Mr. Gradgrind

Island Girl

Island Girl

Did this get your attention, Howard? I've just been looking back on some old threads and wondered who he was. Do you have a story to tell about him?

The thread concerned was "First Ever Poem" started by Jenny.

Howard

Hi IG. Just spotted this. How are you this morning / evening?

Mr Gradgrind was a Dickens character. It's too early in the morning to rememeber the book. (Hard Times??)Some bright spark will know. Anyway, there's a scene where he's either inspecting a school or teaching and he asks a girl to define a horse. She knows all about horses because she rides them (circus?) but she can't tell him they are quadrupeds etc. so he gets angry. Anyway, I always think of Gradgrind as standing for the worst kind of teachers.

I have to say my own were not so much like Gradgrind as the PE teacher in the film Kes. Have you seen it? It's so funny. He organisies the whole PE lesson around himself being the star player. Funny and sad.
Maybe you've started a thread here on memories of teachers. I've a few more to tell but I'll stop there.

Island Girl

Please Howard, do go on. Actually, it's a very good suggestion of yours to make this about memories of teachers - the good, the bad and the ugly. You may start, young Howard.

Stan2

'Yes, please do sir, Howard' says Stanley jumping up and down in excitement.

Howard

¡Jolín! You two are like Year 3 on a Friday afternoon!

Schools have changed so much that things that were commonplace in my day would make tabloid headlines today. 

I think what stands out amongst my own memories of school was how several teachers were worse bullies than the students. Dorothy mentioned changing rooms on another thread which brought back memories of a couple of male PE teachers who could be really nasty. They had their regular victims who were the ones not in the sports teams. In one incident a boy was made to swim a length of our outdoor pool in the middle of winter because he couldn’t climb a rope. (I went to a rubbish school which just happened to have one of those above ground pools.) The water was filthy and it was freezing. I don’t know how they got away with it. Yet when some of us were caught hitch hiking on a cross country run (we climbed out of the back of a van right in front of a teacher) it was laughed off. I remember being relieved at not being punished, but thinking how unfair it was. I can honestly say that I hated school.

Isabella King

My husband had a teacher who apparently once said…The more I look at you boy, the more I believe in birth control.

Jenny

Isabella - that's really funny!!!

Sounds like all boys' schools were quite interesting. Most of the time it was b* boring at an all girls' school!!