Things have got better since the sixties - part 2

When I was at school in the fifties and sixties many of the teachers were psychopaths, sadists, perverts, bullies or any combination of the above. Most of them had come out of the war with no career so I suppose they had a lot to be angry about. And some of them were jolly good teachers

It would be a pity if all teachers were completely bland. Howard Jacobson, slightly tongue in cheek I think asks in the Independent: "government and education .. exist only so long as there are crazies to staff them. You could say the same of the army, the police, ophthalmology, television, dentistry, religion, accountancy, surgery. Who, by any definition of normality, would choose to cut open people's stomachs for a living? How can a person of flesh and blood take satisfaction in a ledger? What man, not desperate to reveal something untoward about his gender orientation, would believe in the Virgin Birth, smother himself in incense and dress in women's clothing?" Anyone not offended yet? You'll have to pay a quid to read the rest on-line. But why not sport an extra thirty pee for the complete paper (with a splendid free DVD) should your newsagent have any left?

Tom Utley made a similar point in the Telegraph yesterday: Kelly should be brave enough to face down mass hysteria. "But all this was nearly 40 years ago, long before the current outbreak of mass hysteria over paedophilia. So perhaps I am being very old-fashioned when I say that I cannot begin to understand all the fuss now being made about the fact that Paul Reeve was allowed by Miss Kelly's Education Department to work as a PE teacher at the Hewett School in Norwich." The Daily Mail would not be impressed. Never fighting shy of an excuse to take a pop at the Government its comment column declares today: "Despite a frenzied week of searching the records in Whitehall, nobody has the faintest idea how many potential child abusers are in our schools". Even the Mirror thunders: "Would Kim Howells have wanted any of his three kids to be taught PE by a sex offender who had been cautioned by police for leering at child porn?" And the Sun's web team want "to hear from you if you know of someone who has got a job in a school despite being on the register." And they'd also like you to drool over some pictures of pretty young ladies.