Mr McGee.
He was a great teacher who made science interesting.
We were regularly shown episodes of a television show featuring American Physicist Professor Julius Sumner Miller.
Professor Miller’s first television appearance in Australia was on Bob Sanders People in 1963.
In an improvised physics demonstration, he attempted to drive a drinking straw through a raw potato. A paper straw normally does not have sufficient strength but if one pinches the end, the trapped air acts as a piston, easily piercing the potato.
For the first time in his career he could not get this to work, and he loudly exclaimed “Australian straws ain’t worth a damn!”.
The next morning, Miller arrived at his Sydney University laboratory to find one million drinking straws on the floor with a telegram reading “You might find one of these fitting your requirements”.
He later stated “I sat amongst the straws with straws stuck in my hair and ears.
But clearly I had made a mistake. I should have said: ‘Australian potatoes ain’t worth a damn’, and I’d have cornered the potato market!” Electric shock prank with Professor Julius Sumner Miller | Why Is It So
It’s good when teachers are praised rather than bashed as is the case very often. I’m useless when it comes to science and that also has to do with the classes I attended. There were simply not enough good teachers in the sixties because almost a generation had been killed in the war. Others were banned from teaching for ideological reasons.
We either had elderly teachers or very young ones who were only insufficiently trained. A maths teacher admitted later that he’d been just one lesson ahead of what he taught and he was not the only one. And that was noticeable in the classroom. The younger teachers had just attended a crash course and were basically unqualified.
I don’t think any of my grammar school teachers were that good, there were a couple I quite liked but generally speaking they were still fighting WWII, most seemed to be ex commando, bomber pilots or navigators for some reason. Remembering Britain employed a lot of unqualified teachers until the well into the 1960s (my mother was one)
Hated school from the day I started until the day I walked out after the last GCE O level. I enjoyed the “playtimes” that was about it! Hated sport too
Fortunately I never failed an exam as I had a really good memory, I wouldn’t go well in today’s schooling where the term work counts as well - rarely did homework, spent a lot of time in detention.
The teacher who influenced me all those years ago was Mrs Evans who taught English. She was incredibly strict but my goodness she was a brilliant teacher. Mrs Evans encouraged a love of Literature in me that has never waned. In fact, it was due to her that I studied Literature at degree level and then became an English teacher in secondary school myself. A career that I loved right up until my retirement. Thank you Mrs Evans.
I remember Mrs Gardener, my science teacher in high school. She was a lovely matronly lady who I warmed to immediately in my scary first year in “Big School”. We did a study on snails one time, and looked at their mucus trails and their alarm reaction when they scoot into their shells.
Of course, this prompted me to steal a snail for the purposes of getting it used to other stimuli and I carried this poor thing for 4 hours around school! It was only when it randomly appeared on my sleeve during a maths test (everything was quiet, so it clearly felt safe) that I was rumbled and had to return it back to Mrs Gardener.
She thought I had a great future in biology but advised that I’d be better leaving the animals in their natural environment!
I tend to forget about my early ‘state’ school years and then applaud my later years in a boarding school, where respect for everyone was enjoyed by everyone within that establishment. I was taught by two science masters, one for Physics and the other for Chemistry, where both were dedicated in getting the facts across to everyone. The most impressive though was my Latin Mistress, who persevered even with me to get it into my head and she succeeded "Virtue et labore"
