Teachers saying "you would amount to nothing"

Guest2

Guest2

Guest2

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I remember as kid one of two of the teachers at my primary and secondary school would say things like "you will never amount to anything" and "you will be a bin man when you're older"

Now i'm not sure if teachers still say the same sort of things to kids these days but looking back now I am around their age (36) I can safely say they were wrong and am probably on at least 2 or 3 times the average teachers salary. I highly expect some of them will still be working now, maybe as elderly substitute teachers having to top up their pension in their 60s :D

Did your teachers ever say your would amount to nothing and would like to shove it in their face that they were wrong?
 
Guest2 said:
I remember as kid one of two of the teachers at my primary and secondary school would say things like "you will never amount to anything" and "you will be a bin man when you're older"

Now i'm not sure if teachers still say the same sort of things to kids these days but looking back now I am around their age (36) I can safely say they were wrong and am probably on at least 2 or 3 times the average teachers salary. I highly expect some of them will still be working now, maybe as elderly substitute teachers having to top up their pension in their 60s :D

Did your teachers ever say your would amount to nothing and would like to shove it in their face that they were wrong?
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No, i had nice teachers. Mostly said encouraging things.
 
You sound bitter.

Thankfully most of my teachers were encouraging. Some tried to bum me and / or beat me (but that's private education in the 80s and 90s for you).
 
Never heard it said at the old grammar school I attended.

Many variations of the “pull your finger out, because if you have 3 O levels and someone else going for the same job has 5 O levels, guess who they’ll want to interview?” where heard though, usually directed at me.

Never met any of my teachers again after leaving school, so I’ve no idea if they’d have been satisfied that I did alright for myself. Having left school almost 40 years ago, I suspect that they’re not around to ask.
 
GW1970 said:
I had a mix of you will do well and others not so well - if anything the negative ones drove me too prove them wrong.
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Yes, guess you're right. I did have some really great teachers but there were the odd couple who guess were just nasty. That or they did it to allow me to prove them wrong as you say
 
Yup, had 1 college lecturer tell me I'd end up with nothing selling drugs on the street. I took great delight in responding that I was already selling drugs *wait for a moment to let it sink in* in my Saturday job as a pharmacy assistant. Should have seen his face XD

Then we got him sacked*.



* mostly unrelated, the guy was generally a **** anyway, spent most of our lectures trying to sell us this "growing plants" gardening program** "he" had written.

I say "he" but actually he'd gotten his mail order Philippino wife's family to do it for him! (he even brought her in a few times to "show off" how successful he was :p)


** this was where the whole "selling drugs" thing started actually, I asked if it had instructions for how to grow weed as I was having some trouble (yeah I guess I was a bit of a knob back then too :p)
 
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Everyone is a special winner these days. Which is why they all come out of school/coller/uni full of self-entitlement thinking they can just walk in to high paid jobs.
 
Nasher said:
Everyone is a special winner these days. Which is why they all come out of school/coller/uni full of self-entitlement thinking they can just walk in to high paid jobs.
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Not "all", but yes there are a lot of people who now appear to expect the world to bend over backwards to accommodate them. It's OK though, they'll solve all the worlds problems with a protest.

Back to the original topic, there was a single particularly nasty teacher in my high-school who did indeed suggest people would never succeed in life with their <insert derogatory term here> attitude. You were daft to take notice however as every other teacher would be positive and helpful.
 
Nasher said:
Everyone is a special winner these days. Which is why they all come out of school/coller/uni full of self-entitlement thinking they can just walk in to high paid jobs.
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I did go to college, then uni but had a nice wake up call on my placement year where I earned a lovely £9000/year which worked out a less than minimum wage. Prompted me to get some good work experience and move on.
That and maybe the primary teachers saying I was stupid and would not succeed in life maybe spurred me on to better myself.

Maybe that was the teachers plan all along?!
 
Guest2 said:
I did go to college, then uni but had a nice wake up call on my placement year where I earned a lovely £9000/year which worked out a less than minimum wage. Prompted me to get some good work experience and move on.
That and maybe the primary teachers saying I was stupid and would not succeed in life maybe spurred me on to better myself.

Maybe that was the teachers plan all along?!
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The very fact that you still today remember the teacher/s telling you that, seems to me that you carried it with you subconsciously at least and you've used it to better yourself.
 
"Those who can't do, teach" rings true for a lot of them, unfortunately. They've never worked a day in their life in their field of so called expertise, it's all stuff they've learned from a book or copied from the person who taught them.

You do get some fantastic outliers though, we had a science teacher at our school who had written his own books that were relatively successful and he would do work on the side to apply his knowledge "in the real world".
 
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Growing up in the 80's and 90's I seemed to have teachers who were either absolutely fantastic or utterly awful.

In primary school I had a female Scottish teacher who would stand in the boys toilets and watch them using the urinals under the claim she was making sure nobody was being naughty, she didn't stand around in the girls bathroom and none of the other teachers did anything like it. At the time I didn't think to mention it to my mother, despite being uncomfortable with it the teacher was quite authoritarian and I was worried I'd get into trouble if I said anything. Looking back I find it a little bit creepy, I told my mother about it years later and she was pretty shocked. There was another teacher I had briefly when I was around 7-8 who was a temp hire to cover my normal teacher who was ill, she spent half of each day ranting about how she wasn't scared of kids because she used to work in prisons. Would make 'naughty' children stand on their chairs for however long pleased her, even went so far as to try and keep the entire class back for after school detention for some perceived slight while our parents were stood outside waiting to pick us up. She was given the boot after a few days when all the furious parents went knocking on the headmasters door.

I had an English teacher in secondary school who would sing 'Who ate all the pies' every time a certain chubby kid walked into his classroom. There was another English teacher who once threw a hardback book off my head because he thought I wasn't doing any work, a mate of mine was a short little beggar and he actually picked him up off the ground and hung him by his coat off the rooms coat hangers/wrack. I also had a French teacher who was pretty authoritarian and strict, she once made the same guy who got hung by his jacket do laps around the language block with no coat on while the ground was thick with snow because he didn't do his homework. Funnily enough she was actually the sister of the English teacher who accosted him.

Kids being told they were useless or wouldn't amount to anything was the least of the crap some of the kids I went to school with had to deal with from teachers.

I've a ton of stories like the above from my years at school, honestly in hindsight we probably could have got a lot of teachers sacked if we'd pushed the issue or taken it to our parents, but the ones who used to get the crappy treatment were generally labelled (rightfully or wrongfully) as trouble makers and were afraid to say anything most of the time.
 
Nasher said:
Everyone is a special winner these days. Which is why they all come out of school/coller/uni full of self-entitlement thinking they can just walk in to high paid jobs.
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Children should be encouraged.

If they believe they're going to waltz into high paid jobs then they will quickly find out that that's not the case. But what's the problem with them aiming high?

One thing I hate is when people tell me they went to the university of life. The last guy that told me that serves coffee...not looking down on his job but it's not exactly well paid. I went to uni for three years and doubled his salary, and I'm 3/4 of his age.
 
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