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Teachers as role models
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Author:  Alison H [ Tue Mar 30, 2010 9:16 am ]
Post subject:  Teachers as role models
The comments in the thread in FD about some of the unfortunate perceptions some people hold about male involvement with schools made me think about the problem we've got in the UK at the moment with few men going into primary teaching and how people are saying that it's important to have male teachers as role models for boys.

Some, although not all, of our teachers at school were great, but I'm not sure that I'd say that I saw them as "role models". Do people think that CS girls were expected to see their teachers as role models and, if so, which teachers were good role models and which weren't, and why? Sorry, that sounds like an exam question!
Author:  julieanne1811 [ Tue Mar 30, 2010 10:06 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Teachers as role models
Inasfar as Hilda Annersely holds herself and behaves I would say that she is the epitome of what the CS expected their girls to become. She always knows what to do, she is calm in a crisis, her voice 'is ever gentle, sweet and low' (I can't quite remember that quote!), even in a storm, she treats even the tempestuous with strict fairness and she has a sense of humour. A veritable paragon of all that is held in high regard at the Chalet School!!

Although Joey is exalted as the best kind of Chalet School girl, because in reality she is very immature, she will never truly be the ideal. The part of her that remains immature prevents her fully taking hold of the ideal. It does allow for stories to be placed around her activities, but it doesn't reflect the ideal CH woman.

Hilda Annersely, on the other hand, is a Joey 'grown-up', and therefore contains within her character all that the CS expects from thier girls as adults. Makes for less interesting reading though ...
Author:  KathrynW [ Tue Mar 30, 2010 10:17 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Teachers as role models
I wonder if it's slightly different if you're at boarding school and so far away from the rest of your family/other adults in your life? I certainly didn't see my teachers as role models as I found most of them intensely irritating but then I also had a lot of other women in my life outside of school who fulfilled that role.
Author:  2nd Gen Fan [ Tue Mar 30, 2010 10:31 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Teachers as role models
I think that teachers can be role models in certain ways - for example my mother was very against women who had children and worked as well. Whereas many of my teachers were working mothers who I respected, giving me me a strong alternative viewpoint to my mother's. I followed their lead rather than my mother's.

For boys male teachers are particularly important as well - being surrounded only by women in primary school can lead to the assumption that reading and writing are 'women's business', while a male teacher promoting these things gives them a new window on education. My son has a male teacher this year, and is more positive about school than he has been for about three years!
Author:  Fiona Mc [ Tue Mar 30, 2010 10:34 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Teachers as role models
And yet I can certainly name one or two teacher who inspired me as a student and I went to a day school. I think teacher can be a role models in the sense they can inspire their students to go and do things they may never have dreamed of or to be better than what they thought
Author:  JB [ Tue Mar 30, 2010 10:37 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Teachers as role models
I certainly didn't see any of my teachers as role models and I would agree that it's different when you go to a day school. They were teachers; some were good, some weren't but I didn't know enough about them as people for them to be role models. There are a couple that I still think of fondly as being brilliant teachers, but that's it.

Following on from the thread about girls and domestic labour, I wonder how much EBD saw her teachers as role models? I think the CS does have good role models, as it shows fulfilled women who are married and unmarried. I think, though, that she definitely gives marriage as a reward to characters and that, in the early and middle books, we have a division between women who are career-teachers and others who are destined to teach for a while and then marry. This does, though, fall off during the later Swiss books, when no-one seems to marry (I put this down to the quality of her writing rather than an social shift. :) ).

I would say that Miss Slater is definitely not a role model. She's too ambitious and she thinks there's life outside the CS. Neither is Grizel - someone who's forced into a career she doesn't want and who doesn't make the best of it.

Kathie Ferrars is a great role model for a new teacher who we see develop into her role. My personal favourite is Bill, although I love Hilda too.
Author:  Cosimo's Jackal [ Tue Mar 30, 2010 11:09 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Teachers as role models
JB wrote:
Following on from the thread about girls and domestic labour, I wonder how much EBD saw her teachers as role models? I think the CS does have good role models, as it shows fulfilled women who are married and unmarried. I think, though, that she definitely gives marriage as a reward to characters and that, in the early and middle books, we have a division between women who are career-teachers and others who are destined to teach for a while and then marry.


I often find myself wondering about this unspoken division in the ranks of the mistresses at the CS - between the 'career teachers' and those who are thinking of teaching as only a temporary interlude before marriage, or who are actually already engaged. Given the fact that CS mistresses don't generally change schools or leave teaching for reasons other than marriage (apart from Miss Slater and Grizel), and many clearly regard the CS as their longterm home and vocation, I'd have thought it would create quite a difference in feeling between those who expect to be at the CS till retirement and those who hope or know it will only be for a short period.

Might the career teachers ever have got together and rolled their eyes about Gillian Linton gazing fondly at her engagement ring in the staffroom, rather than participating in some discussion about naughty Middles or slang? Or the engaged brigade complaining that they don't know where they're supposed to find time to plan a wedding, see their fiance or house-hunt, or wonder how Matey or Hilda has stuck the CS all these decades? What about a new young mistress like Kathie Ferrars joining the staff - might she have found herself looking around and wondering which 'group' she will end up in?

And to come back to the topic, at a time when most CS girls would still expect to marry, might the girls have regarded the potentially marriagable staff differently to the career teachers - as different kinds of role models?
Author:  MJKB [ Tue Mar 30, 2010 8:01 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Teachers as role models
I'm going to be frank. If I were a new member of staff at the CS, I would want to be in the 'just here til I find me doctor' brigade. Apart from Bill and Hilda, the other members of staff seem to live very limited lives. They're expected to demonstate absolute loyalty to the CS, Madame and Joey. They're expected to be satisfied with no social life during term, other than a visit to Joey's for English tea. And as Joey's guests they are expected to feign enthusiasm for her babies, her friends' babies, and that great big untrained hound of hers. Life at the CS is supposed to supply all their social, personal, intellectual and emotional needs. Well done to Miss Slater for having the courage and the confidence to leave in order to find the promotion she deserves.
Author:  MaryR [ Tue Mar 30, 2010 8:02 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Teachers as role models
Cosimo's Jackal wrote:
And to come back to the topic, at a time when most CS girls would still expect to marry, might the girls have regarded the potentially marriagable staff differently to the career teachers - as different kinds of role models?


But surely all the staff are "potentially marriageable"! :shock: Age doesn't stop one marrying, nor experience, nor even lack of *good looks*. And to a schoolgirl all teachers are old, even when only in their twenties. Although I suppose if you were engaged, there might be a certain glamour attached to you. :D

As to staff not leaving except to marry, teachers did tend to stay in one school for a long time, or even for the whole of their career, in those days. I certainly never intended to leave my first job, which I began in 1969, but then got married and the school was too far away, so I did leave, alas. But most of those teachers stayed there until they retired. It's only in fairly recent times, with the advent of so many posts of responsibilty, that staff move to get the experience necessary for promotion - and in those days most headships went to older people than today. Hilda becoming a Headmistress in her early thirties was not the norm back then.
Author:  JB [ Tue Mar 30, 2010 8:26 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Teachers as role models
[quote="MaryR] And to a schoolgirl all teachers are old, even when only in their twenties. [/quote]

This is so true, Mary. SLOC's niece attends my old school and there are some teachers there who were teaching at the school when I was a pupil. I started at the school 30 years ago this September :shock: and they didn't seem young to me at the time.

I would have loved to see EBD marry off an older teacher with perhaps some long lost love arriving to look for Hilda.
Author:  Lesley [ Tue Mar 30, 2010 8:45 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Teachers as role models
julieanne1811 wrote:
Hilda Annersely, on the other hand, is a Joey 'grown-up', and therefore contains within her character all that the CS expects from their girls as adults. Makes for less interesting reading though ...



May have to disagree about that... :wink:


I cannot remember any of my teachers being role models; there were a couple I kept in touch with for a while after I left school and who could have become friends had we not met originally in the school environment. I think the boarding school environment would be more likely to engender role models.


As for male role models - I can remember 3 male teachers - a Chemistry teacher and a Geography teacher who were both great fun and for whom we all had a lot of respect. And an English teacher for whom we didn't - very poor dress sense, very bad personal hygeine and very poor discipline - he seemed to grow a backbone when we were in our 5th year (Year 11 now) - though all that did was annoy our Form Mistress - she used to dread Friday lunchtimes as Mr Jennings would spend the entire hour berating her about how terrible her Form were. We always wondered why Mrs Bainbridge arrived to take the Register Friday afternoon in such a foul mood! :lol:
Author:  Nightwing [ Tue Mar 30, 2010 8:57 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Teachers as role models
I do think that the CS staff were role models for the girls, and I think it's one reason why I'm sad that the school gets bigger and loses the family feeling - the girls simply wouldn't know all the staff, and not nearly as well as they knew Madge, Mlle. et al in the Tyrolean days.

Presumably the form teachers would be the most important 'role models' for the girls, since they're the ones they would have the most contact with. While I have no doubt that most girls would have looked up to Hilda, how many would have seen much of her? Unless you were very bad, or were one of her adopted "nieces", you'd mostly only see her in assemblies and prayers, and that would have made her seem quite distant. Even though we get the occasional lovely scene of her, like the one where she ties up Ted's hair, there were simply too many girls (and too many other demands on her time) for her to have the chance to have that sort of relaxed, individual meeting with everyone.

I'm not sure that I could say any of my own teachers were role models, but then, I was a day girl! I definitely had one or two that I really liked, because they were good teachers and good people, too; and I had two English teachers in my final year of school who were just plain inspirational. I probably would have failed my final English exam if not for them!
Author:  julieanne1811 [ Tue Mar 30, 2010 9:17 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Teachers as role models
Lesley wrote:
julieanne1811 wrote:
Hilda Annersely, on the other hand, is a Joey 'grown-up', and therefore contains within her character all that the CS expects from their girls as adults. Makes for less interesting reading though ...

May have to disagree about that... :wink:


Please do disagree - how so, then???? !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :?: :?: :?: :?:
Author:  Lesley [ Tue Mar 30, 2010 9:28 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Teachers as role models
julieanne1811 wrote:
Lesley wrote:
julieanne1811 wrote:
Hilda Annersely, on the other hand, is a Joey 'grown-up', and therefore contains within her character all that the CS expects from their girls as adults. Makes for less interesting reading though ...

May have to disagree about that... :wink:


Please do disagree - how so, then???? !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :?: :?: :?: :?:



I don't consider her to be less interesting to read about.
Author:  Alison H [ Tue Mar 30, 2010 9:37 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Teachers as role models
MaryR wrote:
. Hilda becoming a Headmistress in her early thirties was not the norm back then.


Most of the staff in the early days were young. I wonder why ... did Madge think that older people might not respect a young headmistress, or (as most of the teachers were British) were older women less keen on the idea of teaching abroad, or were there just not a lot of teachers in their 40s and 50s because they'd all gone off with doctors?

The Dennys seem to be older than most, but as they were still teaching over 25 years later they were probably only in their late 30s or early 40s in the early days. & several of the mistresses were already engaged (engaged to be married, I mean) when they began work there, which seems odd - why did Madge keep employing people who weren't going to stay long :? ?
Author:  Elle [ Tue Mar 30, 2010 9:51 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Teachers as role models
Alison H wrote:
Most of the staff in the early days were young. I wonder why ... did Madge think that older people might not respect a young headmistress, or (as most of the teachers were British) were older women less keen on the idea of teaching abroad, or were there just not a lot of teachers in their 40s and 50s because they'd all gone off with doctors?


But isn't that why Matron Webb was so dismissive of Madge?
Author:  Alison H [ Tue Mar 30, 2010 9:55 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Teachers as role models
Yes - she started harping on about how she was much older and more experienced in schools than Madge was, which was true! Maybe Madge did deliberately go for younger staff members because of that. It must be quite weird being the boss when most of your staff are better qualified than you, without them being older and having years of experience as well.

Even in the later books, most new mistresses are in their 20s. Maybe they were trying to keep payroll costs down by employing people without much experience!
Author:  Nightwing [ Tue Mar 30, 2010 9:59 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Teachers as role models
Wouldn't it have been fairly normal to employ young mistresses, in the Tyrolean days at least? In most jobs in those days you would have joined a company - or a school, I assume - and have been there for the rest of your working days. The only way of getting a promotion was to wait for your boss/manager to either marry, if she were a woman, or drop dead! So, it would have been a lot harder to find mistresses who were experienced, rather than those who were fresh out of university or school.
Author:  Cosimo's Jackal [ Wed Mar 31, 2010 9:11 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Teachers as role models
MaryR wrote:
Cosimo's Jackal wrote:
And to come back to the topic, at a time when most CS girls would still expect to marry, might the girls have regarded the potentially marriagable staff differently to the career teachers - as different kinds of role models?


But surely all the staff are "potentially marriageable"! :shock: Age doesn't stop one marrying, nor experience, nor even lack of *good looks*.


Not my idea, I assure you, but I sense it's EBD's. Today, in the western world, all the unmarried CS staff of whatever age are absolutely potentially marriageable, sure (as our collective desire to marry Bill - at least before Kester Bellever made it onto the poll! :D - implies). But then the average age of marriage has gone way up since EBD was writing - I think the average age at first marriage for a woman in the UK is now 29, for instance, while that would have been superannuated in the CS world! Also, we are far more likely to divorce and remarry these days, so there are far more later subsequent marriages, as people are freed up and become single again at later ages. And even though that statistic about a US university-educated woman being more likely to be killed by a terrorist than to marry at 40 was flawed, it still reflected a popular conception of marriageble ages in the mid 1980s, to the point where people believed it.

So, in a CS set in today's world, Joey wouldn't be asking Rosalie Dene why she's never married (with the strong implication that she's now unlikely to), Nancy Wilmot might be keeping her chin up in the middle of a messy divorce, Hilda might be a newly-wed, and Bill might be seeing one of the San doctors after being widowed - but I don't think EBD sees it that way. I don't think, for instance, that she sees Rosalie or Nancy Wilmot as still marriageable by the series' end - though now that I think of it, I'm not even sure how old they're meant to be...? Rosalie is around Joey's age, isn't she?
Author:  JB [ Wed Mar 31, 2010 9:21 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Teachers as role models
I can quite see that Madge wouldn’t want to be surrounded by people with more experience of how a school should run. I’m sure she felt sensitive about this, particularly in the early days before she and the school had proved themselves.

I don’t know much about the employment market in the 1920s but I can’t imagine that a more experienced teacher would want to leave a secure job to go to a new school in Austria with few pupils and an inexperienced head. Might that also explain why Madge took on teachers who were looking for a job to fill in time before they married?

And might the “jobs for life” idea explain why, even in Switzerland, most of the teachers are young? There are older teachers who’ve been at the CS for a long time but all newcomers are young. Or perhaps it’s down to their fear of outsiders after the Miss Bubb episode?


[quote="Cosimo's Jackal I don't think, for instance, that she sees Rosalie or Nancy Wilmot as still marriageable by the series' end - though now that I think of it, I'm not even sure how old they're meant to be...? Rosalie is around Joey's age, isn't she?[/quote]

Rosalie is slightly older than Jo, so around 40, i'd say. Nancy starts off a year or so younger than Jo but becomes younger as the series progresses. I'm sure we're told she's 30 when she stands in for Hilda as Head. :?
Author:  julieanne1811 [ Wed Mar 31, 2010 9:22 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Teachers as role models
Lesley wrote:

Quote:
I don't consider her to be less interesting to read about.


Ahhhh ... I see. I was going to still disagree with you on that one but thinking about it I see what you mean. I think that the difficulty with Hilda Annersley's character is the subtlety of it. Joey's is very 'out there' and it doesn't take much searching to find the colour in her character.
Miss Annerseley's on the other hand is more spread out and hidden - we only get glimpses of it throughout the series. For children, they might well miss her character development, and adults, if, like me, they have had a depived upbringing by only having had access to the abridged books, miss out on aspects of her character.

Thank you Lesley!
Author:  Llywela [ Wed Mar 31, 2010 9:23 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Teachers as role models
Cosimo's Jackal wrote:
So, in a CS set in today's world, Joey wouldn't be asking Rosalie Dene why she's never married (with the strong implication that she's now unlikely to), Nancy Wilmot might be keeping her chin up in the middle of a messy divorce, Hilda might be a newly-wed, and Bill might be seeing one of the San doctors after being widowed - but I don't think EBD sees it that way. I don't think, for instance, that she sees Rosalie or Nancy Wilmot as still marriageable by the series' end - though now that I think of it, I'm not even sure how old they're meant to be...? Rosalie is around Joey's age, isn't she?

But then again, EBD does allow Grizel to marry in her mid-30s (Grizel and Rosalie would be about the same age, a year or two older than Joey), so there could still be hope for Nancy Wilmot (a few years younger) after all... :wink:
Author:  Cosimo's Jackal [ Wed Mar 31, 2010 2:26 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Teachers as role models
Llywela wrote:

But then again, EBD does allow Grizel to marry in her mid-30s (Grizel and Rosalie would be about the same age, a year or two older than Joey), so there could still be hope for Nancy Wilmot (a few years younger) after all... :wink:


Maybe! Though it does look as though Nancy is slated to be the next CS Head, and clearly that could never be combined with a husband and children, not if she's to be as entirely dedicated, body and soul, to the school as CS heads always are... (Though I quite like the idea of a married, busy Nancy who keeps saying, in response to some crisis about Middles and motorboats, or Sale themes, 'Oh, ask Joey to run over and take care of it - I'm sure it's more up her street than mine.' :D I wonder whether Joey would quickly get fed up, if she felt taken advantage of as CS Consultant Next Door?

And I always feel that Grizel's marriage is presented, not as something one might have expected in the course of things, but as a fabulous last-minute reprieve and exception to various CS-universe marital rules.
Author:  Llywela [ Wed Mar 31, 2010 3:55 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Teachers as role models
Cosimo's Jackal wrote:
And I always feel that Grizel's marriage is presented, not as something one might have expected in the course of things, but as a fabulous last-minute reprieve and exception to various CS-universe marital rules.

Oh aye, it totally is, but it does show that EBD recognises that even women who are technically 'no longer of marriageable age' can still find love...so even her career mistresses and lifelong spinsters don't necessarily have to be completely written off, matrimonially speaking.
Author:  GotNerd [ Wed Mar 31, 2010 5:25 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Teachers as role models
Cosimo's Jackal wrote:
So, in a CS set in today's world, Joey wouldn't be asking Rosalie Dene why she's never married (with the strong implication that she's now unlikely to), Nancy Wilmot might be keeping her chin up in the middle of a messy divorce, Hilda might be a newly-wed, and Bill might be seeing one of the San doctors after being widowed - but I don't think EBD sees it that way. I don't think, for instance, that she sees Rosalie or Nancy Wilmot as still marriageable by the series' end - though now that I think of it, I'm not even sure how old they're meant to be...? Rosalie is around Joey's age, isn't she?


Rosalie is around the same age as Grizel, at least in Tyrol (they were in the same form at The High), which makes her two years Joey's senior. Given Grizel married later on in the series, it doesn't seem impossible that Rosalie should do the same.
Author:  julieanne1811 [ Wed Mar 31, 2010 6:27 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Teachers as role models
Doesn't Marie start out as younger than Joey? And what about Elisaveta? She's classed as a Middle in Camp but I thought she was Joey's contemporary. OT - sorry.
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