Changing of the Guard.
Picture a male teacher in your head. What’s he wearing? If you picture him looking sexy in any way take yourself outside and throw yourself into the road, you’re not well. I’m guessing you’ll probably see something like the following examples in your dirty little mind’s eye:
- a) Corduroy trousers (brown), sandals, socks (grey), mustard coloured pullover (or similar), bad tie, sports jacket with patches. Comb over ‘hairstyle’. Bad breath.
- b) 1970s era Adidas tracksuit (tight, possibly red) zipped up to the neck with whistle accessory worn over the chest. Permanent stubble on chin due to excess of testosterone.
- c) Immaculate tweed suit, fob watch on chain, mortar board and gown, thunderous grey side whiskers and walrus type moustache. Drinker’s face.
I think they’re almost all extinct now, although type A can probably still be found. They went into teaching for various reasons, and were probably all very disappointed in the end.
a) Joined because he was fairly academic at school and faced with the possibility of having to hack it in the outside world he exchanged his school uniform for his sports jacket so he could hide away for the rest of his life in the only place he ever felt safe; school.
b) Became a PE teacher because the army wouldn’t have him (too aggressive) and neither would the police (too prejudiced to be allowed on the streets). His job allowed him to bully weak children who had dreams beyond the freezing sports field and build up a following of the young halfwits who were younger versions of himself. He could bully children in PE lessons, and teacher A in the staffroom. It also allowed him to shag the occasional girl in the school hockey team or look at boys’ cocks in the showers, depending which way his predatory sexuality swung.
c) Became a teacher after his brief stint in the armed forces. He had a degree in Classics from some third rate university and school offered him the opportunity to take it fairly easy in the civilian world, where people had to respect him. It also allowed him to nurture his growing alcohol dependency during the working day where he found that his young charges were unlikely to ‘tell’ if he ruled with an iron rod.
But schools have changed. Like the dinosaurs of yore they no longer found themselves welcome by the establishment or the children;
- a) Woke up one morning to find that no-one made any pretence of listening to a word he said. He had always known that his words went in one ear and out of the other, but at least the class used to sit in silence, thus letting him pretend to himself at least that he had some sort of audience. All of a sudden they were talking over him, getting off with each other during his lessons or just walking out. What was worse, there was a new generation of teachers who showed an indecent appetite for career progression, and had overtaken him in seniority. Not only did they not respect the fact that he had been at the school for twenty years, but they derided him for this fact. Neither would any of them step in to back him up when a pupil laughed in his face, clearly the staff had no more respect for him than the new generation of beastly oiks he had to teach. Inevitably he walked out to the car park one evening to find someone had written ‘paedophile cunt‘ on the bonnet of his car, let down the tyres and smeared all shit on the windscreen. A nervous breakdown ensued and he spent the rest of his working life in the local library, where occasionally ex-pupils would abuse him, to the amusement of his colleagues.
- b) Was reported to the police by a fifteen year old girl who he had tried to grope after she had accepted a lift home in his car. More children came forward and his home computer, which was so full of child pornography from Russia that it no longer worked properly was confiscated. After serving his sentence (during which he was stabbed in the face by an ex pupil who hadn’t been very good at PE) he was put on the sex offender’s register and released into the community, where he now lives out his days drunkenly leering at teenagers and snarling at ‘the blacks’, whom he despises for reasons he can no longer remember.
- c) Managed to coast along for decades. Generations of pupils and teachers feared him, but he was a reliable pair of hands (even though everybody knew, including the Head, that he was permanently pissed on the gin he slugged from his bottle of Evian). Pupils who took Latin or Greek at A Level passed with flying colours, and let’s face it, the school needed the figures for the now all important league table. His occasional fits of violent rage which took place about twice a day brought an occasional mild rebuke from the Head, who could do no more as he was more scared of the fearsome Classics teacher than he was of outraged parents. One day, after a dull-witted child had fucked the verb ‘to go’ sideways, and he had frogmarched the terrified pupil to the front of the class and neatly choked him half-to death with his own tie (a move he had perfected over the last five decades) his heart exploded in his chest and he was dead before he hit the floor. The class, too terrified to move in case he wasn’t actually dead didn’t report his passing until the end of the double period, an hour and a half later.
I’m sure you knew some of these characters. I know I did. I look about me now and although I’m glad these useless bastards have slipped into history I can’t help but wonder what the future stereotype of the male teacher will be. If my experience of Primary teaching is anything to go by it will be of a fairly nice chap who really cares about ‘the kids’, wears nice, open necked shirts (a tank top if you’re dashing, like me) and who, on the whole, hates to make children cry. It may be progression, but it’s not very pithy is it.
