a teacher that decided to hold the class (it was before lunch) back until they'd been silent for 5 minutes, if anyone talked the clock would be reset. A not too unreasonable punishment given the unruliness that had gone on, but then he decided to aggressively ask questions at some of the more meek pupils to trick them into talking so he could reset the clock. The guy reeked of pathetic prick who's kept awake at night by the inescapable fact nobody would care if he lived or died.

[The Lurker]

The guy I'm thinking of wasn't popular with his colleagues, never mind pupils. I remember one of my sixth form teachers expressing her dislike for the guy which was good to know it wasn't just me that thought he was a prick.

He went one of his usual ego trips in a music lesson singing and playing Praise You on the piano for absolutely no reason whatsoever. It was alright. Very pub singer-ish. Point is, my mate jokingly said something like "what was all that about, sir? You're not a very good singer, like". As we laughed, he stepped up and you could see the red mist forming. He yanked the lad out of his chair and threw the chair into the keyboards and laptops nearby. Before he sent the lad out and started screaming and shouting at him, he threw textbooks at us all and told us to write out every word from a random page - so we all chose the content's page which he wasn't very happy about.

He once threatened to put me in isolation over something I didn't do. Our head of year wasn't arsed so nothing came of it though.

He left after apparently getting into a huge row with another teacher so I never saw him again after year eight. It was fucking ages ago and I can barely remember what he looks like and I would be very surprised if he remembered my name so, yeah, I suppose I forgive him but he's still a prick.

[Danger Man]

Forgive my teachers? I can't even remember them.

The only historical events that I ever remember are in my wank bank. The rest of them are of no interest to me.

[Blue Jam]

It's quite shocking, to realize just how small, silly and vulnerable you were at the time.

I think a lot of people just forget what they were like as kids. It always upsets me when I read a news story about a teacher having an affair with a pupil and getting done for sexual assault, with btl comments along the lines of "Lucky lad!" or "She knew what she was doing". People forget that our bodies tend to mature before our brains, and that there's a huge difference between an adult who is sexually confident and knowing, and a teenager who is horny but confused- and very vulnerable to being manipulated by adults with authority over them.

Ditto for people who want to bring back corporal punishment. They tend to forget that teachers don't always use punishments fairly or wisely, and that a lot of the things people get into trouble for at school are really just small and twatty. If my school had had the cane I'd have been getting it every week for not doing homework, answering back to teachers and (especially) having untidy handwriting. I was a quiet, shy and nerdy teenager but the way my teachers went on about my "behavioural problems" and packed me off to a shrink to "fix" them you'd have thought I was pimping out my classmates and smoking crack behind the bike sheds.

My school had a particularly sadistic French teacher who taught the bottom set in French. Thankfully I was in the middle set (fuck knows why, I'm shit at languages) but I heard loads of stories about the teacher calling them stupid, pea-brained etc. One year a lot of the French textbooks were returned with torn pages and writing on them, and it was decided that the bottom set should all bring in money to cover the cost of replacements for the entire year. They were essentially being punished for being shit at French, and by a teacher whose job it was to make them not shit at French. The school's methods didn't seem like they'd be very effective there...

[mothman]

Forgive them? I've just decided to forget them. If any of them were sufficiently self-deluded to think that the most important part of their job is nurturing young minds and that we're all going to be eternally grateful and remember them always, well, they're shit out of luck.

I've got an autistic spectrum condision, as has my youngest daughter. She may be worse than me, in fact; but I see how much nurturing she needs and think about how little I received, by virtue of having gone to a residential boarding school which was probably the worst environment I could ever have been put into. They didn't understand such things back then, so I was labelled a troublemaker and ignored, even to the extent of having my academic achievements and academic ability ignored, discounted, and even suppressed and covered up because I didn't fit their perceived mould of what made for the well-rounded pupil.

One year I was even denied the prize for being the best in one subject (which I genuinely was), because another bright spark who was on the Oxbridge track was doing poorly in another subject, got parachuted into our class in about May of the first year of sixth form, and got the end-of-year prize because he needed it to look good for his upcoming interview. And the teacher who made THAT decision was one of the few I had any time for.

TL;DR fuck them all off to hell forever.

[Blue Jam]

I once got 11/20 for an essay- 10/10 for content, and 1/10 for presentation. My English teacher's comments began: "This is really excellent work, you have clearly put a lot of effort into this, it is well-structured and you have a way with words. But* your handwriting..." - and I stopped reading right there. I decided that the opinions of someone who would dismiss a good piece of work because the writing wasn't pretty (though it was legible, evidently) weren't worth reading, and fuck 'em.

I can't feel too bad though, because that teacher actually died a few years later, when I was in sixth form. We were told it was some kind of "mystery virus"- I remember a load of my classmates' lessons being cancelled after she called in sick with" flu-like symptoms", and then three days later she was dead. The school held a memorial service where someone read out a eulogy, and I felt a bit guilty for thinking that it seemed full of cliches and generic comments, but then again, she was a really mediocre teacher and not remotely inspiring or memorable so I could also see how difficult it must have been to write.

My school was fucking obsessed with handwriting and my teachers even sent me for "handwriting lessons" one time. Even in the 1990s I could see that it wouldn't be long before we'd all be using computers so I put no fucking effort whatsoever into improving my handwriting, and now I'm an adult and do everything on computers I'm glad I didn't bother wasting valuable time and energy on it. My school's petty obsession with handwriting taught me a valuable lesson, but not the one they intended.

Meh, I've blocked out most of school- if I hadn't I think I'd go mad. I just console myself with "those who can do, those who can't teach"  and the fact that I am now one of the doers.

That said, when the headmistress of that school dies I will go properly "Kerry and Kurtan on Mr Perkins" about it. "She's dead, she's dead she's dead she's dead..."

^{* One should never start a sentence with "But..." - thanks for that, my so-called English teacher.}

[Glebe]

[tag]Pet Shop Boys "running out of ideas."[/tag]

[Twed]

Very first essay I wrote in primary school, after having been there for maybe two weeks. I thought it was fun and clever to write a story about snow and how it was "very very very very very very very" cold. Unpopular journeyman teacher Mrs. England raked me over the coals for it, and said "you're lucky I'm not telling your parents". She shouted at me in front of the entire class, held up my dirty screed and made an example of me in front of my peers. I was fucking four.

I wish I knew what I knew now, I'd have double fucking dared her to tell my parents and to lick my shiny little boy shoes while she does it.

I do not forgive her. I hope she is dead, so she can't damage any more children. Chastising me like like that for trying, for being creative has stuck with me. My entire life I've had a constant feeling like I'm always doing something wrong and will be shamed for it. Foul people like her have no place in any child's formative years.

Teachers have physically and verbally abused me since then, but by fuck I hate Mrs. England the most. She is worse than the teacher who made me wear a vintage girl's dress for his own gratification. I can still feel the embarrassment, and how sure I was that I was bad, wrong and faulty for what I did.

[Blue Jam]

Mrs England? Sounds a bit UKIP. "If you love England so much why don't you marry it? Oh, you did..."

Either that or she had been a Miss World contestant once and you were too young to perv over appreciate her.

[bgmnts]

Reading this thread makes me realise teachers need guns.