Durham cathedral and castle (Photo from Wikipedia under GNU Free Document Licence)

Where is teacher #2 you ask.

He’s called Ron Cockitt and I wrote about him right here. I just called the post something else.

And just to prove I’m mad, great teacher #3 wasn’t a teacher, he was Vice Principal of Bede College in Durham (UK). His name was George Smith, aka G.N.G.Smith, aka Ganges.

When I arrived there in October 1968 we were told that if we had a major problem of any sort and were desperate, he was the guy to see. “His apartment is on the first floor corridor. His office is near reception. Knock on his door at any time of day or night, and since you think it’s that important so will he.”

This advice was accurate.

He smoked heavily and was probably too partial to drink (port? sherry?). He was overweight, and wheezed as he moved around. He was the most important person in our college. He had the gift of believing he was there to serve his students, and that was his life. He was very much in charge but he made us believe that in the sense that matters we were his equal. I remember at the end of one of our termly formal dinners he stood up to speak. The hall was full of students who had already drunk a fair amount and where having a good time. The instant he stood there was silence. “Thank you for sharing this dinner with me. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed your company, but I’m afraid I must now leave you to enjoy the rest of the evening. One thing I would ask if I may. Some of you may be tempted to call in next door this evening.” The girl’s college was the other side of a moth-eaten hedge. “The best of luck, but please be discreet. It’s better the Vice Principal there doesn’t get to hear your arrival or departure. She is so tiresome when she phones in the morning to complain. Enjoy yourselves.”

When I folded with a breakdown early in my final year he was there behind the scenes ensuring I was being looked after and liaising with the Maths department. At the end of the year he heard my mother was planning to come up from Bristol for graduation and insisted she be his personal guest using his own guest room and dining with him on high table. I guess she was the oldest parent there at 65. I was still very depressed, and his kindness and gentle courtesies with Mum made me feel better at least for a while.

You may know of Peter Jolly who for many years was Deputy Head of Leeds Grammar School. George was almost certainly one of Peter’s role models. He was certainly one of mine.

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Don’t know is of course not remotely the same as can’t find out.

An acquaintance recently described part of his medical training following a Consultant around hospital wards. Seriously ill people often have questions. Sometimes the consultant would be asked something he didn’t happen to know the answer to. This is to be expected. We can’t know everything, even about stuff we specialise in; unless our specialist area is something trivial and finite like ‘the works of John Donne’. This Consultant however would never admit to ignorance in front of a patient. If he didn’t know then he’d make up an answer that sounded plausible.

The only thing that partly redeemed him was that occasionally, once away from the patient, he’d turn to his students and say, “Don’t quote that answer in an examination”.

Hmmm. My hands don't look dirty sir.

In 1964 I was privileged to be one of a pioneer class trying out Nuffield Biology. Our text book was a ring binder, and every month or two we’d receive a wadge of extra pages ready punched. The course was fantastic, not least because we had an incredibly able and enthusiastic teacher. (Oi, Ron Cockitt, you know who you are. Thank you.)

Instead of being lectured, or told to read stuff up, we did experiments. I know this has become far more common, but in the sixties it was not how Biology was taught. One experiment involved assessing the quantity of bacteria on our hands by wiping them across the jelly-like substance in petri dishes, covering the dishes, and putting them in a warm environment where nasty bugs would multiply. Half the class just swiped the gel. The other half washed their hands first.

And lo and behold, those with the most bacteria on their hands were the ones who – wait for it – did wash their hands.

What a teaching opportunity, and Ron used it to maximum effect. He expressed genuine surpise and then asked us to suggest possible explanations. After some discussion we figured out the probable error. After washing our hands we’d dutifully dried them – on a towel that happened to be lying around. Washing your hands and then using a dirty towel is likely to be worse in bacterial terms than not washing them at all.

This was the most powerful experiment of many hundred we did at school because it gave the wrong answer, and because our teacher wasn’t afraid to say “I don’t know, but let’s see if we can find out”.

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I’m bad on names and faces. Sorry. I do know he died some years back, and if I’d known I’d have travelled the 250 miles to be at his funeral.

He was the first teacher who treated us as equals, although he was able to retain our respect at the same time. To him we were younger, less experienced, his role was to teach and ours to learn, but we were just human beings like himself, of equal significance in the universe. For a year he was my form tutor. When my mother and I were evicted from our flat and I ended up in council care he arranged for me to stay with a friend instead of in the council place.

In our room the blackboard had an area a couple of metres deep behind it, which naturally formed part of the landscape in which we fooled about at lunchtime. Technically we weren’t allowed behind it, even though it was wide open. One day we were playing with the board duster – thick felting attached to wood – behind the board when he came in to collect something. Most other teachers would have shouted at us to behave. Some would have been embarassed and gone straight back out. He caught the duster in mid air, zipped it round his back, turned, and passed it to someone else as if he were playing rugby. For a minute he joined in the game before saying, “I’m sorry, I must get on with some work. By the way, I see someone’s been writing on the back of the board with chalk. It all looks polite and acceptable to me but some of my colleagues might get upset, so make sure you don’t get caught.” We cleaned all the comments off that day.

He made me feel like I counted, that I wasn’t just a tiny component on a large conveyer belt. He got me thinking that you could achieve something really important as a teacher. He was one of my models for how to be a teacher. I wish I’d told him so.

Ah, I think I now have his name, though I may not be spelling it correctly: Mr. Dunnicliffe.

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Mum, Dad, please let me out of the cotton wool

What is it these days with stopping kids doing anything remotely real?

When I was a kid we were rarely driven anywhere. We walked, cycled, or caught the bus. All kids (that I knew) had bikes. Okay so it was the fifties and sixties and there were fewer cars on the road and society hadn’t invented road-rage, but we were let out to cycle on our own where we wanted to go. I was slow having been born with punier muscles than the average kid.

One day on the Downs (which are at the top of the Avon gorge) in Bristol my friends got way ahead and then decided to turn around. As they cycled back past me they shouted, and naturally I started to turn across the road to follow them. There was an instant of confusion, and then I found I was on the road and in pain with a car looming over me. An elderly passenger was quite distressed, but the driver did his best to help. No mobile phones, so I guess someone called at a local house for the ambulance. I wasn’t badly hurt as road accidents go, but enough to be a great deal more aware of cars next time I got on a bike.

We often used to go exploring the golf course and the woods beyond. We’d be gone for hours and have a great time climbing trees and making shelters and fighting and poking through the undergrowth looking for creepy-crawlies. It never rained, or so it seemed. We failed miserably to be kidnapped by strange men or fall off one of the cliffs.

It was with my parents, again on the Downs, that I did meet an odd guy. I’d gone exploring in the woods, and after gazing at a limestone outcrop wishing I was brave enough to climb it I wandered through a denser area and met a really nice person. He was much more interested in what I was up to than my parents were. We sat on a log and chatted, but after a while he put his hand on my leg and began to slide it up under my shorts. This puzzled me. I told him not to do that. He tried again. It made me feel uncomfortable so I got up and went on my way. Some time later I returned to my parents and mentioned the odd behaviour of this very nice man, and they sort of explained to me that if it ever happened again I should fetch them at once. Why? Never mind, just do it. I was allowed to wander off on my own exploring, but they gave bought me a whistle.

I’ve only met two people who have admitted being sexually abused as a child. In one case it was her father. In the other his parents died in a car crash and he was assaulted over many years by some of the people paid to look after him.

I broke my arm in a games lesson at school. My parents did not threaten to sue the school. Things like that happen, it wasn’t anyone’s fault. The school took me to hospital, and left me there with the god-like presence of a prefect to look after me. I was repackaged in a rather neat plaster cast and sent home. For a month I had the joy of learning to write with my left hand, and was the centre of attention as I got to choose who could write on the cast. Yes of course it hurt but so what? At school the Headmaster used the cane sparingly and wisely. Only a couple of my friends were ever caned (in ten years) but you thought twice before skipping detention or switching labels on chemical bottles in the science lab.

Yes, shockingly dangerous though it must appear we did most of the science experiments ourselves. I rarely got the results promised by the text book, but I learned a lot from trying to use the equipment for myself. I never heard of anyone being hurt.

It may seem strange to twenty first century kids but we were content without mobile phones, home computers, ready meals, Child Protection and Human Rights acts. We were more likely to survive childhood because the rate of teenage suicide was lower. I believe we came out of it stronger for being allowed to take risks and sometimes get hurt. We were certainly fitter, healthier, slimmer, and respected ourselves and other people. And frankly I think we were a lot happier too.

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