Teacher Songs #2: Spineless Swines, Cemented Minds

More songs and stories about teachers, by a teacher. School's back now after a far too short Easter holiday...

Thank you for your suggestions last week. Our resident Maths teacher reminded of this sweet ode to teachers from Reg Dwight. "I think it is probably very inappropriate," says George. I think, in this day and age, most songs about fancying your teacher would be cancelled... but isn't that just part of adolescence?

I was sitting in the classroom
Trying to look intelligent
In case the teacher looked at me
She was long and she was lean
She's a middle-aged dream
And that lady means the whole world to me

It's a natural achievement

Conquering my homework

With her image pounding in my brain

She's an inspiration

For my graduation

And she helps to keep the classroom sane

Elton John - Teacher, I Need You

Meanwhile, The Blogfather weighed with a suggestion based on an artist we both used to cherish... until we all had to cancel him. JC says...

As much as I can't abide what he's turned into, Morrissey did pen a mighty opus about the profession.....turns out some clever clogs has recently made a video marrying the song to very old clips of 'Grange Hill'. Thought it might be of particular interest to you, Rol.

Morrissey - The Teachers Are Afraid Of The Pupils

Those old Grange Hill clips certainly bring back memories. How times have changed, eh? Then again, Morrissey's lyrics reflect that...

Say the wrong word to our children...

We'll have you, oh yes, we'll have you

Lay a hand on our children

And it's never too late to have you

Mucus on your collar

A nail up through the staff chair

A blade in your soap

And you cry into your pillow

To be finished would be a relief

Because here (or 1995, when this was written), it's the teachers he feels sorry for... whereas just ten years earlier, he wrote a very different song in which his sympathies lay far more squarely with the pupils. 

Belligerent ghouls run Manchester schools

Spineless swines, cemented minds

Sir leads the troops, jealous of youth

Same old suit since 1962

He does the military two-step

Down the nape of my neck

I want to go home

I don't want to stay

Give up education

As a bad mistake

Mid-week on the playing fields

Sir thwacks you on the knees

Knees you in the groin, elbow in the face

Bruises bigger than dinner plates

Please excuse me from gym

I've got this terrible cold coming on

He grabs and devours, he kicks me in the showers

Kicks me in the showers and he grabs and devours

In 1985, I'd be 13, just starting my Second Year in High School. I'd grown up watching Grange Hill and was quite terrified of what to expect when I went to the big school, but as I arrived the winds of change were blowing. I remember an older kid getting the slipper when we were in the First Year, but that sort of thing had gone the way of the dinosaurs only a couple of years later. The schooldays Morrissey recalls in The Headmaster Ritual (and ones many of you may have been familiar with) were already on their way out by the time the album Meat Is Murder was released. 

But just because things change... it doesn't necessarily mean they get better.