Independence Day

...for the General Teaching Council for Scotland, anyway.

They become a fully independent body on Monday after the passage of the necessary legislation last year. I attend an event at their Edinburgh HQ today to mark the change , and the high point was Scotland's Makar , Liz Lochhead , reading her affectionate, wry but sharply honest poem about her own 1950's primary education, "The Teachers".

They taught
that what you wrote in ink
carried more weight
and could not be rubbed out.
Punctuation was difficult. Wars
We're bad but sometimes necessary
In the face of absolute evil as they knew only too well.
Miss Prentice wore her poppy the whole month of November.
Miss Mathieson hit the loud pedal
On the piano and made us sing
The Flowers of the Forest.
Miss Ferguson deplored the Chinese custom
Of foot binding but extolled the ingenuity
Of terracing the paddy fields.
Someone she had once known had given her a kimono and a parasol.
Miss Prentice said the Empire had enlightened people
And been a two way thing.
The Dutch grew bulbs and were our allies in
wooden shoes.

We grew bulbs on the window sills
Beside the frogspawn that quickened into wriggling
Commas or stayed full stop.
Some people in our class were stupid, full stop.
The leather tawse was coiled around the sweetie tin
In her desk beside the box of coloured blackboard chalk
Miss Ferguson never used.

Miss Prentice wore utility smocks.
Miss Matheson had a moustache.
If your four-needled knitting got no
Further than the heel you couldn't turn
Then she'd keep you at your helio sewing
Till its wobbling cross-stitch was specked with rusty blood.

Spelling hard words was easy when you knew how.