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Ahhh, that would be Mrs King. Pretended to teach English when I was at Sherborne School for Girls. Taught literature straight out of Brodie's Notes (seriously, I'm not sure she'd ever actually read the texts or would have understood them if she had) and occasionally attempted to (wrongly) correct my spelling.
Those who know me and my mad Human Spellchecker skillz can imagine how that went down. I would take great delight in proving her wrong with the dictionary. When I was feeling more than usually bored or annoyed with her I'd experiment on her by padding my essays with lines of pure gibberish. If she noticed, she never called me on it. If I hadn't had the luck to have parents who fed me books from an early age, plus an excellent English teacher at my previous school (hi Mr Lewis, you may have been a sadist but you knew your arse from your elbow - respect) I would have left Sherborne practically illiterate.
I think I'm still angry about her, because, dude, it was English. You can have a happy and fulfilling life without knowing shit about physics or geography or foreign languages if you need to, but English in an English-speaking country? Those are the molecules that form every bit of communication and contact you have with every other member of your species you'll ever meet. Knowing how to use them is important. And maybe I'm biased because words are my lifeblood: nearly every good thing that's ever been in my life has come out of my love for reading or writing.
It's not a subject where it's hard to engage children's enthusiasm, either. We're born wired to communicate, we're born craving stories. All it would have taken was someone who loved stories too, and was articulate enough to show us why - and Mrs King couldn't even manage that. She went through great romances and tragedies like someone balancing a chequebook. It never seemed to occur to her that books were intended for pleasure; we learned, by rote, exactly what was needed to pass exams and that was it.
Mrs King was murdered a few years after I left school. According to gossip it was a spurned lover, but in my headcanon it was a raging ex-student who'd just found out how very, very badly she got shortchanged in the English department. I suppose I ought to feel shocked or sorry that it happened, but I never could bring myself to.
Mrs King, I would have one thing to say to you if you were here now: Why the fuck were you even doing that job? You hated it and you sucked at it. And you ruined Jane Austen for me, too, and that's fucking unforgiveable.
Ahhh, that would be Mrs King. Pretended to teach English when I was at Sherborne School for Girls. Taught literature straight out of Brodie's Notes (seriously, I'm not sure she'd ever actually read the texts or would have understood them if she had) and occasionally attempted to (wrongly) correct my spelling.
Those who know me and my mad Human Spellchecker skillz can imagine how that went down. I would take great delight in proving her wrong with the dictionary. When I was feeling more than usually bored or annoyed with her I'd experiment on her by padding my essays with lines of pure gibberish. If she noticed, she never called me on it. If I hadn't had the luck to have parents who fed me books from an early age, plus an excellent English teacher at my previous school (hi Mr Lewis, you may have been a sadist but you knew your arse from your elbow - respect) I would have left Sherborne practically illiterate.
I think I'm still angry about her, because, dude, it was English. You can have a happy and fulfilling life without knowing shit about physics or geography or foreign languages if you need to, but English in an English-speaking country? Those are the molecules that form every bit of communication and contact you have with every other member of your species you'll ever meet. Knowing how to use them is important. And maybe I'm biased because words are my lifeblood: nearly every good thing that's ever been in my life has come out of my love for reading or writing.
It's not a subject where it's hard to engage children's enthusiasm, either. We're born wired to communicate, we're born craving stories. All it would have taken was someone who loved stories too, and was articulate enough to show us why - and Mrs King couldn't even manage that. She went through great romances and tragedies like someone balancing a chequebook. It never seemed to occur to her that books were intended for pleasure; we learned, by rote, exactly what was needed to pass exams and that was it.
Mrs King was murdered a few years after I left school. According to gossip it was a spurned lover, but in my headcanon it was a raging ex-student who'd just found out how very, very badly she got shortchanged in the English department. I suppose I ought to feel shocked or sorry that it happened, but I never could bring myself to.
Mrs King, I would have one thing to say to you if you were here now: Why the fuck were you even doing that job? You hated it and you sucked at it. And you ruined Jane Austen for me, too, and that's fucking unforgiveable.
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