Why no rod no lines?
- Basher Eyre
- Aug 2, 2024
- 13 min read
Updated: Aug 13, 2024
2nd August 2024
1967 marked the end of my first full year at school. 1984 was the year I completed my probationary period to become a teacher. I wonder how many teachers working in a British school today would recognise this lady? Or know that she wrote the report that, for a while, actually changed education into something that children actually liked to be a part of.
I can imagine the reaction if I plonked a copy down on the desk of any of my current colleagues. TLNGR "Too long, not gonna read" would I suspect be the reaction. And yet. And yet, what could have been?
Looking back, I can see that when I went to school a lot of the younger teachers were putting Plowden into practice. Naturally the old timers poo-pooed any mention of "child centred learning" but even at my positively Dickensian grammar school some of them let us do the science experiments, encouraged us to voice our own opinions and even watch a cine film about Karl Marx!
In the sixth form our head even admitted that he saw caning a boy as a sign of failure: on the school's part. Some five years later my first boss announced in daily briefing that the EU had banned the cane in all schools. One, to me, positively ancient colleague, said it was the fat end of the wedge- a phrase I stored up for future use, but never did.
Similarly, with lines, I got my fair share at school. I recall once having to write a thousand pops because I had made a, well, popping sound with a test tube. But by the time I was doing my probationary year giving lines was generally frowned upon. Phrases such as "making wrong choices" and "fresh day, fresh start" were already in place.
So when the mother of one of my ex pupils said I should really write a book, the only title that came to mind was "Memories of rod and lines" by Mr Chips.
This, therefore is my 21st Century update on an old classic- no rod, no lines....
4th August 2024
My sister sent this post box topper yesterday. As I write the Olympics are in full swing. The first one I remember was 1972. I also recall doing a project on the 1984 Olympics at the end of my probationary year.
I even gave each learner a chart to fill in. When school resumed, two children even handed theirs in. Thats 2 out of 30 (6.66%), which I would say is about par for holiday homework. I would like to say those two people are now prime minister of our country and Chancellor. I'd like to say that but it wouldn't be true.
No doubt Gavin and Julie-Anne have done well. Learners rarely surprise you with their future path. A gnarled old reception teacher once told me "They sit there that first day, and I can see them all: the liars, the big mouths, the wife beaters, the thieves....
For 30 years I worked in the Portsmouth area. And yes, I've heard all the jokes.
"That's more than you get for murder"
"No wonder you've got long hair- so we can't see the scar where they took your brain out."
"Is it true they call assembly 'slopping out' at your school? Well it does say "Preparing our learners for their future' in your foyer?"
Well, I've heard them all. And I have the Portsmouth News clippings in my scrapbook to prove it.
*Marks & Spencer Employee of the Month"
*Baffins Beauty nails 3rd spot in Miss Southsea
*Plucky Portsea mum rescues sons from Gosport ferry wash
And my personal favourite "All eleven Portsea Arms players booked for dissent" I had taught all of them :-(
This week three little girls were murdered by a teenage boy in Southport. Social media quickly “confirmed” he was a Muslim asylum seeker. Crowds then congregated around mosques and hotels where asylum seekers were being housed. Rioting, looting and attacks on the police ensued.
Inevitably, we heard there was a demonstration in Guildhall Square. Quite naturally I looked at all the protesters.
Like the good citizen I am I froze the TV.
Yes, I know who that is- Yes, I taught him - Yes, he's a big brother of _____ - Not sure - No- Yes - Yes- Yes-Yes etc
Should I do my civic duty and grass*
No, the police knew exactly who they all were. And so, no doubt, did their reception teachers....
*Sorry, I've been a teacher too long
6th August
Can you tell me who this?
Here's another clue
People my age will now know that is James Herriot
The generation down from mine might
recall
My dad's boss went to Veterinary College with James Herriot. Apparently, every meal time James would begin each anecdote with "When I write my book....
One Sunday his family called his bluff. "You are never going to write a book.”
So James (real name Alf) went upstairs and began writing.
He sent it to a publishers who agreed to publish it IF they could re-write the first chapter.
If you ever read that first chapter it is a real camel: a product designed by a committee. It has no authenticity, just a corporate sameness akin to a thousand other ghost written scripts.
Mercifully, enough readers persevered to discover a brilliant writing style.
I once asked Dad if the real James was charismatic and he said no. But then, the whole point of the books is that James is often diffident, tends to defer to the bigger egos in the story but slowly builds his confidence to become a trusted colleague and practitioner. He's just a fantastic writer.
And I'm not, but to tell my story effectively, I have to write about my own learning process So, what if a group of publishing hacks were to re-write my first chapter....
OPTION ONE
I arrived at a school one day as a supply and was about to sign in when the head loomed. "I'm sorry, Mr Eyre but one of my staff raised a safeguarding concern about you at her last school."
I'm rarely lost for words but all I could get out was "Who is that?"
"I'm sorry I can't tell you."
So I got out my mobile, typed in the school. accessed the web site, found the list of staff and replied
"Gemma Dawson"*
The head refused to say, just insisted I had to leave.
My mind went back 15 months to what had been a horrible job in a horrible school. Taking advantage of a vacuum created by having no headteacher and a weak deputy, two young teachers, grossly immature, had behaved abominably towards me.
I said rather feebly "You will be hearing from my union."
To cut a long story short - ie doing what no book and precious few blogs ever do- no record existed of any "concerns". AND both heads now knew exactly how their teachers had behaved.
You see, not James Clavell, Tom Clancy stuff. And certainly not James H!
*TO quote AC/DC "Only the names have been changed to protect the guilty
This second try is much more me, but still not up to the standard of my heroes PG Wodehouse, Eric Morecambe or Tommy Cooper.
OPTION TWO
"Has anyone seen George?" I feel George* could answer this question. Where is he?”
A muffled voice came from behind me "I'm here Mr Eyre. Behind you. You're squashing me against the board...."
It had all started with an idle boast that was put to the test.
They were a brilliant class, chock full of personalities, and we were doing this graph in Maths: favourite sandwiches.
So I did an example on the board, first asking people for their favourite sarnies.
There were the usual suspects: cheese, ham, pickle- when a voice piped up "Custard", which got the laugh it deserved.
"Samuel," I said, "is custard really your favourite?
"Yes, Mr Eyre"
"So, if I was to go down to Hartleys and buy a loaf of bread, some butter and a tin of custard, you'd eat it?"
"Course I would"
Well, I was never one to back down from a dare, so at lunchtime I beetled down to Hartleys and bought the ingredients for a custard sandwich.
When everyone came in from lunch I did the register. "Now everyone, first lesson this afternoon is How to make a custard sandwich." and whipped the tea towel off the ingredients.
I turned to reach for the board rubber but it wasn't there, so I reached into the spare clothes bag and pulled out a pair of knickers.
There was a faint titter which I thought was because someone had noticed the unusual board rubber.
Actually no, George had crept behind me and was mimicking me as I drew a line and wrote "How to make a custard sandwich."
As I was about to swing round I realised someone was behind me, so I played dead and turned round extra slowly so as to allow him to continue the joke.
I began to explain the task. Realising the class were laughing anew every time I did a hand gesture, I became ever more dramatic, whirling my hands around, slapping my leg, scratching my head.
Then I moved slowly and inexorably backwards until the miscreant (who I had now by a process of elimination, identified as George) was well and truly squashed.
Reading this through I recall a recent case I read. Here is just the headline
Head teacher awarded over £100,000 after she was sacked and accused of assault for tapping her own toddler son's hand when he was playing with a bottle of hand sanitiser
(Daily Mail 2 July 2024)
If you cut and paste the above headline into Google you can read the full story. My hunch (after four decades working in schools) is that a few old scores were being settled, but of couse I don't know. Suffice to say that no UK teacher in 2024 would do what I did that sunny afternoon in 1994....
*As George and his family became friends (31 years and counting) that is his real name
7t August 2024
I’ve had to take my car in for servicing today. Never had one for many years but London and Portsmouth were easy places to get around in. Now I’m a supply, necessity dictates.
In my first school we had a teacher called Maura Messiter who spent her whole day quivering with suppressed rage.
In those distant times most schools finished at a quarter to four. Her class would be all packed up ready to go, coats on, bags on back at about 3:35. She would then lead them in a line to the door, right outside my door. There would then be ten minutes of her screeching at her class to be quiet.
The second the bell rang she strode out to her car, got in and drove it through all the parents and infant school children, tooting angrily at anyone insolent enough not to jump out of the way.
At the end of my first year, the school appointed a keen young head who insisted on a staff meeting a week. The old timer she had replaced had never bothered with them. I think Gordon O’Brian may have used his fat end of the wedge quip again, although he was far to genial to really mind.
But Maura was incandescent with rage at EVERY staff meeting for the whole of the time she was there. The whole meeting would be punctuated with her sighs, each one heavier than the last.
Anyone reading this would naturally ask, why didn’t he sack her? To which, anyone from those dark and distant days would reply- teachers were pretty much unsackable.
The only way was to prove they had kept an unreliable register. Consequently, even those teachers who never put any effort in at any other time, checked, double, then triple checked their registers.
About a year after I left that school a child at the Roman Catholic school across the road was killed three minutes before official home time. As I recall, a shop owner saw the accident and rang the speaking clock so he had an exact time to give the police.
The Local Education Committee then instituted a policy that all teachers had to be in a quarter of an hour before official start time and stay a quarter of an hour after let out time. My buddies still at the school said Maura was incandescent with rage.
Since dear old Maura finally retired to spend more time with her neuroses there have been other Mauras. People so miserable that they had no other way to get through the school day except by badmouthing the customers.
*at my second school a teacher referred to a group of Year Six girls as The Micro Sluts
*at my third school a teacher referred to a boy of Bangladeshi heritage as “a typical greasy arab”
Haircuts are another bone of contention with the moaners.
I’ve been in schools for four decades now and I marvel at the ingenuity of barbers who come up with yet another haircut to annoy the short back and sides brigade. One supply confided to me recently “I always take down any boy with a yob haircut, it saves time.”
Now that is interesting. If there’s one tendency I fight hard its to judge a book by its cover. As a supply you do usually get that advance warning from any learner who is going to push the boundaries.
However, I’d say it was more body posture, a swagger, a glint in the eye but yes appearances do matter: although I would say a learner not wearing school uniform but obviously expensive leisure wear is a better indicator of someone who is going to play up.
Nevertheless, to those many teachers who have told me that being friendly is a sign of weakness, that the learners laugh at me behind my back etc- I’ve never found that. That is what they think, but of course are too afraid to say…
8th August 2024
So here I sit in my mum's back bedroom waiting for the dustmen. A fortnight ago the Head Dusto on our round had a day off. Consequently, anyone whose bin was not visible was not collected. Mercifully, it has been a pretty mild summer so the bins have not been stinking to high heaven.
The moral of this story is- you should never have a day off. Any teacher will tell you about coming back from a day of and finding the classroom trashed.
Well, even the toughest of us succumb. I recall that toughest of tough old school secretaries Avril Walmer having a day off on Submission Day. No that is not submission as in wrestling, although anyone daft enough to take on Avril in the ring would have been well and truly beaten. Nor was it anything from the dark web. No, Submission Day was the day you had to put your order into County Supplies for the next term.
This was long before Local Management of Schools and you had ONE chance per term to order what you needed. The lorry came, dropped off what you needed, never to return, well until next term.
If you had ordered something wrongly the driver would NOT put it back on the lorry.
Consequently getting the order right was a BIG thing. And Avril was not going to be there to make the order. She briefed her diffident assistant, a mousy little woman called Cathy Howan.
By the next morning Cathy was a bag of nerves. What transpired afterwards was that what she should have ordered was 12 packs of each colour crayon, each pack containing 12 red crayons, blue crayons etc.
What Cathy actually ordered was 12 dozen of each colour. So when the County Supplies lorry dropped off 144 boxes of each colour (red, light blue, dark blue, dark green, light green, yellow, orange, white, black, purple, brown, pink) our beloved secretary was apoplectic with fury.
"Put them back on the lorry at once," she screamed. But to no avail, the immovable object had met the irresistible force.
"We're not allowed to put anything back on the lorry."
And so we had enough crayons to last for 12 years.
Luckily our head Walter Paulson had the answer. One of the old school, Walter. A scouser he had run the Liverpool Boys Football Squad and had had Jimmy Case, John Gidman and John Bailey in his team. He had also been in the same class as Paul McCartney's brother at school. Quite a character.
And in those long distant days before Ofsted reared its ugly head he had a solution. Every class was to use crayons in every lesson. It didn't matter what you taught, just use plenty of crayons.
The whole of the school was covered in jungles, oceans, forests etc. Eventually the boxes got down to reasonable piles. By July we were down to just brown, purple and orange.
No problem. The school was divided into three teams, you've guessed it Brown, orange and purple. And every team challenged to make props, shield, banners et all in their team's colours. They don't make 'em like Walter these days....
13th August
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