Stereotypes

Somewhere in the PSHE curriculum, it says that you have to teach students about stereotypes.

Undeniably, there is an ideological agenda at the core of such teaching, which the cynical might label as political and the more reasoned might describe as enlightening, humanitarian, egalitarian or something else soft and nice, which I generally agree with, not being a bastard that is.

Let’s face it, the country is awash with prejudice, because it is a very natural flaw of human nature to lazily categorise people into simplistic groups and cast barely substantiated judgements at them, while deep down we don’t actually fully subscribe to these glib thoughts that prop up our prejudices.

Therefore, you will assume that students have these prejudices, and so you teach them – or rather challenge them – to think deeply about their opinions of other (groups of) people in the hope that they become a lot more enlightened than their parents (and a great fucking amount more enlightened than their grandparents) in their attitudes towards people who are superficially dissimilar to themselves.

This is how it might go. Lesson one – write down every word you can think of to describe a homosexual.

The flood gates open. To challenge prejudice you have to bring it out into the open. Like a séance. Call up the evil spirits and only then can you exorcise them.

Only, to the students, it appears that you’ve given them license to write a plethora of abusive and insulting words onto sugar paper. It might even become competitive, with efforts to out-do each other in terms of how many forms of homophobic abuse they can think of.

Once this catharsis is complete, you are able to start tackling the tricky subject of stereotypes, in which you preach that everyone is in fact different and you blindly ignore the truth that we all conform to a stereotype to some extent at least, because if we didn’t then the whole concept of stereotypes would not even exist.

It’s too dangerous to tell students that they are in fact “not” completely individual, forming independent opinions and endowed with unique tastes and talents.

It’s better to let students find out the dark and bleak truth for themselves.

They all assume that they’re different, but in an effort to fit in, they try to be the same as each other and end up casting suspicion on (or systematically bullying) anyone who seems significantly different to them.

The evidence confronts them everyday, because like it or not, you as teachers often conform to teacher stereotypes. Beyond the shared capacity for weird humour, talking too much, use of obscure “Teacherspeak” phrases and the wearing of smart casual clothing from supermarkets and Matalan, you do tend to dip a toe, a foot or a leg into the subject-stereotype puddle. In some cases, you plunge in up to your ears.

This is not where I fall into the trap of picking on PE teachers for being illiterate, beer-swilling, overly-butch, pseudo-rebels. Even though the odd female one does manage to fill every gap in that particular mould. (But none that I work with now, should any colleague be reading this. In fact, far from it, to be fair.) That would be a cliché. If anything, PE staff demonstrate remarkable literary competence in the application of suffixes, by adroitly adding a Y or O to the end of each others’ surnames. (PE teachers refuse to recognise that anyone has a first name, even students.) Linguistic dexterity can sometimes lead to the use of “–ers” where a pronoun ends up sounding too Brazilian or just too daft when buffered with Y or O.

Just imagine if some of history’s greatest individuals had ended up as PE teachers! US Civil Rights leader, Kingy; English playwright, the Bard, Shakeso, and British War-Time PM, Churchers. There’s a suggestion that Gandhi was in fact a PE teacher, named Mahatma Gand.

On the subject of History, people who teach this subject provide the strongest evidence against the accusation that “those who can do and those who can’t teach.” Because although there may occasionally be some truth in the stereotypical view that drama teachers are failed actors (Luvvies without the luck,) who would ever think that any History teacher ever wanted to become an historian? This might also stem from the fact (my view) that History teachers are perhaps the most normal of all subject deliverers and the least teacher-like. In fact, anyone teaching a Humanities subject by default is more human and better able to relate to other members of the species. Probably because at university they did the least work and had the most time to sit around talking and drinking with other people.

In contrast, Scientists at university were in the lab on campus all day 5 or 6 days a week, many ending up with an inability to communicate with humans. Mathematicians are the same. That’s why there is a shortage of teachers in both these areas. Only those who managed to demonstrate human characteristics and some awareness that living organisms can be communicated with outside of a petri dish, have felt tempted to apply for teacher training. Mind you, that doesn’t stop the majority growing beards.

Which brings us – as I wonder if I spelt petri dish correctly – to the most unbearded of staff, English teachers. Women whose love of literature just slightly outdoes their love of small children, plum for secondary over primary education and swell the ranks of English departments leaving no room for men to get a look in. Only a confident man would enter an English department office anyway, because the sheer magnitude of combined intellect and femininity can be too intimidating for most males.

Finally, a mention for languages teachers. They pretty much defy all stereotyping, because they are only united by their ability to speak another language, so they tend to be a diverse breed.

So, there you have it. Students are confronted by stereotypes, students fit stereotypes and yet students are taught not to stereotype. Now, write down all the words that might describe teachers…