Professors: RL and Academagia analogues

[Svinik]

I've just finished reading my father's fourth book on his old grammar school (jointly written with his brother who is also an old boy, covering the period 1946-1975). Some of the recollections from old boys on their masters indicate that some of the masters were - er - possessed of strong and individualistic personalities.

 

Clearly being a poor and undutiful son I often found myself wondering whether some of the professors would have got on in Academagia and which RL professors had Academagia analogues. Also, admittedly, thinking that my own school had clearly been somewhat quieter and safer than my father's.

 

A few of the (slightly edited down) quotes from old-boys about their beloved professors which explains their characters, and indicates some of the pranks that the old boys got up to.

 

1. An officer and a gentleman

He was, in addition to his scientific background, an accomplished linguist - in addition to his knowledge of Serbo-Croat and Russian, I can remember him speaking German on a railway platform as we travelled to Switzerland; he learned some Norwegian, prior to our trip to Norway and I expect that he managed to make himself understood on all the trips that he led. It is only when one thinks of his teaching of both scientific subjects and, what was then, a rather unfashionable and rare language, and his very varied life before and during WW2 that one realises what an accomplished man he was and what an interesting life he had.

 

2. X taught me chemistry, but what an inspiration! I was one of the most interested as it was my university subject, but X trusted me to work alone in the labs at lunchtimes and during breaks on projects. I doubt it would be permitted today, and even then that degree of trust was rare. He told me what extra books to read to get ahead of A-level syllabus - again much appreciated. I also remember him in charge of the "second-hand" shop - that enabled the less well-off (like me) to buy "used but good" rugby kit. A very kind man. I had absolutely no idea he was a jazz pianist.

He was the reason I taught chemistry, but he was a dangerous person to be with. On one occasion he left some glassware out for my wife to clean and when she poured water on it, it burst into flames.

 

3. If you were ever kicked out of Mr Y's class, you made your way round and let X see you, he would beckon you in and put you in the back of the class he was teaching.

Mr X taught mathematics and was an excellent teacher. What could not be introduced at one end was introduced at the other by the Gym shoe (Slipper). His "old Spanish custom", was the invitation to form a right angle intended to help in the retention of the wisdom that he imparted. In the absence of X we experimented with the production of water gas into the bottom opening of the stove, the steam rising through the coke produced inflammable gases which exploded when they came into contact with the air at the top of the stove. The ash that was blown out gave the game away.

 

4. Nice man, no nonsense engineer.

Always calm and unflustered in metalwork. He kind of blended into the workshop. Always there to help and advise; respected and his lessons were fun, so needed little discipline.

When it transpired that a couple of us were taking metalwork O level but not engineering drawing ["ED"], he laid on extra lessons in ED for us, this was essential as about 50% of the exam was reading and making drawings! While we covered 2 years work in 2 terms ED is still a great love of mine.

 

5. When he could, he would come by you and ask you to explain what you had done up to the point where you had become stuck. By careful questioning he invariably led you to discover your error but he never chastised you for it.

I recall his introduction to 5th form pupils on the lines that if you were not interested in mathematics that was ok - you could just keep quiet in a corner and he would leave you alone. On the other hand if you so desired he would do his very best to help you.

 

6. I decided to slide down the banisters backwards. The first flight was fine and I carefully negotiated the turn to the lower flight. As I arrived at the bottom going full speed I felt a very sharp pain on my backside. Standing at one side with slipper in hand was a semi-stern X exercising his Prefect's Duties. No detention, just instant and very effective retribution.

Can anyone remember 'pirates' at the end of term gym lesson? X would have all the fun apparatus in the hall - beams, wall bars, ropes, vaulting horse etc and then strategically place gym mats on the floor or rather in the 'shark infested waters'. The 2 'pirates' hunted down their quarry while the latter ran, jumped and swung chaotically around the apparatus trying to avoid capture.

 

7. "When he refereed Rugby House Matches we often saw the eccentric sight of a game starting with 2 or 3 players per side, with the rest struggling to get onto the pitch"

"It was unfortunate to teach a class just before he did. In those circumstances it was impossible to have an orderly ending to the lesson. The boys claimed that he did not have a question 1 in his tests because no boy ever got there until at least question 2."

 

8. I well remember Mr X's capacity for dropping off to sleep. At the end of a lesson the boys would creep out. I was timetabled to teach a sixth form in a room immediately after him. As a new master, I crept away and found a new room.

 

9. X was another teacher who struggled with my name. He rejected "[pupil's foreign name]" at a very early stage and decided that my name would be "Sugar Foot" and so it stayed for the whole period he taught me.

We found a huge quantity of grasshoppers on the field during break and released them at the back of X's class - and him trying to swat them with his slipper.

In the sixth form, if he thought his wife knew more of an author than he did, he would send us home for a tutorial with her. I will pass over the fact that we paid for this privilege by marking lower forms homework. She was an inspiration as well, with unlimited enthusiasm for writers she liked.

What was so marvelous about X was not only that he required boys to mark their fellow pupils homework, but that his examination for the GCE boards was largely carried out by his wife, who I believe marked conscientiously rather than in X's case where he freely admitted he only read the first and last paragraphs.

 

10. Advice to pupil on the last day: "If you ever have to make a decision in future about two alternatives, make a guess and then change your mind, because you are so stupid that couldn't even guess correctly"

Frankly I did not like the man. He was a "beat it into them" merchant. That said, for his chosen stars, he was a most effective, attentive and encouraging teacher.

X spent the whole class telling us about his motor bike and whacking us with a foot rule. As the A-levels got closer he told us he had the most important exam of our lives upcoming - and then carried on about his bike.

 

11. X was far too accurate when throwing a board duster or a dig in the ribs, but useless at teaching physics...

X - great builder of moral backbone

X knew how to get your interest, especially if it involved hurting someone.

Every boy's fun teacher, where whipping with rubber tubing was corporate fun and always fair and deserved.

I can still see him playing in a cricket match, staff vs. boys and batting. A ball hurtled towards him (he wasn't very tall) and instead of ducking he deliberately used his head to glance it away over the slips for runs! There were no helmets or faceguards then, and the rules were less stringent, or maybe the umpires had never come across such a situation before!

 

12. Mr X simply could not keep order, We set out to bait him, to see if we could be the first to be get beaten with his "twanker", a flat piece of wood from a desk-front I think. One day I succeeded and was duly instructed to bend over - which I did facing him. I was extra sore that day as he took his revenge.

 

13. The cloudy memory makes them all good memories - X almost blowing the chem lab up on a weekly basis.

A bit shy but could suddenly lose his temper. Couldn't remember pupil's names and was always saying "What's your name again?"

I have always felt sorry for X. He seemed to be in a world of his own and every now and again he emerged to teach us. He struggled to control the class using the words, "uhh, now lads, settle down..."

We arrived for the lesson to find the whole front bench packed full of glassware for an experiment which involves manufacturing methane. X said that the experiment was "...a bit dangerous" (he was a master of understatement at the best of times) so he had decided that he would demonstrate it to us. The experiment involved heating up a beaker with a Bunsen Burner to start the reaction. We all waited with baited breath. At the end of the line of glassware was a tiny test tube with a hole in it and we were promised faithfully that once the process was functional, X would put a match to the hole and we would see a small blue flame coming out of the end proving that methane gas was being produced.

A few minutes passed by and nothing happened. A few more minutes passed and still no reaction. X struck his match and held it to the hole and nothing happened. Becoming agitated he went back to the other end of the glassware and turned up the Bunsen burner to a roar. A few seconds later he went back to the test tube end and struck his match...

I remember a kind of thud, followed by tinkling, and the entire glassware disappeared in front of our eyes. X divided under the bench and we just sat there watching, transfixed. Silence. Then we saw one hand followed by another appear above the bench...followed by a pair of eyes and a nose and a quiet voice from below the bench said "is everyone alright?"

The outrageous ####-taking that went on in every X lesson. Y throwing lit paper aeroplanes at the board, everyone sliding the desks into a single block and breaking the lock on the way out so that A and B had to climb out of the window at the front of the school

I can remember the time that Y hid in X's desk the whole maths period (he was only little). He bet everyone 5p that he could and collected from us all. Even X saw the funny side and contributed with a smack around the head!

[Svinik]

My guesstimates:

1. Tarvixo Sido

2. William Vickery

3. Evdokseia Valenta

4. Polisena Briardi & Finus Piaxenza

5. Errus Viada, Regnault Parchait & Matain Leith

6. Lisle Aventyrare

7. Kate Badcrumble

8. Baldassare Montario

9. Thiblault Pluiete

10. Sixt Von Rupprecht and Giovanni di Lucca Alazzo

11. Oliver Storey and Sixt von Rupprecht

12 & 13 - Marlein Knoht

 

I couldn't match Contzel Ringraeyer (I don't think that the concept of fashion was understood within the school - boys wore uniform, masters their gown - sometimes from the sound of it the same gown for decades), Leo Massioti - there were several non-quoted ones that fitted, but I figured it was getting over-long and wanted a professor with more than 1 quote, Rieulle Chastellain - no-one really fitted, Violante de Canapiedra - like many profs there are no memories of this person who records show was a professor

 

Anyone see other match-up's, or have some professors of their own to post?

[Leoshi]

Why does Professor Knoht fit so many of them?!

[freespace2dotcom]

Because she's an Omni disciplinarian?

[Svinik]

Knoht strikes me as a bit scatty, I can see her struggling between being master & friend, so failing to keep discipline in 12, but also trying stuff that's just a little too complicated for her and getting 13 sort of results.

 

Sixt is on 10 and 11 too, so she wasn't the only one I saw aspects of too of them in, am I being harsh in 11? I suggested some teachers behaviour to Larry when he was designing the game but he avoided the "beat sense into them" approach to education for some reason

 

I feel that I'm being a little harsh on Giovanni - I was wondering about 3 but in the Young Vernin he seems somewhat calculating.

 

Leoshi: which one would you want as teacher?

[Leoshi]

So hard to choose here....

 

But probably (4) for the no-nonsense attitude. Teachers like that can control a class so well that you would choose to excel in the class.

 

Oh dear gods! It fits Professor Briardi!

 

What about you <Insert Person's Name Here>?

[Albert]

My relationships with teachers and later professors has always been complicated.

 

Before University teachers either hated me or loved me, there didn't seem to be anything in between.

 

Some years I was the teachers best friend and would actualy advise them(and they asked for it and appreciated it), then I had other teachers who hated me utterly.

I know when I scored top results on tests and exams but the teacher would tell me I barely deserve a passing grade in their class. Other teachers said I was brilliant and had learned and done all they could teach me or assign me and that I already had the highest grade possible and didn't have to go to the last few classes if I didn't want to.

 

At one point I had a bunch of teachers who disliked me so much they wanted to offload me on a teacher who was specialy trained to teach children with learning dissabilities and other handicaps that needed extra help.

She did some tests and wondered why I was there and told the other teachers I didn't belong there because I didn't need her help.

For some reason those 4 other teachers insisted that I did so they brought a professor from a university the next day with IQ tests.

 

First I did one test, then after he had examined it he decided he would need ot do a second, then when that didn't satisfy him he had a third test. After that he said he had ran out of tests to give me and that he couldn't establish an IQ but that it must be very high.

 

This shocked the four teachers that wanted to get rid of me, they suggested there must be something wrong with the tests, and since they didn't want to do them themselves they had the class do the test.

 

Most of the class scored below average with a few reaching it. The professor told them it would be ok since these tests wern't designed or meant for children or young adults in the first place. With them standing there seemingly not knowing what to do I sugested I would be allowed to attend a "normal" class. Which they agreed to lacking other alternatives.

Without much of a change on my part my grades suddenly blast off towards the stars.

The Biology teacher who hated me the most for reason that are still unclear to me, some kind of personal chemistry, went in for surgery and a substitute teacher did the exams and after I nailed a 100% score she even gave me the top grade. (Which ofcourse I rubbed into the face of my old biology teacher when she got back) After all she used to tell me I didn't even deserve a passing grade.

 

Later in University one of my professors seemed to have a similar problem and I asked him what it was all about, I was doing ok on his tests after all. He told me he feelt I wasn't taking him and his work seriously.

 

So, yeah, my relationship with teachers and professors in RL was complicated. Some of them hated me others wanted me to advise them on their personal finances.

 

But I survived my school years and now I don't need to care about anyones opinions. No bosses or anything.

[Albert]

I think the Swedish concept of "Lagom" applies here. It has no direct translation. According to law, the exact right amount, not too much not too little. While the philosophy might have good sides it also has it's downsides.

When concepts like "everyone is born equal" gets mixed into it, it becomes a mess. While that commes from democratic ideas popularised in france during the french revolution that everyone is born with the same rights, in Sweden it seemed to take the turn of "Everyone is born the same", people who wern't smart enough or socialy adapted were caught and sterilised. People who were sucessful were usualy seen as enemies of the state, breaking the norm, except for athletes who won medals for the nation and brought some glory to the people. Asside from that the most accepted way of getting rich or sucessful was winning money on the government controlled lottery. Jantelagen (which isn't an actual law but it's a Scandinavian description coined by a danish author to describe the phenomenon, sicne the 30's it's become very popular even among people who don't know it's origin)

I guess it was the prefered way of the socialdemocratic movement and it's supporters to view reality, people arn't born great, they are molded and created by society to fill a purpose and a career. Everyone is born equal.

 

Not being average is a problem that the system and people used to it were having problems to accept, being smart was the same as being smarter or trying to be better than someone else and was scorned on. Something like the "Tall poppy syndrome".

 

All teachers wern't like that thankfully, one even trusted me to take care of her parrot while she had to be away for a few days, which suggest she didn't see me as a rotten apple.

 

But, I made it, I passed school, made money, and now I'm wasting most of my time and potential on doing almost nothing at all

Even though at some point during my early years they were actualy thinking about trying to snatch me from my mother who was a great mom with good income and a great home to grow up in. If we hadn't been working so hard to keep them away they might have suceeded at ruining my whole life.

 

Ironicly it might have made me appreciate playing a school simulator in a fantasy setting. Exploring a different type of school. Trying out different paths.

And yes I had friends in school. And maybe those who liked me less than others.

 

What's more shocking is that young people who are in greater need of help and want help don't seem to get it.

[Albert]

I'm not sure what type of analogues I can make when it comems to teachers

 

But I do enjoy having a different school experience.

[Leoshi]

That certainly is a different school experience. Thanks for sharing there Albert.

[Svinik]

Ouch, I'd not have enjoyed your place Albert - my issues weren't as bad but I had some teachers like that - one found out I had been put in for an advanced maths exam and banned the teachers from giving me lessons in it as very few other other students were doing it, we didn't even know how to read some of the questions when we came to do the exam as the terminology was completely unfamiliar - I got a B from sheer cussedness. I had some 3, 4 & 5's (more than one had been trained by my father which helped), sadly I also had some 10, 11, 12 and 13's (the 2 11's deeply frustrated by my schools "no hitting" rules which they were mostly forced to respect).

 

I also, sadly, had one dim-and-in-denial teacher who was determined to follow the syllabus rigidly, she saw my habit of doing both classwork and homework during the lesson as an affront (after finishing I apparently "distracted my fellow students") but went from scorn to active dislike after attempts to humiliate me by asking loaded questions failed after I pointed out errors in her board work. She got worse and worse until parent teacher day when my father (a professor who trained teachers unfortunately for her) and she "had words" after which she completely ignored me beyond marking down my work as much as possible - somewhat pointless in a 100% exam course fortunately.

 

So Leoshi, if "4" is your favourite, which would have been the least?

[Leoshi]

I don't really like to judge but I had one like "8". I am now struggling a little with Chemistry.

[Svinik]

8 - there isn't really anything you can do with a teacher who is absent through sleep or lack of interest, even the complete ####'s can be a useful resource if approached correctly by the right sort of person, for some of them.

 

Hmm, looking back I sound big-headed in #11 for which I apologise, it was more the teacher being inept than I being brilliant.

 

"1" makes me wonder what more there is to know about Tarvixo Sido, he must have some interesting stories to tell (and skeletons in his closet).

 

As a kid I didn't really recognise that my teachers were more than ciphers - what I saw in class tended to be what I thought they were, rather than me realising that they would be complete human beings (in some cases) with lives outside class, from before they were teachers, etc - we see a few hints in Academagia about the backgrounds for some teachers, but not much, I hope that we see more in Year 2.

 

Question time again anyone want to speculate what made Storey - well - Storey?

[Legate of Mineta]

I hear it's quite a...Storey.

[Leoshi]

To be fair, until you interact for a period of time with some people, you wouldn't think much of them at first.

 

For Storey.... A dark and painful experience during his early years as a student?

[freespace2dotcom]

Nah, just repeated dealings with ogres-turned-students that belong to the clan of Marchant.

[Svinik]

I suspect that if a Marchant decided to go back to the school as a professor, that they'd be a 10 or 11.

 

The Headmaster of my Father's School had a deliberate policy of hiring ex-pupils as he thought that they would be better able to maintain the school ethos - my uncle even taught there for a term before going to university after a teacher left at the end of the second term.

 

I think that a 7 would be hilarious in Academagia - it could easily lead to some adventure or random event possibilities if the students who started on time were heavily weighted to one team or if Rui decided to "encourage a home advantage" or some such by delaying other students. I'm not sure that any of the Academagia regular professors were so incredibly rigid as to start on the dot regardless of how many, or few, students were in class, on the field, etc.