Dead Teaching Society

High school is tough no matter what sort of kid you are. It may have been tough because you were incompetent with the opposite sex or maybe you were a trouble maker, or a nerd, or not good at maths. Whatever the case at some point in your high school career I’d wager that you had a little cry about it. If you were me, there was more than one of these moments; one in particular was in year twelve. My history teacher had just confronted me and told me to leave school because I wouldn’t pass History and would bring the average down “for the students”, after which I went behind the old Phys Ed office and shed salty angst tears. Looking back I realize that when she said “for the students” what she really meant was “for the school”. These are the institutions that are meant to help kids, I’ve seen the movies, Robin Williams reaches his students through poetry, passion and language and through that they learn about life and love and English. Yes the guy from House kills himself in the end because the guy from that 70’s show is his father, he’s a scary looking bald man and House guy wore stupid tights and tried to be an actor, it wasn’t Robin Williams’ fault. Teachers aren’t supposed to be looking for the bottom line in education; they should be helping their fucking students. Kids that they are going to be sent out into the big bad world to get their teeth kicked in. Sure I wasn’t a model student, but I wasn’t a bad kid. I always treated my teachers like adults; I never punched or kicked anybody, or broke or stole anything. I was a fucking drama geek for Christ sake! I may have not been good at History, in fact I was shit, but when you go into a class and got sat in front a television screen with a documentary playing that was made when women were still give thalidomide for morning sickness what are you going to do? Granted this may not be the fault of the teacher, truth be told I actually liked the woman, unlike my English teacher.

My English teacher; I think the poor guy just didn’t know how to deal with me. He would preach about how writing poetry was about breaking conventions and speaking from the heart. Yet when his preconceived notions of “speaking from the heart” or “breaking conventions” were challenged he would close off. When I found out how hypocritical the man was I didn’t make the situation better either, not with the turbulent ocean of testosterone and misguided anger bubbling underneath my pimply frame. As an example of me aggravating the situation, one afternoon when discussing The Handmaiden’s Tale by Margret Atwood (which now I don’t mind) he asked us “What makes a man?” to which I replied without missing a beat “Cock and balls might help!”. So alright, I didn’t help but the guy was a douche who was too preoccupied with trying to impress the female majority of the class, leaving the three males more or less high and dry (although Ben Woods was pretty much the smartest man alive). Another time I had tried my very hardest on a particular essay, I mean I thought about every line, every paragraph; I got a D. Then the next time I just let it rip, real stream of consciousness type deal, literally talked shit for four pages; I got a B- and a Great improvement comment. What the deuce? I had tried to put in the effort, put in every little rule that he had told us to include in the bull shit essays and I got butt-kiss for it but when I pull words from my gaping teenage anus it’s a great improvement. I think that’s when I realized that school was truly retarded, that teaching is just a job and like any job you can get someone who can make a great macchiato and some that give you a watery latte. Like any other business my school needed good marks so that it can publish them in the paper at the end of the year so parents of prospective children can look through and see which school will be the best for their little nightmare offspring. There are new admin buildings to be built, that new chapel won’t pay for itself, Mrs Godwin’s retirement fund doesn’t grow on trees, it grows in the pockets of northern suburbs WASPs.

All I can say is thank god for my form teacher Ms Wearne, that woman saved me in more ways than one. She not only talked to me like a grown up but was a shining beacon of encouragement in the dark, murky waters of unrealistic expectation and pressure. In a world where we were preached upon that school is the be all and end all of your life she kept me sane. She was the Robin Williams to my Ethan Hawke, not by making us call her Captain my Captain or spouting clichéd Latin phrases , but by reminding us that it was just school. That in the grand scheme of things it didn’t actually matter. It’s the choices that you make after school the count. She’s a good kid.