How many children in this country would need to be introduced to Tony Robinson? I mean, honestly.
We’ve just watched an episode of some weird programme (The Teaching Challenge) where they stick a celebrity in front of a classroom and make them teach a lesson, then a trained teacher savages them for their efforts. Tony Robinson stood up and rabbited about wee and poo to some rather transfixed early teens, who were quiet throughout, obviously absorbed lots of it, and didn’t make the slightest whimper throughout. And then the teacher criticised him for not introducing himself, for taking his coffee into the room (a health and safety issue it would appear, that no one had mentioned to him beforehand) and because his talk wasn’t relevant to their exams.
Aargh! Mr R then left the school muttering about how difficult teaching is and how he couldn’t do it, and how important teachers are to our society.
Tell you what, he can come round and do home education here any time, I thought he was absolutely excellent. I’d let him drink his coffee as well. I bet I know what would happen though – I’d end up with a really big hole in the back garden…
Comments
17 responses to “How utterly ridiculous!”
well, if you invite him, let me know and we will visit!
And how, exactly, would that be a problem? Surely that would be the education bit? Can I come?
ooh, me too – go for it. Although I think my kids would probably need an introduction, otherwise they’d call him Baldrick, which might be slightly embarrassing …
LOL. I could even live with the big hole!
I’ve seen that one Jax, thought he was excellent too. H&S rules must have changed since I was at school, all my teachers had mugs of tea/coffee whilst teaching us.
Yeah mine did too! I couldn’t survive without mine at my side LOL!
We’ll come 🙂
I just watched it on line. I think he would be great. Maybe we should ask him to Melrose, and tell him *we’d* appreciate him, even if nasty Colin didn’t.
Ooh yes invite him, but not Melrose as we won’t be there. We love his Worst Jobs in History programme.
LOL – even my kids would know Tony Robinson, and we don’t even have a television!
He wouldn’t know us, of course, though he’d know our town – he opened our museum recently :~D
Ooh, Joyce, that’s a fab idea…wonder if he’d go for it? 😉
I did spend quite a while this morning attempting to find contact details for him, so that I could at the very least let him know about home education. He seemed like someone who really didn’t enjoy school one little bit.
Well, he’s president of this: http://www.britarch.ac.uk/yac/
and their website is completely up date, so I thought it might be possible to contact him via them, although he doesn’t have a contact on the web site.
Have to say that my music teacher (the school one) had a kettle in the classroom to ensure regular coffee. He also smelt very strongly of pipe smoke. He was lovely.
Jax – sorry to put this in here but thought you might see it here first! Someone on Hunnybeez is looking for you on the working parents forum. HTH.
Thanks Sally, will go take a look 🙂
LOL dottyspots – I don’t remember any teachers with kettles in the classroom, but I distinctly remember the one who kept a hipflask handy at all times…he’d pop out of the classroom for a few seconds and come back smelling strongly of booze; how he never realised we knew exactly what he was doing LOL. But maybe he just didn’t care – he also used to take off his shoes and socks and pick his toenails during class!
(And he was *normal* compared to some of them!)
ur, I dont think any of J’s teachers introduced themselves to her as she was terrified of most of them and called them “strangers”, as she didnt know who the heck they were.
Nothing wrong with having really big holes in your back garden, you know. 😉