Shortman · Sat Apr 1, 12:58 by Eleri Straker
My father-in law, a gentle, pipe-smoking man was a dog-trainer. What he didn’t know about our canine friends wasn’t worth knowing and could be written on the head of a pin with space to spare! He told me once that he liked ‘real’ dogs. ‘Real’ dogs were those animals that were what he considered to be ‘normal’ sized, left as nature intended and not genetically modified to suit the fashion of the time. So he had little patience with yappy little terriers or molly-coddled lap dogs. Give him a Labrador or a Retriever or an Alsatian any day. He always said that with a big dog you knew where you were. They had nothing to prove. If they wanted to, they could do a lot of damage, but since their size made that fairly obvious, they generally couldn’t be bothered. A small dog, however, had something to prove: that they could be as ferocious as their bigger brothers. And since they didn’t have the size to impress, they used nastiness. He believed that this was sometimes true of people.
I don’t know whether or not he was right, but Shortman certainly gave weight to his argument.
Shortman was a very small man. Almost as short as the youngest students in the school and he taught geography. He didn’t teach children. He didn’t like them.
He was a very short man and had clearly decided that this would not stop him from terrifying his students, which he did. Every lesson.
Unlike Killer, Shortman didn’t shout. He spoke softly. Very softly. He had the kind of voice that chilled. You hear it everywhere. Not the blustering shouting of the obvious thug, but the controlled menace of the genuine article. The real bully. The one who controls through fear and intimidation.
I dreaded Shortman’s lessons. His method of controlling the class involved making you feel stupid and worthless. As the school I attended was a grammar school, the students were generally fairly bright. But at the end of every one of his lessons, I, along with my classmates, would feel defeated and depressed.
I actually remember very little from his lessons, at least, little of the subject he taught, as I was too busy keeping a low profile and not making eye contact. Of the subject matter he taught, everything I know of geography I’ve learned from watching David Attenborough or Michael Palin on television. What I did learn from Shortman was that calling someone ‘stupid’ was like a self-fulfilling prophesy; that the target of the abuse would behave exactly as Shortman said, after all, if teacher says you’re stupid, teacher, who knows everything, must be right.
Recently, while discussing Othello with my year thirteen students, my attention was drawn to the boy reading the part of Iago. His accurate, coldly menacing interpretation of Shakespeare’s most terrifying villain froze my heart. Through his chilling portrayal of cruelty, disdain and thorough dislike of others, my gifted student had channelled Shortman, and I was reminded forcibly how teaching involves a lot more than simply knowing your subject. It also involves people. Something that Shortman had never understood. Isn’t it sad that that is what I remember of his lessons?
P.S.
I heard later, while I was at University, that Shortman had left teaching to work in a library. This was a really good thing, I think, as it meant that future generations of children would not be subjected to his vicious tyranny. I don’t know how he fared among the inanimate books, but I do know that the students spared his cruel taunts, had a lucky escape.
