School teachers can inspire or conspire

When I was 6 I had a fabulous teacher. Her name was Miss Allott. She always sat in the front pew in Church, and was very tall and slim. From my earliest memories of her, to the last time I saw her when I was about 30, she had never changed at all. Always smiling, always caring. Of course, to me, she didn't have a Christian name, or if she did, it was Miss. It was only after she died that I discovered she was called Rachael.

Her passion was Geography. She would teach us the way round the world, leaving Liverpool, calling in at Dublin and then across to Canada and so round the world. I was obsessed by learning about geography. I could soon recite all the capital cities, what each country exported, what its language was and a myriad other facts about every country. She was a truly inspirational teacher.

I lived the furthest away from school, and had to get a bus there at 8am each morning, which meant I was at school with the cleaners. I could not get a bus home until 5pm, and as in those days school finished at 4pm, it meant another hour with the cleaners. I loved that time. I adored poetry, and would spend a lot of those hours learning new poems to recite when I got home. I had been reading since I was 3, and as my siblings were 8 and 10 years older than me, we really had nothing in common, so, since I lived in a big house and there were no children nearby to play with after school, reading became my big love.

We moved house when I was 10, and so as I am an August child, I went to the new High School 2 bus rides away. Only 2 other boys passed from my school, and since this was a single sex school, I no longer saw anyone I had known at junior school.

I was lucky. It was a brand new school and I was in the first first year there. It was 1953. Coronation Year. It had happened in the June, so all celebrations were well forgotten by then.

I had a new set of teachers, and the georgraphy teacher was not a patch on Miss Allott. She was not interested in Capital Cities or exports or pretty much anything that we had learned before. She was all graphs of population and crop growing. Nothing interesting like the Taj Mahal, or Ayres Rock, or the Grand Canyon. Fortunately, the seed was well planted by Miss Allott, and it grew of its own accord.

I did have a fantastic English teacher though. Miss Wainwright. Again, no Christian name. Just Miss. She was small, with untidy hair and her black gown (all our teachers wore their hoods and gowns every day to teach), flapped around her. At the end of her lessons, which she always managed to make incredibly interesting - even clauses and phrases - she would stand, wrap her gown tightly around her, and rest her bottom on the edge of her desk. She would then tell us classic stories. One which made a huge impression on me was the story of Svengali from the book Trilby. We were the most silent during the telling of these stories than at any other time of the week in school, such was her skill at story telling. She was like every Best Actress rolled into one. The voices, the actions, and facial expressions, they were all there. She became the person she was telling us about. Extraordinary gift that is. I only found out three years ago that her name was Mary.

Then there was the other side of the coin. The Maths teacher. Horrible woman who delighted in belittling any girl who made an error, no matter how small. Not one of us liked maths after have had her for 5 years. Yes, a true martinet. Not an inkling of human interest in children learning anything. She inhabited her own planet, and we were just one long pain to her. the same with the art teacher. I can't even remember her name (all our teachers were females). What I do remember though is that we had one very gifted girl in our class, and the rest of us could go and knit fog as far as the art teacher was concerned. She said that it really didn't matter what any of us did, because we were all, with that one shining exception, rubbish at art. So, art was something to be suffered and dropped if possible. I never picked up another paintbrush until I was 54!<

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There lots of Ann's, Pat's, Jean's and Julie's in my year. I was the only Phyllis. The sole other bearer of this awful name was the headmistress. Miss Cater. That woman had the most devastating effect on my life it was possible to have.

I had been the innocent victim in a court case, and when I knew that it would mean I had to go to court to give evidence I went to see her to tell her what was happening. Nothing was said. Not a word of comfort or support. The day came, and I went to court and endured something no girl has to face these days. I had to stand in a courtroom, look around and actually point out the defendent who had attacked me. Once it was over, I thought that was the end of the matter. I went to school as usual on the following Monday, and was happily cooking in the Domestic Science class when the school secretary came in and ordered me to the headmistress's office.

Shaking I went in. She had a sheaf of newspaper cuttings in her hand, and my mother was sitting in the corner. There was to be a school trip to the Channel Islands the following Whit, and I was daft enough to think my mum had brought the money up to school to pay for my place on it.

Waving the papers at me, this angry woman said that since I had been in court over such a matter, I was no longer fit to mix with 'nice' girls, and that I was to go home with my mother and never come back. I was not even 16 until the August and this was March. I had shone at my mock GCEs and had been expected to get 8 or 9 good grades. Now all that was out of the window.

My ambition had been, since a little girl, to be a nurse and a missionary nurse at that. I was numb. I sat at home with my parents, who were both very angry, but of the generation who did not, ever, question anyone in authority like a Headmistress. My father asked me what I wanted to do. He said I need never work, that I could happily stay at home with my mother, and just be a lady, or I could do whatever I felt right for me. I wanted to work. I got a job as a Vet's surgery nurse until I could get into Nursing School the following September.

The Nursing was my dream job. I loved every moment spent learning and caring. I would often be found telling jokes to patients (particularly when I was on a male ward), and my nickname was Smiler in those days. I passed my exams with ease. I felt I was on the right path for me. Then one day, just before I was 18, I got a message to go to the Matron's office. I had always got on well with all the Sisters and even with Matron (godess though she was in the hospital in those days)!

Wondering what it was all about, I went to the office. The moment I went in my heart sank. There was Miss Cater. Matron simply said that according to information she had just been given by Miss Cater, I was not to be allowed to nurse male patients again. To say I was devastated was the understatment of my life, let alone that year! Here was history repeating itself. If I was to be banned from nursing men, then there was clearly no future in nursing for me. Full stop. End of.

So you see, wonderful teachers inspired me to see the world and to be able to express myself in good English and to admire beautifully written works and love poetry and prose in equal measure, but another teacher ensured that I became almost innumerate (though not completely), and finally the one who should have been caring of a rape victim was the ultimate devastation. I thank heaven that such events can no longer happen, because now girls such as myself are cared about and protected. I had to fight my own way through, but I suppose I am who I am because of the events of that time.