Everyone remembers their schooldays, so everyone remembers that among the sadists, chancers, nonentities and incompetents clustering round the staff room Jaffa Cakes, there were always some teachers who made a difference.
They're the ones who become the subject of films like Mr Chips and To Sir, With Love or who pop up in reality shows like Educating Essex. They are the ones artists, actors and entrepreneurs remember fondly in interviews for setting them on the path to success.
Before the teachers' unions set their internet trolls upon me, let me add that the "sadists, chancers, nonentities and incompetents" I'm talking about are the ones I encountered at the chalk face, back when pupils knew what a tawse was. My intention isn't to demean teachers, whose long holidays and skivey "in service" days are, I know, small recompense for having to spend their working lives persuading gobby, smartphone-toting teens that Sunset Song is worth reading and Perez Hilton isn't.
What's less remarked on is the effect a teacher's dress sense can have on pupils, though a recent comment by Sir Michael Wilshaw, head of England's Ofsted schools inspectorate, has set the cat among the sartorial pigeons. He said teachers should dress more smartly because to do otherwise was patronising to pupils. Cue much Twitter abuse, presumably from teachers outraged that something so trivial as their appearance should be used as a stick - or a tawse - with which to beat them. Trivial? I'm not so sure. Wilshaw holds no sway in Scotland, of course, but he has a point. Just as we remember the good teachers, so we remember the good clothes even the bad teachers wore. Or I do, anyway. I can't pick out a knitted tie without thinking of a dapper little Maltese maths teacher I had in the late seventies who always wore one, and I can lay my love of knitted ties at his door. Not only that, but he had another little style quirk which was to always pull the tie up and out so that it looped down in front of the V of his tank top. That's also a look I've flirted with.
This guy knew how to accessorise, too. He also owned a worn leather satchel which he would slap down on the desk top on entering the classroom. As you'd expect it made a splendid, satchelly sort of sound when he did it. I'm absolutely positive that nothing of any consequence ever emerged from or was placed into this satchel but like his ties and his way of tying his ties, the bag became an object of great fascination to me. If I were the briefcase-carrying sort, it would be to a similar satchel that I would turn.
So there you go. I didn't learn much maths at school but 30 years on isn't it curious that a well-dressed maths teacher had an influence I can still feel today? As they probably still say on exam papers: discuss.
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