Grange Hill, flippin’ eck Tucker

Mr Kennedy, ex-Leeds Utd player in the 70s, and then Wycombe Wanderers, a nasty man who passed away in 2018.

A bully with judicious use of corporal punishment, and a seeming deep-down dislike for 10-11 year-old children. Made life hell for most of the lads and was worshipped by the girls. His legacy still haunts me now 44 years later.

Some people should never have been teachers.

On the flip side to my previously mentioned PE teacher, we did have an excellent maths teacher who was really there to teach and if you wanted to learn he was really inspiring. Same with a stand-in woodwork teacher we had, he ran a carpentry business locally and stepped in when the regular teacher was off for a few months. Absolutely brilliant, real work skills that he just wanted us to learn.

We had our fair share of terrible teachers ( including a PE teacher who once tried to boot me across the changing room for talking at the same time as him. A bad move because I was 4 inches taller and generally a lot bigger all round than him. We had a little “talk” about it a couple of days later in town.) But the worst was an R.E teacher that had started at the school years before when my father was a pupil. He was a nasty, vicious piece of work and the sole reason that my dad never came to any parent’s evenings because my dad said that he wasn’t sure that he would be able to control himself remembering all the things that he’d seen this man do (the teacher was a Methodist preacher that was very spare the rod and spoil the child to the extent of making a selection of his own tools for beating boys with).

I recall many similar anecdotes (I was 11 in 1978).

Mr Lucas (PE Teacher) lined up the whole class one day to give us all a whack with his Trainer shoe that he kept for just such things. He decided that we made too much noise while getting changed after a cross-country run!

A Maths teacher (can’t recall his name) who liked to throw the Wooden Board Rubber at any kid that talked during his class. In his defence he aimed for the desk in front of the pupil rather than the pupil themselves! Usually this resulted in a cloud of chalk dust and the kid next to the target pupil getting whacked as the Board Rubber would bounce off the desk!

Kids would regularky get sent to ‘see the headmaster’ for a caning. One or two of the senior teachers were also ‘authorised’ to use the cane.

About 15 years after I left school the French Teacher, the one that we saw every week, was convicted of child sexual offences – loads of pictures on his computer apparently.

The Government banned corporal punishment just after I left school.

I got an F for PE thanks to a shit PE teacher.

I could have written this thread about 2 months ago.  I literally binge watched Grange hill for about 2 months solid.  There are about 25 seasons!!

From Tucker, Gripper, Banksie, Roland, Hollo, Gonch, Zammo etc etc.  I did the lot.  I could not believe how well (for the time) they covered all the issues that were about at the time without having to pussy foot around the subject.

Have a youtube search of Grange Hill racism and there is an astonishing clip of Benny complaining to a teacher and one of the more caring and understanding older girls.  She listens, gives advice and shows real empathy.  Then she ruins it all right at the end (in front of the teacher) by saying “you cant help being a nigg nogg” (Apologies if this offends, its what she says).  Simply stunning.