Results tagged “pupils” from Birmingham Post - News Blog

I was gutted when back at school I failed my O' level Physics. I felt so ashamed - it was as if I had let my family down. But oddly, at the same time, I also knew that it wasn't purely because of my inability in science, but the way I was taught.

My teacher was a harsh, puny wisp of a man from Bombay thrown into an inner-city school. The idea of developing a rapport with the pupils was as alien to him as the laws of Physics was to me.

Anyway, suffice to say, he was rather a cruel, venomous entity with all the charm and empathy of a rattle snake. He believed that the best way to instil knowledge in his pupils was through the threat and the use of the cane, intercepted with incomprehension and boredom. And that's precisely how I suffered through double Physics on Monday and Friday mornings during my fifth year at secondary school.

Why am I telling you this?

You might have read in one of the national papers that an RE teacher in a secondary school in Staffordshire gave detention to two boys who refused to participate in a role play.