To think Miss Honey in Matilda is overly personal?

If everything had happened as it should, it wouldn't be much of a story, surely.

Wtf?
It is a work of bloody fiction!

Please explain

😂😂😂😂
It is based on a work of fiction, ffs.
If you object to the parameters you have outlined, why aren't you moaning about telekinesis, because that's even more fabntastical than the bits you object to

In the 90s two teachers came to my house to discuss an exchange trip. And then 3 of us went to our teacher’s house for dinner during the trip. Nobody thought twice about it.

I remember reading an account of Roald Dahl's experience of being beaten at school. Dahl was in his 70s when he wrote the story - I'm sure he was more influenced by his own schooldays than what school was actually like in the 80s!
Goodness knows what we could make of the teachers at Hogwarts!

It was set in 80s Britain where there was more engagement between families and school and in certain regions this wouldn’t have been seen as weird at all. I think it’s now that we have it wrong. Just as much terrible stuff happens now despite all the protections but we’ve lost the ability for people to do what’s best and instead they just follow the book and remain detached and “professional” when actually talking to parents directly might well be helpful. We now live in a bureaucracy, not a society.

Maybe teachers did home visits in US back in the nineties? Or it just fitted the plot better. Could she safely call her parents into the school with Miss Trunchbull there? Even if she did try to call Matilda's parents into school, it's doubtful they would have bothered to school.

It's also unrealistic that there wasn't a regulatory body she could report Miss Trunchbull too for locking kids in cupboards and throwing them 100 yards.

Takes a bow.

headmonster. Brilliant @OrwellianTimes 😂

It's a book written in the 80s and expectations have massively shifted. There were no DBS checks, for example and part of the reason a small number of teachers etc got away with abusing kids is because they were assumed to be the good guys. And there simply wasn't the scrutiny over their behaviour that there is now. Plus it's a book written by a man born in 1916 educated in the British public school system.

Add to that the fact that Matilda is sort of set in the real workd, but sort of set in a fairy tale world. I don't think you can fiddle the mileometer by attaching a drill to the car wheel like her father does.

I do get frustrated with clear illogical procedure in some fiction, but really not here. I think all that is a long way to say 'dramatic license is a great thing in storytelling'.

She encourages them towards fascism, encourages one to go to fight for Franco in the Spanish Civil war, and tries to make another one have an affair with a married Catholic teacher (from what I can remember, the one she encourages doesn’t, but a different one does, and dumps him to convert to Catholicism and becomes a nun…?)

Brilliant novel!

I’m sure the book was set in the U.K. wasn’t it? So the point made above about American teachers is irrelevant. Miss Honey took Matilda to her home and visited her parents in the book.

Personally, I feel that Mr Twit should have been charged with attempted murder after the incident with Mrs Twit and the balloons.

Don't whatever you do read The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. She has girls from her class round at hers for tea on a Sunday. I can't remember what else she does but it did seem to be really abnormal!

A much maligned woman, way ahead of her time.

Back in the 90s my sister’s teacher came to our house!

And not the Headmistress hammer-throwing a small girl over the wall of the playground because she doesn’t like her hairstyle???😀😀

I saw the musical recently and yes, Miss Honey is a fucking safeguarding NIGHTMARE.

I mean obviously Miss Trunchbull is much worse, but she's clearly positioned as the villain, whereas Miss Honey is the saviour figure...

Yes, that’s the problem with what’s going on in that school for sure. Not the headmonster.

Ofsted would have a field day.

You also can't adopt a child willy nilly but yeah Miss Honey going to the house rather than inviting them to the school is the big problem with the story.

All these comments about Miss Trunchball are making me laugh 🤣🤣

Cause yeah, in this fictional tale, Miss Honey is really the biggest issue? 🙈

I think Miss Honey would get struck off 😁 Taking a pupil to her house? Taking her to live with her without social services involvement?!

And if anyone is worried about Miss Honey’s activities, how do they feel about a Headmistress swinging a child around by her plaits, locking children in a spike-encrusted cupboard, and sadistically forcefeeding a child cake in front of the whole school while he tries not to vomit it up?

The book was written in 1988. The lines of appropriateness was different then. I am roughly the same age as Matilda and it was not out of kilter - especially in a village.