Did you have a stupid teacher trying to teach you?
Did you ever have a teacher at school who really said stupid things? I did.
I was inspired (If that is the word) to write this by Leonard Tillermen who has written about an abusive teacher he had to suffer.
The teacher I am going to write about was not abusive. Just teaching the wrong subject.
The teacher in question was a lady who tried to teach us science.
During one lesson we were discussing the way sound travelled, I asked that had baffled many kids of my age. If a tree crashed to earth on a desert island, with no one there to hear it, would it make a sound?
Her reply was “Don’t be stupid, of course there would be sound, it’s like saying a tree isn’t there if a blind man can’t see it.”
I know I should have said that a blind man may not be able to see the tree, but he could still bump into it. That would have been a bad idea, as this lady was very touchy, and my reply would have been construed as insolence. This could have resulted in being sent to a male teacher to be caned.
This is something she did a year before, over a minor disciplinary matter. I didn’t think it deserved a caning, but as I mentioned, she was a touchy lady.
Fortunately, the male teacher, who had administered the punishment, was not one of the vicious types, so he didn’t lay it on too much. Getting caned was an occupational hazard in those days. Our attitude was if you got caught, you got punished. Just like the real world.
The upside to this story is, although this lady was not much of a science teacher, she was a good English teacher and taught me to love English literature.
For that, I have always been grateful.
The odd thing is, her husband was the main science teacher at our school, and he didn’t like boys who liked English lessons.
He was a jerk. I may write about him one day.
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