So teachers who shout in the classroom are in the bad books.

There’s been a call for them to be investigated for what is perceived as a form of child abuse.

Presumably the call comes from those who want to see children cocooned and protected from just about everything, without considering that taken to extremes, this mollycoddling could well see kids growing up frightened of their own shadows and ill-equipped to cope with the inevitable bumps on the road of life.

Shouting by a teacher trying to maintain order in the classroom, or even blowing up a student for mucking up is hardly child abuse in the sinister sense that rightly horrifies society. Well, not in my book, anyway.

So now it’s eye-roll time for those who dread the phrase “In my day…” Here, from a work in progress, is my memoir of one teacher who shouted:

Until I reached Grade Seven at South Toowoomba Boys, school was a tedious but tolerable way of putting in the time between 9.30am and 3.30pm, but then we went into the scholarship class of Cyril (“Duck”) Oehlman.

We all wondered what had struck us when he turned on one of his simulated rages.

I can hear him now, readying us for the dreaded exam that would decide which of us could go on to secondary school at the state’s expense.

“You sit there, still pooping yellow, and you think that because you’re in Grade Seven, you know it all. Well, I’ll teach you. I’ll teach you just how much you DON’T know; and unless you get your heads down and your bums up, you can forget about passing scholarship.”

We soon learned to keep a wary eye out for flying dusters (pure theatre, of course) and ‘Duck’s’ biting wit could etch a lesson more deeply into our minds than all the parrot-fashion repetition in the world.

But there was another side to him.

We never knew when he would lead us on an expedition into an unexplored field of thought, or give us a rare and therefore highly prized word of praise for some apparently insignificant piece of work … an essay, a sentence, or even a neatly turned phrase, which had shown him the glimmer of promise.

Occasionally, he would invite two or three of us who had shown an incipient interest in one or more of the arts to his bachelor home, where he would show us his art works, play some of his wonderful collection of music, and discuss literature at a level deeper than that required in the classroom.

For a teacher to do that today would be unthinkable. Grooming prior to child abuse, the media would probably call it.

Well, the media would be wrong.

Never once by word, gesture or even eye contact, did “Duck” give any of us reason, either then or with later hindsight, to see his motives as other than those of a true teacher.

During the whole of my school days, I never had a better one.

So let’s raise a glass to all true teachers, whether they shout or not. My shout.

rich.29@bigpond.net.au

journoremembers.blogspot.com