PARTHURBLOG

So, the Chief Inspector of Schools’ wants a ‘crackdown’ on boring teachers?

Putting aside the problems of a centralised curriculum, an obsession with testing and league tables, and the squeezing out of all innovation and creativity (not that I have an axe to grind on this topic),  does Christine Gilbert have a point? Here’s a wholly unscientific, statistically unproven test to ask your children about their schools.

How many teachers have a nickname?

As they run through the list of form tutors, Heads of Years, pastoral leaders and subject teachers, if everyone is Mr, Mrs or Miss this is not right; this is not how things should be.

Consider this cast of characters from my schooldays 30 years ago. None of them at all boring:

Big Jim: a small English teacher with a passion for theatre and  an oversize check jacket. For six years, he looked like a man on a sympathy vigil with the first year boys who didn’t yet fit their blazers.

Splonk: tall, thin, slightly stooped, in mustard-coloured corduroy. A real gentleman who taught history and  lived with his mother, waiting to inherit the manse. A bit like Prince Charles.

Mickey: maths teacher and Head of the Upper School. A man’s man, we thought he’d been thrown out of the Desert Rats for being too terrifying. His wife also worked at the school; she, of course, was called Minnie.

Deep: Head of the Lower School, his nickname was his initials. Like Inspector Morse, he never revealed the meaning of the Es.

Archie: the world’s most patient-but-explosive French teacher. Then again, he was given one of life’s short straws in trying to get me through ‘O’-level. Rumour had it that he had fought in the French Resistance; that would have been easier.

Jesus: Head of RE. When two teachers share the same surname, one gets nicknamed after his subject, and ‘Differential Equation’ was too long.

Bendy: a Games master who spent just a little too long talking rugby tactics in the shower after a match. In hindsight, he was just one of life’s enthusiasts – but try telling that to a fourteen year-old fighting puberty.

Charley Farley: I think there might have been a Charles somewhere in his name, but we were never really bothered. A physics teacher who achieved cult status by sending a boy home to grow his hair because it was too short.

Crutch: the oldest teacher in the world to have taught anywhere, ever. Lessons on the Industrial Revolution were news reports from the front line. Had been a close friend of Turnip Townsend.  Once posited that a national fixed wage should be introduced to pay a pound a week for each year of your age: that day, there was a run on the banks.

Billy: an economics teacher of Bunter proportions. Moved to a very prestigious public school where he would listen to pupils telling him of summer holidays in Barbados or Martinique, then report on his fortnight visiting parents in Wolverhampton.

Knocker: German teacher with a white DA and pencil moustache. Slightly less scary that Mickey, but it was a close run thing. A pipe-smoking cricket obsessive who could get through two bowls of Old Holborn in an over.

Ducky: Head of Art, with obligatory goatee and neckerchief. Gave the best assembly presentation on record when he explained Picasso’s ‘Guernica‘. Introduced First Year boys to ‘Just A Minute‘ and ‘I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue‘. Now that’s teaching, Ms Gilbert.

KP: Head of English, bachelor, avid skier and proud possessor of a sauna that he built in his loft. Once had a letter read out on ‘Stop the Week‘, answering Robert Robinson’s question “What are you doing while listening to the wireless?” As he was sitting in his steam room, KP explained that his knob had fallen off.

Buller: my form tutor, and founder member of the Virginia McKenna Fan Club. Allegedly taught Geography; actually taught Life. The word digression only appeared in the OED the year after Buller entered the teaching profession. 35 years on, and I miss him dearly.

The nickname, of course, is not just a sign of affection or insult. It can also be  a tiny effort at insubordination, a not-so-secret attempt to undermine authority and to make its subject more vulnerable, more human.

These men were scary (we did have women teachers, but they didn’t need ’softening’ in the eyes of 12 year-old boys). They were giants. And they commanded (rather than demanded) respect.

Most of all, they were interesting – not just interesting teachers, but interesting people. As acne-ridden teenagers we didn’t know it at the time, but it was certainly part of the school’s ethos.

People like that can still be found in the teaching profession. The Big Jims and the Charley Farleys are still there – it’s just that we don’t do a good job of recognizing and nuturing them, encouraging variation and initiative.

Instead, we’ve made education a ‘process’ as homogenised as a McDonald’s franchise. Which is fitting, given that it’s where many young people will now gain their GCSEs in  Maths and English.

Which shouldn’t be so boring, should it?

* * *

If you have a couple more minutes, go to What Teachers Make

Popularity: 5% [?]

There is no greater pleasure, no greater sense of achievement, no more obvious evidence of a job well done than cleaning a pair of shoes. Done properly – thoroughly – it can be the source of true contentment.

Today presented a double duty; my walking boots that needed recovery after our Christmas Day amble and a pair of black brogues that – to my shame – had been neglected since late November.

The boots first. They had been consigned to a plastic bag on returning from the walk, then into an under-stair cupboard, then into the loft as the stream of festive visitors came and went, and the boots became an ‘after New Year’ task.

The mud was thick and encrusted. It called for a scrape. I have an old knife, from a very early cutlery set – the sort of knife that you’ll find in the drawer that isn’t the cutlery drawer, but we keep cutlery there, because it’s unlucky to throw it away (or is that only in my house?). A single piece of cast metal, rounded tip, very worn serrated edge, totally blunt. It’s perfect for the job.

Starting on the left instep, the knife scudded along the edge of the sole, sparks of earth skipping into the air and onto the  newspaper. (Did you know that Herbert Chapman, manager of Hull and Arsenal in the 1930s, created the WM formation – 3-2-2-3 – and is now regarded as the greatest innovator in football management? Accidental learning is a joyous supplement to  a session with your shoes.)

As the dirt flew, so the boots revealed another reminder of Christmas afternoon. We had walked through a very muddy field, and the footpath running alongside the fence was awash with sheep manure. It didn’t matter; by the time we got back to the car, we’d wiped most of it on thick grass and hedgerow.

Most, but not all of it, and even dried, two-week old sheep dung smells of sheep dung.

Pressing on, I turned the boot over and began on the sole itself, a maze of channels and crevices. Working the knife, sometimes like a chisel, sometimes like a cut-throat razor (little finger raised for balance) the earth snapped away and the true pattern began to show. It was like archeology, uncovering something clean and whole beneath a carapace of crud.

The next ten minutes were spent chipping and scraping, knapping and scratching to return both boots to a pared state ready for polish. And those minutes were the most focused, most vivid of my weekend. All thought subsided, all distraction evaporated. Just me, an old knife, and a pair of boots.

Perfect calm.

To the brogues next, and the ritual I have performed for the past 25 years, ever since I started wearing ‘proper’ shoes, and realised just how expensive they are if not well cared-for.

Remove the laces. Wipe any dirt or detritus with a wet cloth. Open the tin of polish, and spray water onto the wax (I’m not a camel, so  never have enough spit). Apply copious amounts of the black stuff onto both shoes. Take up another cloth, wrap it around your index and middle finger, and wet it. And the polish and the shoes. Pick up polish with your two fingers, then work it into the leather. And work it. And work it some more.

The toe cap, the vamp,  the punch holes (these are brogues). The quarter, the counter, the cuff.

Soon, the shine begins to appear, a small sun coming through a black window. Keep moving those two fingers in circles over the surface until there are no more smears: it is ready to buff.

While the application brush is stiff and wiry, the buff brush is soft and giving – much softer than a shaving brush. And the bigger the better. Jerky little scrubbing movements just remove the goodness of the clean; longer, more elegant strokes bring the deep shine to the surface.

It’s that ‘inner’ quality which is so satisfying at the end of the work, as it was today. A sense of bringing the life back to something. A task well done.  I remember it from cleaning the brass candlesticks at Granny’s, from helping my mother clean the windows with newspaper, and from earning pocket money from cleaning my father’s car.

Perhaps my sense of well-being at the end of the work is a nostalgia for childhood experiences. But I think it goes beyond that.

There are quicker, easier, ’spray-and-shine’ ways of cleaning shoes, just as there are people who’ll offer to polish them for you. That’s true for virtually any outcome you need to achieve; you can buy a short-cut, a quick-fix or a ready-made answer.

However, for the real pleasure of cleaning shoes isn’t the outcome; it’s the act itself. It combines duty, cleanliness, creation, art, discipline, labour and a total suspension of all worries, concerns and distractions.

All the benefits of a meditative retreat – for the price of a tin of polish.

Popularity: 5% [?]