What are your terrible teacher memories?

[lovelyjubbly888]

A bit random - and in no way a teacher bashing thread! I was just inspired randomly by a thread about whether people make sure the sink is dry after use.
I had an absolute hag of a home economics teacher - who one day had a right go at me after I had washed up all the dishes. She lifted up the wash basin, and there were soap suds on the bottom of the basin. She got angry at me for it, and made stay behind and wash it until there was not a soap sud left. I was then late for next lesson. I'm still indignant about it, she was a fucking loose screw.
This was only 10 years ago!!!

Another change I think about 1990 was instead of being called 5th years we became year 11.

You definitely didn't! :)

But according to the OP she left in 2013, home economics was definitely not a thing 10 years ago. It didn't exist when I was at school 5 years prior.

Nobody referred to it as home economics either, it was simply 'food technology' 'textiles' etc.

This always confuses me. I left in 1983. I don’t have kids. When people talk about Y8 or whatever I’m always 🤔and having to add 5 onto the year to work out the child’s age and then work out the year in Old Money!

That hit us much earlier in Australia. I went from being in Form 1 to Year 8 in 1976/77.

ilovepixie · Today 15:20

I moved to london from northern Ireland in the late 70s. I was eight. My teacher used to call me IRA girl and wouldn't let me go on a class trip to the horse of the year show in case I bombed the horses!

Fucking Hell! My grandad moved from Armagh to London when he was 6, as he was orphaned and had a bad time of it. He quickly learned to speak with a local accent, but was always referred to as a "stupid Paddy."

Even in the 50s, my dad had to explain that he wasn't "one of those Irish," as grandad was from a Protestant background. All the kids with Irish backgrounds, Catholic or Protestant, tended to stick together.

If I ever complained about school in front of him, grandad would tell me I was soft and come out with some horror story.

Not in Scotland.

We still have first year, second year etc also know as S1, S2 etc.

Home Ecc in my day and whilst it was supposed to be co-ed only girls took it. The boys all did woodwork instead.

Today my son does what is officially called 'Practical Cookery' but all the kids talk about doing Home Ecc

So dreadful to read these stories of such abusive behaviours! :(

Mine is pale in comparison to many of these (I was at school in the 1990s/early 2000s) but mine is the music teacher who was an arrogant snob, shouting at me in front of a hall of people during a dress rehearsal for a concert because I couldn't find the right sheet music quick enough (my parents made me be in the orchestra and play the violin, both of which I hated...even more so after that!)

He later became headteacher at the same local high school but has luckily gone now, as no way would I want my kids being round him.Total idiot who enjoyed egotistical power trips.

I must have been to one of the worst primary schools in London in the late 70s/early 80s.

One elderly male teacher would keep a child back each afternoon to clean the blackboard after school ended. It was one you could move round, not static, but when it was my turn to stay back, rather than allowing me to pull the board down to clean, he lifted me and held me close to his body so I could reach the top. Then he lowered me to the floor while pressing me against his crotch. I told my Mum about this as it made no sense to me at the time. My Mum's visit resulted in this creep's sudden retirement.

Later, in my final year, a large boy punched me in the face for treading on his work. My teacher told me to shut up and stop making a fuss while I wept with my head in my arms on my desk. She caught sight of my thick lip when I looked up and turned visibly pale, rushing me out the door to the medical room and then taking the boy to the head master. If my lip had not swollen, she'd have done nothing, even though she witnessed the punch herself.

I was also forcibly fed Semolina at lunchtime when I asked to just have the jam and the dinner lady decided she knew better despite me telling her I was allergic to milk. Her and the lunchtime supervising teacher stood over me as I cried and ate it mentioning the word anorexia several times (I was small and thin). When I started vomiting and collapsed on the floor, an ambulance was called because I was struggling to breathe and covered in hives.

I was a late school starter at Easter because I was born in August.

I may have been only 4 but I can vividly remember being told off by the teacher for chewing the ends of the straws in a construction straw game thing we used to build shapes with. I did not do it.

Two girls who had been at school together since September told the teacher I had done it. I was really upset that the teacher believed the two girls. It was the first time I experienced injustice and looking back it laid the seeds to my career.

i

English teacher, Mr Hartley who disliked me immensely. I was an incredibly painfully shy kid, with a really unhappy, abusive home life, but was always well behaved, polite and really bright. Got good marks in everything and never, ever caused trouble - never had a single detention. The other kids called me a ‘swot’. I never worked out why he disliked me so much, but he had his favourites and then there was me… He was in an absolutely foul mood one day from the get go. He singled me out to read a piece of homework out loud. When I pointed out that I had just come back to school after an illness, and hadn’t been there when the homework was set, so didn’t have it, he went puce in the face and roared at me for having not done it, implied that I had faked an illness to have time off, and made me cry. Seeing that I was crying and a snotty mess he then made me open our set text and read the next chapter out loud to the whole class. Something I hated (and he knew it) at the best of times. It was utterly cruel and humiliating and I’ve never forgotten it.

Bamboo?

Sr Mary Catherine (AKA Sr Mary Thwak 'em) had a special 1m wooden ruler, twice as thick as any other one. NB I'm calling it a ruler not a rule because it would annoy her.

As I said too many tales but that ruler was used at least daily. She found someone had written in a text book, decided it was boy A and told him to confess. He didn't so he got 6 whacks with that ruler, the next day the same thing, and the next. After a week boy B admitted it was him.

@OldTinHat I remember CSEs too, it used to be said that if you put your name on the paper you got a 5 and if you spelled it correctly you got a 4.

Several teachers in relationships with girls around 13 at school and nothing done about it, one made me stay behind after a lesson then was pushing me against a wall. I escaped. But head knew, my Mum knew, completely covered up for reputation of the school. One is still teaching in Sweden. I thought it was better these days but when DD reported PE teacher was entering their changing room watching them getting changed safeguarding lead said not to discuss as may damage reputation of school and tell my DD not to ask other children. 😡Eventually they did something. Got DD out.

Also another teacher at junior school would beat up working class children and stick their heads down the toilet or wash their mouths out with soap.

Remember reporting to a teacher a girl who said her foster parents were throwing her down the stairs and were a million times worse than the Mum she was removed from and teacher just shrugged and said what can you do. So did my Mum.

When I was with a male teacher crying another male teacher asked him what he had been doing to make me cry so much in a really sleazy way, must have been 15 or so. The girls were always blamed for the male teachers behaviour. And the families hid it to avoid damaging the girls reputations.

I attended school in southern France from the ages of 8-14 and I never lost my English accent, not fully. This seemed to amuse most of my teachers who constantly took the piss out of me in front of the class.

It was like being repatriated when I came back to the UK and I fitted into my new school with no problems.Strangely enough the only teacher who was arsey with me was my French teacher, who wasn’t French. Bizarre !.

We had a nasty maths teacher ( female white South African). We went on a school journey to Scotland... one night some excited girls were talking after lights out so she made them stand outside for quite a while in the freezing cold in their nightwear!
This same teacher used to wake us up with a cold flannel in the face! Being the 'brave' 12 year old I was I got up early one morning with a cold water flannel and crept to her room... there she was laying on her back sound asleep I rubbed the flannel on her face and legged it, sadly she shouted out my name before I'd even got back to my bed! The punishment was harsh but the moment if glory was sooo worth it. ✌️✌️

Had an awful teacher at junior school. I was fairly quiet, always top of my class and loved school. I was also an excellent swimmer and I was due to.do my gold badge that afternoon. I had.been brought up to be honest and I was also in the brownies. Basically I was a good kid.

This particular morning in class I saw a pin on the floor. I picked it up and said "sir I've found this" at that point the boy sitting next to me said 'ouch, she's just pricked me with it". I hadn't band wouldn't have even thought of doing that. The arse of a teacher believed the lying little shit and I was told I wasn't allowed to do my swimming badge that afternoon. I was absolutely devasted. My mum and her friend were waiting at the swimming baths and I was distraught . That teacher was an utter bustard and I have never forgotten it. It made me lose faith in teachers and from then on I decided what was the point in being good, I may as well be naughty if they thought I was anyway. I was 10 years old and that teacher changed me. Yes it sounds trivial but I've never forgotten it.
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Once had a teacher tell me if I asked another question, she'd smash my head against the wall, in front of the whole class. I was an anxious kid and sometimes asked more questions because of that, but it was a relevant question and by no means did I ask an excessive amount. I felt so stupid and small. Still annoyed about it all these years later!

Feel so bad you had to go through this....how has it affected you growing up? I think its bad that although there is much emphasis on the impact of parental abuse and neglect on someone's mental health, the abuse or neglect experienced by other key figures such as teachers often seems overlooked as being a significant factor in adverse childhood experiences and long term emotional trauma.

Thank you for your empathy @Mummyof287 , it's appreciated.

We forget how awful school used to be only last century. My husband is a little older so caught the corporal punishment aspect in the 70s in his home country. He says that the teachers there visibly enjoyed hitting the kids and took pleasure in making it their own. Large plimsoll with worn out treat to the bottom of the shorts so it contacted bare skin. Taking a run up with the leather strap across the palm of the hand. Seems so alien in today's culture. However, it was certainly abuse.

Also, the blind eye to "fagging" in boys schools. The sexual abuse of younger boys by older boys has never been addressed but was known and common.

My own experiences made me a fighter and gave me a strong sense of fairness. I work in an area where I support people. There's a saying that the strong stand up for themselves, the strongest stand up for others. I am lucky that I managed to take the injustice and turn it into something positive.

Oh plenty but I think the absolute worst was when one class would randomly break into song about me detailing how ugly, smelly, horrible I was and the teacher just ignored it.
Tbh most of my stories are about teachers not caring I was being bullied.

60s - The PE teacher threatened to break my brother’s arm if he didn’t play rugby.

A horrendous teacher at an awful school I attended from 9-11 after we’d moved area. Everyone was petrified of her. She’d yell and rant, take boys by the scruff of the neck and throw them at the blackboard, chuck blackboard rubbers at pupils.

No sympathy at home! My DM would say, ‘Poor old thing, she probably lost her boy in the war.’ (This was late 50s/very early 60s.)

At a parents’ evening I saw her smiling and going positively pink and simpering at my father, who was good looking and very charming. Afterwards he said, ‘Oh, I thought she was quite a nice old thing.’ I felt so betrayed!

It was a private school, a moneymaker for the head, who treated himself to a new Jag just about every term. But eventually after I’d left, they found him out - DM found him shouting at my very little sister, no more than 5, who he said was waiting in the wrong place to be collected.
They sent her instead to the C of E primary next door, where she thrived.

I remember two female PE teachers who were generally lovely but once made fun of a fat girl and joked that she shouldn't be allowed on the trampoline. I was absolutely mortified for her. I still can't believe they said it.
Our history teacher was shagging a 16 year old pupil (I know this to be true. She was my friend).
We went on a school trip to France for a week. One of the teachers was a very large woman who never stopped eating. She sent me off to get her an ice cream but it meant I was 5 minutes late to meet everyone at the meeting spot. As a punishment I wasn't allowed to join in any activities for two days. Age never once stuck up for me or explained it was her fault! I still feel resentful about this, 30 years later.

Our primary school PE teacher was large, crew-cut and butch, with a bellowing shout and a mean temper. She was also so useless that our netball and football teams regularly lost to the other local schools by St Custard margins. I remember her standing in the middle of a playing field shouting while we struggled round for the nth time, and I also remember getting a pain in the back of my heel after an entire PE class spent doing nothing but star jumps and burpees (no sprung floors or fancy trainers in those days either, just black daps, or Green Flash if you were posh).

In my last year there our class had to put up with her in the classroom for a few afternoons a week. I dreaded these as she would set pointless homeworks like ‘All the national airlines of the EEC, with livery’, and shout at us when we couldn’t get to travel agents or whoever might have that info to find out.

She left in my final year there, and I later found out that she had been sacked amid dark rumours of swimming pool changing room misbehaviour…

That is appalling.