2005-02-18 - 7:08 p.m.

Male school teachers

When I was at school I spent most of my time obsessing over how I would be going to kill this or that teacher. When the teacher’s bullying intensified and I inevitably attacked a teacher or another student, I was given the minimum suspension allowed by policy, and when I retuned to class I would hear stories of lectures given by teachers to their classes denouncing ‘victimisation’ even where it was clear to all that these teachers themselves were the primary instruments of this victimisation.

When the HSC was over, while other students were relieved at having finished their school studies, I was relieved at having resisted such a great temptation to murder.

During school and since then I have been asked quite a few times how I found school, why I didn’t like it, and why I didn’t like certain teachers, and I often get responses like “oh come on, the teacher surely didn’t mean that” or “you just took it the wrong way, get over it”. My Robbinsist phase has led me to recognise that to adopt these attitudes in spite of their mendaciousness would be beneficial to my social development.

So yesterday I was in a social group which included two male school teachers and their supportive wives. One teacher described how he plays a mathematical game in which he challenges his students one-on-one, in front of the rest of the class. He was keen to share with us the joy he derives from fixing these games in such a way as to ensure that he always wins, much to the chagrin of his more intelligent pupils.

The other, more vocal male school teacher identified with this joy and exclaimed “I love to play games where I just dominate,” and shared similar anecdotes. Another young man in attendance responded to these apparently good-humoured narratives by laughing and saying “I could never be a teacher. I would just scar too many people for life.”

Proof that I was right, or maybe I just took this the wrong way too.

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