I have been thinking about teachers. It seems the teachers now are a different kettle of fish than the ones that I ran up against in the fifties. These women were just mean bullies. Of course not all the teachers were dreadful just the greater majority of them.
My grade 2 teacher was lovely and always ready to give a hug. Nowadays a teacher that hugs would get into such strife for showing compassion. Mrs. Hearn was someone that my friend and I have always loved.
In grade 3 Miss White was a scary woman who smoked Turf cigarettes out of a little red tin box. She had brown fangs and as I remember it not a very nice looking woman. She was a smacker. One day I had done some little sums and realized that one was wrong. I did the exact sum underneath and then got a thump from Miss White because I couldn't tell her what the sum was. I do tend to freeze up with the sums, as you may have picked up elsewhere in my blog. She also had fixed ideas about which colour went with what. I was doing a nice design in coloured chalk in my little gray paged pastel book and got a good whacking for putting purple and orange next to each other. She said they didn't go and I say now that I was ahead of my time. Miss White didn't really care what she hit me with, a hand or a ruler; she had no preference. The interesting thing was that she was always nice to my friend Lorraine. Of course Lorraine is a blonde and as most of you know, little blonde girls can do no wrong. I found that, all the way through infant school that if something was naughty I was always the one who got into trouble. Maybe I was naughty but I was always a little confused about everything so maybe the fault was mine, or maybe I just had the wrong colour hair.
Our grade 4 teacher was called Mrs. Connley. She was not a smacker but I was scared of her. She was extremely strict and one day when I was fiddling around with the ink bottle that was on her desk I spilt it all over her little tablecloth. It was easier to tell her what I had done and get it over with, so as I remember it, she kept me in after school which meant I missed my train. Her particular form of torture was to ask mental arithmetic questions at home time, until you managed to get one right and then in my case go on a mad dash over to the railway station. I don't remember whether I missed the train but the stress of the whole thing has given me absolutely no chance of working out anything in my head. When by chance I did know the answer she didn't ask me. It was sheer terror. The other thing I remember vividly was when Jeanette Cooper fell over and hurt her arm, Mrs Connley grabbed it and shook it up and down and pronounced it fine. Of course I really don't think she had a medical degree as when Jeanette came back to school the next day her arm was in plaster. It is funny how you remember things because when we went back to a re-union Jeanette had no memory of the whole incident.
The cream of the bunch was Miss Larkin who taught grade 5. She was a sarcastic bitch. I often had time off school since my rheumatic fever and when I returned my books were always out the front and I had to wait until Miss Larkin could find me a seat. She always told me in front of everyone that if I came to school more regularly I wouldn't have to go through this process. Oh yes that was the worst I think. To be made the butt of Miss Larkin's venom and embarrassed in front of all the girls, yep that was the worst. One day I badly sprained my ankle. As it made a loud crack when it happened I thought I might have broken it. She was her usual scathing sarcastic self and made fun of me. Luckily it was not broken but that hardly made up for her jibes. One day it was announced that there would be a puppet show for the whole school and of course I knew that Mum could not afford for me to go. Miss Larkin wanted to know why I wasn't going and as I didn't want to say Mum had no money I said I had my own puppets. I did have them but they were actually clothes pegs. This engendered a blast of sarcasm and ridicule. This woman should not have been let loose on little kids; she was a sadist. I was glad to get away from her class.
There was nothing notable as I remember about Mrs. Lewis the grade 6 teacher. I do remember her physically fighting with one of the girls who had dreadful rubber sandshoes. Her feet stunk. On this particular day Mrs Lewis decided that the shoes had to go and told Elaine (not her name) to take them off. Of course she didn't comply and so Mrs. Lewis had a knock down drag out fight to get the offending footwear off. Of course she won because she was bigger. She was definitely bigger but she was in the wrong. I think it was in this class that some girls were picked to wash up the teachers cups from recess and lunch. I broke one and had to tell the teacher involved what I had done. I am sure that if it was Miss Larkin I would not be here to tell the story.
Our grade 7 teacher Miss Simons was the most lovely person. She was so kind to me and told me I had a talent for words. I worshipped her. She was going to teach me how to play the violin but as usual Mum wouldn't let me. Because of the praise I blossomed and came second over all that year. My particular forte was of course writing but I also managed to get a credit in arithmetic. My best score was forty- nine and a half in Social Studies. It was Miss Simons who convinced Mum that I had to go on to high school. Mum must have been looking forward to me getting a job and kicking in some money to help us manage. However, she agreed and I passed on to Port Adelaide Girls Technical High School.
Overall I really only had three teachers that were nice. I have not mentioned Miss Cole who was my infant school teacher. She was so kind to me and managed to find me when I got confused and went into the wrong class roooms. She always held up my work to show all the kids what I good job I was doing. I wish that we had not moved away from Murray Bridge but I suppose you can have too much of a good thing.
So there you have it, three lovely teachers up against the vile, sarcastic, sadistic creatures that seemed to make up the teaching community in South Australia in the fifties. I have talked over our teachers with Lorraine but she did not seem to have had the trouble that I did with the wielders of power.
I do not always agree with the new ways children are taught nowadays, but by golly I would prefer to be taught by modern teachers than the dreadful arbiters of information 'in my day.'
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