Old-school teachers might have been sadists wielding fan belts, but man did they have style

When we were growing up most of us harboured dreams of qualifying as teachers someday – so we could avenge our suffering at the hands of our no-nonsense educators who ruled with the stick, the fan belt and all manner of pain-inflicting objects.

These included the board duster and ruler, especially the one made of steel, used to great effect to strike our little fingertips.

One teacher was notorious for using wrestling-style moves to inflict pain. Once he grabbed our classmate by his balls and the scruff of the neck, held him up in the air, swung him around a few times and dropped him on the ground with a thud.

Our classrooms were, to an extent, an ex­tension of the notorious interrogation chambers at Security Branch headquarters. But hey, those men and women whose heads were filled with Bantu Education rhetoric and propaganda had style, maaaan...

The recent World Teachers Day celebration reminded me of those days when teachers were hardcore but committed to their work, not as docile as this current crop of couldn’t-care-less, unionised, clock-watching salary-collectors.

World Teachers’ Day is celebrated annually on 5 October by the United Nations Educational and Scientific Council (Unesco) to celebrate all teachers around the globe. The day has been celebrated since 1994 – the year of the birth of the tenderpreneur in Mzansi.

Read in Daily Maverick: “Growing old disgracefully — JZ and the ANC exist somewhere between party line and flatline”

Unesco says this is a day to celebrate how teachers are transforming education but also to reflect on the support they need to deploy their vocation, and to rethink the way ahead for the profession globally.

Anyway, back then – when we would be released early on pay day so the teachers could travel to town “to change their cheques” – educators had style.

Well, they were not all the greatest of people. Some applied sadistic methods to force us to memorise the names of rivers and mountains in strange, far-off places.

In those unstylish days a teacher could lash you with an old, cracked fan belt across your back simply because you couldn’t properly spell Nebuchadnezzar.

How they expected a bunch of Bantu children located on the southern tip of Africa to master such complicated names from biblical times beats me.

But hey, beat us up they did.

Still, no matter their sadistic tendencies, teachers were neat and snazzily dressed, though there were those who barely made the effort and looked like they had wrapped themselves with old curtains. But generally teachers were snazzy dressers.

You could be at the receiving end of the stick from a teacher on a cold winter’s morning, yet at the same time admire his shiny Florsheim shoes, neatly pressed Brentwood slacks and crisp white shirt held tight by a well-knotted tie.

Is that a teacher or a pickpocket?