Tutor Influence 1.

Those formative years are important years.

"Show me the boy at 7 years old and I will show you the man"

"You cannot teach an old dog new tricks"

It all amounts to the same idea and of course there is a great deal of truth in it.

It is also a mandate for pushy over-achieving parents to make a childs life a total misery (fair preperation for the total misery the rest of his life is going to be some would argue).

Like a good many kids teachers were my role models, creators of order and general arbitrators of things "normal".

I did not know at the time most were just burn outs with poor degrees parroting the same lessons year in year out in the hope enough would stick to get you through an exam which had little relevance to "real life".

Actually I am getting ahead of myself, they came later in the educational system. First off were a bunch so old and crusty for all I knew they actually knew Moses. Certainly a good deal of them spoke with enough authority on the subject to have had long chats with him.

I was not to realise it at the time, but know it now these people were also swimming in a tide of ignorance. Decimalisation had hit and they were struggling to work out how much a pint of milk was costing them. 2+2 still equalled 4 but they were no longer sure if it was apples or oranges being added up.

Fortunately my exposure to these Victorian relics was short lived (although war relics would follow me right up to A-levels before they fell by the wayside).

All I knew was most of them were old as gods dog and dull as ditch water capable of making boring subjects really boring.

Still there were a few which pretty much totally changed my outlook on life.

Firstly some ex-army martinet that loved to make us do mental math in our heads, for long minutes he would drone on, "add 5 to 7, divide it by 2, subtract 3, multiply it by 4".

I would be lost within moments but the torture would continue as I struggled to make sense of what was going on.

My first experience of education was bursting into tears when I was left at the school.

My second experience was being reduced to tears of frustration because I could not keep up with the mental maths required by this ogre.

There was no suggestion of teaching or learning anything, you could either do it or not. I could not, I hated maths and was no good at it, throughout my education and remained one my great struggles.

Moving along a few years and a few schools (ahh the joys of continually moving and leaving friends behind as a lowering disposable income brings you into contact with more and more underclass and fewer opportunities) The second teacher was a short fat hairy teacher with an unfortunate name.

His first introduction to us, "My name is Mr *******" (he is probably still alive so no need to embarras him) "so you can guess what my nickname is". Pause as he looks around the classroom to see if anyone is laughing, "I will not call you by your nickname and you will not call me by mine".

This was all very "right on", but I was going to call him "Sir" coz thats what you called teachers. This on two accounts, it saved me knowing their names, "Sir" and "Miss" were the only names I needed to know using this method.

I didnt have a nickname.

One kid was called "Bog rat" coz he seemed to live in the school toilets for some reason (dont worry the family moves again soon and I get to meet people lower on the ladder than this).

This teacher did setup one of the mysteries of life, what exactly was his nickname. At the time it totally foxed me, but after years of consideration its likely to have been "Eggy".

It seems obvious but it clearly had such a profound impact on the man and his development it seems just to inane.

I think he taught maths, but that bit is rather hazy as most of the time he expounded on his life philosophy and I wondered what his nickname might be.

His lesson for us all boiled down to one guiding principle, "Life isn't fair".

Into the bleak classroom of stunted tables and chairs designed for the seven year old and towering above us at 5foot not a lot he explained he did not want us coming to him saying "It isn't fair". Life isn't fair, he would repeat to us, it was the one certainty in life, it wasn't fair.

Benjamin Franklin was not wrong when he said, "There are only two certainties in life: Death and Taxes."

But he had slightly missed the core issue, "There are only one certainty in life, it isn't fair".