Chalk Talk

Discussing school days and chalkboards with one of my blog readers (do chalkboards even exist anymore?) I recalled that it was once quite a privilege to be the ‘chalk eraser monitor.’  The more loaded with chalk dust it was, the more exciting the act of banging the life out of it, forming a massive cloud of colored dust.   

These days, that would have at least half the class reaching for their inhalers.  I think maybe 2% of the kids at my (large) school had asthma.  We wouldn’t have known an inhaler from a kazoo. Nebulisers?   Never heard of them; would have thought they were some kind of alien weapon from “Lost In Space.”

 Certainly one of the most common simple ‘punishments’ a teacher could mete, if he/she saw someone not paying attention in class, was to hurl the chalk duster across the room at them, hitting them either square on the head, or leaving an impressive branding on the back of their school jumper.  Again, if we transpose that to a modern-day school, I can’t even begin to speculate the cries of protest that would arise, the throng of parents complaining and possibly laying assault charges.

When I was 14, our temperamental English teacher (a very camp gent in ultra-high-waisted slacks) one day became increasingly annoyed as he listened to a group of rowdy girls in our class  mocking novels by Jane Austen and the Bronte sisters.  “Stop it!” he finally yelped. “ You’re just a bunch of sluts!”

Well, that certainly shut them up.  It wasn’t appropriate from a teacher, but at the same time, some of the huffy reactions were hypocritical to say the least.   And guess that?  The two parents who lodged complaints about him, were the very ones whose daughters were being dropped off after school, a block shy of their homes, by guys who drove panel vans.