Another Voice
There are no ‘good’ teachers: the teacher who is good for you may wreck another’s prospects
The funny thing is that I’m not sure I ever knew her Christian name. No doubt she had one, and for no reason at all I think it might have been Jean, but to us she was so much, and so completely, Mrs McLeod that as a boy I probably imagined her husband called her Mrs McLeod at breakfast. Come to think of it, I’m not sure I even knew about a husband — but her title was ‘Mrs’ and there was a daughter, so I suppose she must have had one.
And this was the woman whose name came straight into my head the other morning as I listened to Anne Atkins, on Thought for the Day on BBC Radio, suggesting that apart from immediate family, the person most of us would say had exercised the most influence over us in our impressionable years ‘was probably a schoolteacher’.
Without question that would be Mrs McLeod. Small, bun-shaped, yet firm and compact with a beautifully moulded helmet of grey hair, discreetly scented and carefully made-up and powdered, immaculately turned out as she stepped from her grey-green Morris Minor, and forever about 55, Mrs McLeod was my class teacher in Standard IIa at Borrowdale Junior School in what was then Salisbury, Southern Rhodesia.
I was eight and it was 1958. With my family I had recently arrived by train from Capetown, whither we had sailed from Southampton on the Jagersfontein, Holland–Africa line, scattering messages in bottles into the Atlantic all the way via Madeira (no message ever returned to me). I was nervous about a new class, new school, new continent.
Enough reminiscence. Reflections on Mrs McLeod go wider and I had entertained them before I heard Anne Atkins make her point. A journalist conducting a survey had asked me to name the ‘best teacher I ever had’ and explain why. And when I came to explaining why Mrs McLeod, a melancholy thought had struck me. This neat and emphatic little lady, with her faint trace of an ‘educated’ Scots accent and her insistence on meticulous spelling and grammar — the woman who first encouraged me to think I was good at school and could be top of my class — was more than the best teacher I ever had: she was also almost certainly the worst teacher that at least half a dozen of my class of 40 ever had; the woman who helped destroy in them all hope or confidence that they could ever do well at school.
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John Ionides
June 5th, 2008 8:22amIndeed; and it is a fundamental failing with try to turn out teaching clones crammed full of "best practice". Far better to have a range of styles, one (or more) of which will hopefully resonate with each child.
The same is, of course, true of schools. A learning environment, or set of education abjectives, that is ideal for one child might be far less suitable for another.
TDK
June 6th, 2008 10:17amYour anecdote tells of a teacher who chose favourites and used the favourites to humiliate the other children. I'm sure such exist. I'm sure that your ego was flattered by the attention.
I'm sure there are other measures of goodness.
I recall certain teachers who were able to command the attention of a class. Teachers who had learnt the art of gaining silence by lowering the voice. These were classes in which I wasn't even in the top 50%. Despite dropping history, I still retain an interest that the teacher originally inspired.
I also recall teachers whose inability to control the class denied learning to everyone.
I teacher I know draw a parallel to acting. Each lesson is a performance and unfortunately just as there are good actors there are good teachers. Teacher training may mitigate the weaknesses of some teachers but it will never give the gift of truly inspirational teaching to those who don't have it already.
It's not that I disagree with your point that if you ask a schoolyard, who is the best teacher, you will get many different nominations. It's just that it is nonsense to suggest that there aren't better and worse teachers.
Karen Cronje
July 22nd, 2008 8:22amI was in Mrs McLeod's class in 1978 and she still looked like this article described her!!!!! Her first name was Jean and she did have a husband. What a great teacher she was!