2 February (Part 1) - Classroom fat cats
I have not been a fan of the so called teaching profession ever since I was old enough to realise that me being teacher’s pet in primary school
was nothing to be proud of. While I was being favoured some of my friends were terribly abused.
Some might think I would be likely to speak up for them because 100% of my cousins were teachers if I ignore the fact
that one moved into teacher training and another to a wholly administrative
role. Two of their children are teachers too. 50% of my aunts were school
teachers and 100% of my female in-laws. Two were head
teachers and another was not only a teacher, her husband was as well.
As far as I can judge only one among my own family is a rabidly left wing.
One dabbled with the Lib Dems for a while but was suitably disgusted when the party
refused to accept democracy in June 2016. The Scottish in-laws on the other hand
were so far left that they regularly holidayed in Moscow as guests of the Russian Communist Party.
But none of that was what really put me off of teachers as a whole. In the late
1960s and early 70s I worked on the second floor of a building in central London which was
on the marching route to Whitehall. I don’t remember how many times it happened
but the teachers would march by anxious to demonstrate to everyone that they were scruffy loud mouthed hooligans.
Nothing ever happened to change the opinion formed back then and certainly not what I observed last Tuesday evening.
Newspaper headlines.
Tuesday evening found me in a pub as part of a quiz team. Around the adjacent table was a team of six teachers celebrating
the next day off school and time to recover from a hangover.
All females and all well enough paid to order steaks and things and wash it down
with beer. Five of the six ranging in age from a guessed mid twenties to maybe
45 were grossly over weight. It was not a pretty sight.
I doubt any of them had ever been inside a food bank unless perhaps they have found one with double swing doors.
There were only nine quiz teams and mine managed only a poor fifth place but
three of us was more than enough to beat six teachers by a decent margin.