One of the silly, sneaky joys of the age is the proliferation of old-comrades websites. I am a regular visitor to a BBC one called www.oldsms.co.uk which displays photographs of every bygone course for trainee studio managers, all of us beaming foolishly with our screwdrivers and tape-editing kit in our top pockets. You can click on people and find out what the hell became of them. It also includes a reminiscence spot where bores like myself can exchange happy memories of the old OBA8 mixer and TD7 bakelite gram-deck, or chew the fat peaceably about the demise of the 4038 ribbon mic and how many times we failed our stereo test (“I still swear that I was sitting in a node”). Many trades now have these sites; I am all in favour. But you can see why teaching unions are getting irritated about friendsreunited.co.uk, the old-schoolmates website. I discovered it some six months ago, and nip in from time to time to check up whether any more of my GCE year at the dear old convent have tapped in their details.
A fair few of them seem to be teachers, which must say something for it.
However, surfing the other schools, one cannot help being reminded that one of the ways in which we all like to reminisce about our schooldays is by gaily slandering the teachers. It happens when you meet again at a party or indeed in the aisle of Sainsbury’s - 30 seconds in and you’re both shrieking “Madame Mouton! God, I still have nightmares about those cardigans!” or “Do you remember when Mr Monkton Meredith used to get over excited about pollination and back us into the biology cupboard?
“Jeez, these days you’d sue!” For teachers, let us face it, are sacred monsters of myth.
You meet them when you are young and powerless and beadily observant: their appearance, manner, and idiosyncrasies are burned into you forever like those of your first love or first boss. They glow with sharply individual power: every detail about them is illuminated. Never mind “Nobody forgets a good teacher” - nobody forgets any teacher, not really, which is one of the reasons it is such an alarming profession to go into.
Over the years, as pupils grow more powerful and independent and less frightened, the remembered details are exaggerated for comic effect and the bygone teacher becomes either hero or villain, epic bore or genius. And teachers be comforted, it does work both ways: middle-aged men in particular will rave about the preternatural allure of a young woman teacher who “definitely fancied them”, but who as a non-pupil you remember perfectly well as an ordinarily pleasant creature with a devoted marriage, Bugs Bunny teeth and a slight but distinct waddle.
Anyway, the problem with friendsreunited.co.uk is that it attracts joyful exaggeration of school memories, and the National Association of Head Teachers is worried that some of the remarks on it will lead to lawsuits, false-memory allegations and all the rest of the tedious modern paraphernalia of the blame industry. Surfing around, you can see what they mean. There is a lot of inter-pupil reminiscing, and the occasional anorak with an ability to remember the entire class register from 1983, but most often they describe teachers:
“He was obviously a psychopath with a passion for sharp African collectables ... music teacher: mad, prone to paranoid outbursts ... incident with a trombone ... PE pervert ... evil old dinner lady ... chemistry teacher in a rage ... Mr J’s Big Slipper in the cupboard...the starchy grey-haired nit nurse with her vicious comb ... Miss Buxton’s cane with a little bit of leather ... Miss Webb, wow, what a dragon...”
There are, of course, herograms too. Cheers for “Miss Marchant who encouraged my reading and gave Gregory and I responsibility for handing out the milk” and for the wonderful-sounding headteacher who reproved the habit of pulling chewing gum out of your mouth as far as possible by saying mildly at assembly: “I know it’s lovely to see a yard of it, but...” Generally, however, the sacred monsters of this semi-fictional world are pretty gothic.
And if it wasn’t for the genuine worry about abuse lawsuits, which needs tight monitoring by the webmasters, I don’t actually think teachers should mind. It is a measure of their importance, and not entirely unflattering. They are up there with film stars and war leaders and Lord Nelson and Attila the Hun and Beowulf: larger than life, encrusted with generations of legend, grudgingly revered, attracting brickbats because of the very height and splendour of their natural pedestal. Go on, staffroom - enjoy it. Out there in the limelight, silhouetted against your whiteboard, you’re a star. Stardom has penalties, but at least you never get forgotten.
