On the importance of sterotypes when shaping young minds

 Lord knows how they find us but by thunder they do.  We have ensured any useful motor signage has been removed; never issued a brochure or had one of those inter-web things and even bribed that chap who takes photos for goggle to double back and circle around the nearby self-assembly dream factor that appears to have moved in to the old brick works on the by-pass.  All this was to no avail.

 



We had another one of those coves with drip dry handshakes and smart casual smiles turning up our own blessed St Audrey’s – the Club funds an educational school of an independent frame of mind - wanting to know the secret of our academic success.  As chair of governors of the place  I do keep writing to these research-wallahs formal letters pointing out  letting teachers shout at the little blighters till studying is left as the path of least pain is the key but this does not seem to convince. Well,  I felt it was time to ‘take one for the team’ so I agreed to motor down and meet the rotter.

 

Things didn’t start well.  When I suggested a snifter to start it was as if I had revealed myself to be  a purveyor of illicit happiness.  Coffee?  He wanted it with all the vim taken out.  I dare not share his view on biscuits. 

 

We did the tour.  ‘What lessons could other schools draw from your success he begged?  ‘Ensure all the parents have a bothy full of cash and employ a decent number of kennel maids’ was, again, not what he wanted to hear.  ‘How do you tackle stereotyping’ the unctuous placeman demanded.  At last I felt I had something to bring to the table.  ‘We are right on top of that one’ I purred, lent back and warmed to my theme.


 

It has always been the case that when chaps of either and all persuasions turn up at St Ethels they have enough to deal with learning where to hang their satchels and which pavilion to get changed in for games so knowing what sort of master you are going to get takes away one cause of anxiety.

 

History Masters are selected for their ability to drone away for hours about Corn Laws and Palmerston’s Foreign Policy without noticing that none of their pupils are paying the slightest notice but are likely to get over excited and spray spital everywhere when describing particularly bloody battles from the times of the Caesars and hold strong opinions on things no one else have ever heard of.

 

If a Geography master does not have the whiff of cagoule they are not to be trusted.  They should return from the end of the summer hols with either knees so brown they cause confusion and dismay because they have been attempting to hike through every OS map searching for the fabled ‘Golden Trig Point’ - where it is possible to see five different religious Ordinance Survey symbols in one go -or have a deathly pale pallor caused by spending August in caves marvelling at  mites and tites.  It is always a good sign that they can not understand why others do not share there passions for ox-bow lakes and the stupid pikes that tend to get stuck in them.

 

We have never held with Technology as a subject, employing Woodwork Teachers on the basis they have a minimum amount of hair growing from their ears; nicotine stained fingers and a total exasperation at any child that fails first time to employ a chisel like a time-honed craftsman.

 

The assumption that all Art teachers will either be chaps with flowery shirts or Mistresses with dangley ear rings is almost held as a central principal.  If they do not have at least one mug of coffee on the go at anytime and a belief that popular music will help inspire their charges to greater feats of creativity, just the way it didn’t help Gainsborough, they will not do.

 

French Mistresses are, by statue, required to be young and pretty and bring an air of continental chic to the drabber corners of the school.  The purpose of this is allow for private revelries for those frustrated by the conjugation of verbs and allow young minds to see the exact point in which applying make up just stops from turning from style to self parody.

 

PE is, of course, the domain of fellows of either sex who appear to own nothing other than track suits, branded with various sporting associations or singlets in club colours.  It is believed they may have once owned other togs but no one has ever seen them do so. Of all the faiths adhered to by those who profession is the shaping young minds, theirs is the most pure; an unshakeable commitment to the central idea that running around in horizontal sleet chasing some ball or other is the highest peak of fun.

 

Well I was warming to my task now; Maths Masters should have certificates for withering sarcasm and the accuracy of their chalk hurling; chemists should have singed eye brows and stained white coats and under no circumstances should physicist be intelligible to the lay-man.

 

I was just getting to the point of explaining that English masters fall into two types; those that feel everyone could love poems about shrubs if only they were forced spend hours analysis every semi-colon and those who specialist in the Shakespearean plays with the highest body count when I noticed the fellow had left.

 

He’s not been back.


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