I don’t know if you’ve seen the documentary series, Educating Yorkshire, which has been as depressing as you might imagine from the title. Some of the teachers in the film were excellent, but the overall feeling one got was of inadequate individuals endlessly indulging their arrogant and stupid charges. As described here, rather brilliantly, in The Daily Mail.
The headmaster in particular got my goat. I don’t think heads should address the pupils as ‘mate’ and suck up to them. There was an especially emetic final scene for the end of year address from the headmaster to the year 11 pupils, in which the staff all started crying. This over-emoting and over-indulging is, in the end, a cop out to make the lives of the teaching staff easier, and it is a betrayal of the children. But I don’t suppose the school in Educating Yorkshire is very different from most other state comps these days.
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