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Mistresses: The Working Life of the Chalet Staff

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#1: Mistresses: The Working Life of the Chalet Staff Author: jennifer, Location: Taiwan

Posted: Fri Aug 24, 2007 3:49 am
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What do you think of the working life of the Chalet School mistresses? Was the working atmosphere pleasant, did they get enough time off, opportunities for promotion, compensation for their work, and so on? Was their workload a reasonable one? What do you think of their interactions with each other, and the hierarchical structure?

For those with experience with boarding schools, do you think that the portrayal of their working life was one that was realistic for its times?

#2: Author: Jennie, Location: Cambridgeshire

Posted: Fri Aug 24, 2007 12:08 pm
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Not particularly realistic, more idealised.

Given the location on the Platz, I suppose the staff could not expect to have a great deal of time off, especially as there were no house staff to take over in the evenings and at weekends.

However, I think that what they did was unrealistic in that they all seemed so keen to go away on escorting the girls to various places, and I would assume that the staff travelled and boarded at the school's expense as they were working, but they were expected to do an awful lot out of school hours, such as Kathie Ferrars doing lax and tennis coaching .

Another point is that there is no real change in the staff in Switzerland apart from Herr Laubach retiring and Ros Yolland returning to teach and the odd teacher leaving to get married to a doctor. Frau Mieders was with them in Austria and still seems to be going strong by the end of the series, but where it is unrealistic is that there is no promotion and very few leaving to go to other schools to gain promotion.

The way Pam Slater was treated was a case in point. She left because she wasn't happy at having to speak in three languages and because she wanted and needed more money, so her CS colleagues treated her as if she had committed treason and ought be behaeded on Tower Hill.

There was also serious understaffing in some departments, PE is a case in point. The girls were supposed to be happy with games lessons and practices being run by prefects, and the PE mistress was hardly ever there. I don't hink that was legal in those days, and it certainly isn't now. So, episodes such as Margot's infamous hockey coaching would have led to heads rolling.

And I've never been in a staffroom where everyone was united and happy, without exception, unless they were all united against the head, and that happens, believe me.

#3: Author: Alison H, Location: Manchester

Posted: Fri Aug 24, 2007 12:37 pm
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I find it unrealistic that everyone gets on so well. Nice though it would be to work in a place where everyone's on good terms, very few places are like that, and with living under the same roof as well as working together there's no way there wouldn't've been little - or even big - niggles. I can imagine there being conflict between the Old Girls Clique and other people.

If you work at a boarding school then I suppose you have to accept that you'll have to take prep after school, look after pupils who can't go home at half-term, etc, but in Switzerland no-one seems to go anywhere apart from to Joey's and to the dentist's: there's an odd mention of someone going somewhere on a day off but they (apart from the Dennys) seem to spend most of their time at the school.

I forget which book it's in - although I've a vague recollection that it was something to do with a sleepwalking incident - but one of the mistresses indicates somewhere that she thinks they don't get paid particularly well. Although Biddy O'Ryan seems to be able to afford to donate a tenth of her annual salary to the chapel fund in Excitements! I don't think it's unrealistic, given that it's a relatively small school, that there isn't much talk of promotion - most departments only have about two mistresses - but it does seem odd that so few people leave other than to get married.

Having said which, one of the things that makes the CS books so much better than e.g. Malory Towers (IMHO) is the fact that we do get to see so much of the staff as well as the pupils.

#4: Author: JayB, Location: SE England

Posted: Fri Aug 24, 2007 12:38 pm
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I think some parts are quite realistic; the staffroom griping about unsatisfactory pupils; the fact that the mistresses are sometimes shown to be irritable or impatient.

The staffroom atmosphere seems to have been pleasant and friendly, but I think it is unrealistic that everyone got on together with no cliques or squabbles.

It also seems unrealistic that none of them seemed to have a life outside the school in termtime. Although Nancy et al did have their small car, so I suppose they must have used it for something. And the focus was on the school, so Nancy and Kathie's weekend trips weren't really relevant to the story EBD wanted to tell.

They did give up a lot of time to extra-curricular activities, but I suppose if you went to work in a boarding school you knew what you were getting into. If you were good at hockey and lacrosse and enjoyed them, helping out with the coaching might be the only way you'd get to play yourself.

At my non-boarding grammar school in the '60s, one or two of the mistresses used to join in hockey in Games lessons and for all I know might have coached the teams too. (I hated hockey and had as little to do with it as possible.)

Also unrealistic is the fact that so few mistresses ever left, and the only acceptable reasons for leaving were to marry a doctor or to look after a sick relative. Other than Pam Slater, Grizel is the only one I can think of who left for any other reason.

#5: Author: Róisín, Location: Ireland

Posted: Fri Aug 24, 2007 1:17 pm
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I think I would love a job there all the same! Laughing

Imagine, being in the Alps for your nine to five, being able to ski in winter and hike in spring, popping to Interlaken on your day off, fraternising with handsome young doctors at Joey's dinner parties Very Happy

Yes, I'll take that thankyouverymuch...

My favourite bits of narrative are when we see the staff off duty, whether having elevenses, sitting alone with chocolates and a cigarette or having a personal shopping trip down in the runabout. They seem to socialise a lot *with each other* - maybe sometimes they are actually off when we think they are working.

I think overall that they do work a teensy bit too much, but that the advantages of being where they are, in a high-end school, makes up for it.

#6: Author: Sunglass, Location: Usually London

Posted: Fri Aug 24, 2007 5:07 pm
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I'm often slightly baffled by the CS hiring process - old girls clearly take priority over any other candidates, and quite often a job seems to be semi-created for whatever their field is. Yet (slightly like even those new girls who don't run away to school, presumably read the prospectus, and are nonetheless stunned by the trilingualism), some staff at times are shown as being less than entirely capable of teaching in three languages, even though presumably that would be a priority in hiring new staff. Although it's interesting that, if I'm not mistaken, there are never any hiring mistakes in the ordinary teaching staff, just the Matrons and Miss Bubb - although most of the staff are very young when they join the staff, most just out of training. Kathy Ferrars still behaves like a small child when she hears she's got the job!

I think I'd have been horrified at having to teach in languages my pupils didn't speak at all well - surely it must have been desperately hard to teach, say, history, to a class that included native speakers of German, and new girls who didn't speak a word of it? Half the time you would essentially be teaching German vocabulary or comprehension. Whatever about learning ten new words a day, a girl might potentially lose out on two thirds of her weekly timetable because it was taught in a language she didn't speak!

I agree entirely with whoever said they would have imagined tensions in the staff room between old girls, with their endless stories of Tyrol fun and Joey's doings (can these ever have been of any interest to anyone not directly involved?) and non-old girls, who didn't realise they were going to be plunged into a whole new folklore and might have wanted to talk about something else.

I suppose some of the oddities of the lack of obviously 'professional' structure to being a mistress at the CS are down to the fact that it begins in a such a small way, like the tiny school the Brontes planned over a century earlier - less like a business than taking a few extra girls into your home, with no university-trained teachers or professional qualifications. By the end of the series, it's a huge success, with trained teachers and several branches etc, but the professionalisation of the staff room never quite catches up. Though I must read whichever book it is that the Pam Slater fracas is in - sounds most interesting...

#7: Author: Mel, Location: UP NORTH

Posted: Fri Aug 24, 2007 5:59 pm
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The boarding school set-up would be fine for any old girls joining the staff. Also at the time girls would progress from girls-only schools, then University/College with all-girls Halls of Residence, so teaching at a girls boarding school would be more of the same familiar routine. This would seem incredibly restricting to girls of today used to sharing flats or living alone. For a few years it might be fun, but for most of them in the Chalet School it becomes their home. It is a tiny world they live in which I would hate apart from the ludicrous teaching in three languages. They did have a lot of duties, but longer holidays than state schools. Also, their timetables might not be that onerous. Kathie Ferrars teaches Maths and Geography to Inter V and two other forms in Middle school. By my reckoning that comes to 12 teaching perids per week as I can't see them having more than two lessons a week in each subject. Afternoons might be free for the academic staff as the girls spend so much time sewing, prep, games, trotting down to swim and row in the afternoons (another unrealistic idea!) However, going to Austria to teach in the 1930s must have been a great adventure, and a much more attractive setting.

#8: Author: LesleyAnn, Location: Perth, Scotland

Posted: Fri Aug 24, 2007 8:26 pm
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I do think the mistresses were expected to take on a lot of out of school stuff, but as already been said, if you go to work in a boarding school you would expect some of that. I do find it unrealistic that they get on so well but you do occasionally get the odd moment when one member of staff says something annoying. I'm thinking in particular of Biddy O'Ryan's response to Pam Slater in (I think it's 'Wrong') the fear and trepidation with which the staff meet the prospect of going back to tri-lingual teaching - something like 'I can give you half a dozen addresses of people to speak to you if that's all you're bothered about' kind of thing!

Although you get the odd glimpse of time off for them to do their own thing I wonder sometimes if EBD would just have taken is at read that her audience would know that they had that anyway, and saw no reason to go into great detail about it. After all, apart from New Mistress, the books were about school life for the pupils and that is what her target audience would be primarily interested in. As adults, I suppose we love reading about the staff and what they get up to from an adult perspective, but her audience at that time were probably more interested in who could fall off a cliff/get lost in fog/nearly drown or die from pneumonia than what the staff were doing!

Having said that I think the way Pam Slater was treated for having the temerity to want to leave was pretty appalling. I remember an article in FOCS a while ago which had been written as a letter from Pam to (I think) someone wanting to take up a post at the CS. I can't remember all of it but the bit that sticks in my memory is something like 'endless cups of nectar-like coffee but no chance of a snifter in the staff-room. If you want that you'll have to go to your room. No member of staff seems to be allowed just to retire their room in the evening, you have to spend your evenings in the staff room, whether you like or not!' Wink

#9: Author: JayB, Location: SE England

Posted: Fri Aug 24, 2007 8:55 pm
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I think the lack of privacy would get to me - but then again, if you didn't like communal living, you wouldn't apply for a job in a boarding school. And life in the past generally offered less privacy anyway. Young unmarried women were far more likely to live at home or in rented rooms or hostels than have their own flats.

Although I thought it was a bit much in, I think, Highland Twins, when Matey, one of the most senior members of staff, and possibly the oldest too, didn't even have a properly private bedroom. Her bed, if I recall rightly, turned into a sofa during the day and she used the room for making lists, sorting linen and interviewing pupils. At least the mistresses had their own tables and shelf space in the staffroom for schoolwork and their bedrooms were entirely private and personal spaces

#10: Author: Tara, Location: Malvern, Worcestershire

Posted: Fri Aug 24, 2007 10:48 pm
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I think that the focus on the staff is one of the defining characteristics of the books - for adults. As LesleyAnn said, we are left wanting lots, lots more, but the books weren't written for us, strange though this seems!

Whatever the limitations, and of course they're there, we see far more of the staff as people than anywhere else in school literature. As a teacher myself, I love the little incidents like Pam Slater (iirc) reminiscing about spoiling reports and having to crawl around the others getting them all to rewrite theirs - I remember when it really was like that and, yes, I've had to do it myself! Embarrassing, very!

OK, perhaps too much sweetness and light, but some of the friendships are deep and longlasting, they have all known one another for a very long time, and the early school really is a family. In fact it continues to be for, for example, Herr Laubach, Biddy, Matey - even Hilda and Nell, I suppose.
The Pam Slater rebellion actually, I think, shows how subversive EBD could be. Granted, Miss Slater is regarded with total incomprehension, but this devotion to the school was a fundamental supposition of the literature, and having Pam question it (and having her decision validated - she is shown in later years successful and happy and with no yearnings at all for the CS) was startlingly unusual.

So - I love the staff and would like loads more of them - but doesn't it leave a nice lot lof space for drabbles ...

A personal note: I spent the last fifteen years of my teaching life in a large (and very good) comprehensive and, while the school in general was, I guess, much like most others, my department was absolutely wonderful, we really were friends as well as supportive colleagues, so it isn't completely unrealistic. And the person I shared the Sixth Form Head of Yearship with has just left - and has been replaced by a young man I taught when he was in Year 9! Now that would have been interesting.

#11: Author: JayB, Location: SE England

Posted: Fri Aug 24, 2007 11:39 pm
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Quote:

And the person I shared the Sixth Form Head of Yearship with has just left - and has been replaced by a young man I taught when he was in Year 9! Now that would have been interesting.

Nancy Wilmot, as Head of Maths, and Acting Head, ended up senior to some of the mistresses who taught her when she was a pupil, didn't she.

#12: Author: Fiona Mc, Location: Bendigo, Australia

Posted: Sat Aug 25, 2007 7:25 am
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JayB wrote:

Quote:

And the person I shared the Sixth Form Head of Yearship with has just left - and has been replaced by a young man I taught when he was in Year 9! Now that would have been interesting.

Nancy Wilmot, as Head of Maths, and Acting Head, ended up senior to some of the mistresses who taught her when she was a pupil, didn't she.

Nancy left the year after Joey and well before most of the Swiss Mistresses had arrived to teach at the school. Miss Wilson, Miss annersley, Mademoiselle de Lachenais, Matey, Herr Laubach and Frau Mieders are the only ones who taught her that are still there when she comes back.

#13: Author: Mrs Redboots, Location: London, UK

Posted: Sat Aug 25, 2007 11:57 am
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Alison H wrote:

Although Biddy O'Ryan seems to be able to afford to donate a tenth of her annual salary to the chapel fund in Excitements!

Well, many Christians do tithe (i.e. give a tenth of) their salaries, although those Churches with which I have been involved suggest 5% to the Church and 5% to other charities, so that bit isn't unusual (and please, those of you who do this, DO gift-aid your giving, so that the recipients can claim back the tax you've paid on your gift!).

I see it as semi-realistic. Certainly there were several - at least five or six that I know of - mistresses who came to the school I was at more or less straight from college and stayed there until they retired. I asked one of them once what had kept her there, and she said that it was a great job and, as she hadn't wanted a headship, she had no reason to want to move. And on the Platz, most single staff would have to live on-site, and may well have volunteered for extra activities in their spare time to stave off boredom!

We only had two PE staff (this was in the 1960s) for the whole school and certainly House practices were the responsibility of the House Games captains, usually hideously early in the mornings (thank goodness I was never on a team!) with no staff supervision of any kind, although adult help would not have been hard to find in an emergency.

I was amused, on revisiting the school one Old Girls' Day (how sad of me!) to be shown round the "new" staff flat in one of the Houses. The former housemistresses I was with commented that they had only had a bedroom, bathroom and sitting-room, and those not self-contained. I pointed out that back then it was assumed they would be single women - nowadays they might well be married with a family who would want to live on-site.

I don't know what the arrangement is now, but back then the House staff each got one full day off a week, and didn't come to any meals or anything. I suppose, with hindsight, that unless they had a bolt-hole locally it must have been pretty dreary for them, skulking in their rooms all day!

#14: Author: MaryR, Location: Cheshire

Posted: Sat Aug 25, 2007 12:32 pm
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Alison H wrote:

but one of the mistresses indicates somewhere that she thinks they don't get paid particularly well.

Teachers were paid relatively little in those days, I'm afraid. In my early teaching days, at the beginning of the seventies, the pay was very poor in comparison with other professional jobs. I certainly earned a lot less than my husband who worked for the Health Service.

As to being taken on so easily as a Staff member - in 1969 I merely rang up a school where I had done a teaching practice and asked had they any vacancies, and the Head offered me a post immediately, no interview. The same happened when I had to move schools five years later when I got married. A walk around the grounds and an amiable chat with the head and the job was mine. Rather different from today's interviews! Laughing

I have been in schools where the staff got on so well that there were very few cross words and arguments were soon mended. And have come away with good friends from such schools. Other schools there have been, though, where one really had to watch one's back. Evil or Very Mad

So I don't think the atmosphere in CS was too unrealistic at all.

#15: Author: Mel, Location: UP NORTH

Posted: Sat Aug 25, 2007 1:26 pm
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I too have worked at several schools and found the atmosphere in Staffrooms to be good-humoured and friendly. I can't believe that the lives of the CS staff were so dull that they would need to volunteer for extra duties to alleviate boredom!

#16: Author: Lesley, Location: Allhallows, Kent

Posted: Sat Aug 25, 2007 1:44 pm
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Mrs Redboots wrote:

I suppose, with hindsight, that unless they had a bolt-hole locally it must have been pretty dreary for them, skulking in their rooms all day!

Anyone else like to theorise on the CS having a local taverna where they all disappeared to, to escape the School, girls, Head and Joey? Laughing

#17: Author: Alison H, Location: Manchester

Posted: Sat Aug 25, 2007 2:22 pm
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Lesley wrote:

Anyone else like to theorise on the CS having a local taverna where they all disappeared to, to escape the School, girls, Head and Joey? Laughing

I'm just remembering an unfortunate occasion when several teachers and the school librarian went into our school's local pub one lunchtime and sat at a table near the door, much to the dismay of a group of Sixth Formers who then couldn't get out without going past them and ended up being late back ... I can't see OOAO's Gang getting caught out like that but maybe some of the others would've done!

#18: Author: JayB, Location: SE England

Posted: Sat Aug 25, 2007 3:21 pm
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Quote:

I can't see OOAO's Gang getting caught out like that but maybe some of the others would've done!

Do you mean OOAO's Gang wouldn't have been in the pub in the first place, or they wouldn't have been caught? Very Happy

As to who was likely to be caught in a pub, Betty Wynne-Davies, for one. And undoubtedly Joan Baker.

#19: Author: Pado, Location: Connecticut, USA

Posted: Sat Aug 25, 2007 4:29 pm
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Quote:

Although Biddy O'Ryan seems to be able to afford to donate a tenth of her annual salary to the chapel fund in Excitements

But then Biddy has a unique relationship to the school and may well see this as an opportunity to give something back/even things up/make a symbolic statement/buy her way out of indentured servitude/whatever.

#20: Author: Miriam, Location: Jerusalem, Israel

Posted: Sat Aug 25, 2007 8:57 pm
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I think Biddy in particular would have had very few living expenses. She seemed to spend her jolidays with Jo, and would not have had to pay anything for that. A lot of the others would have had to pay for accomodatiopn in the holidays (like Hilda who seems to have had no home of her own) or some of the other staff who contributed to family funds. Biddy's salery only had to cover her clothes and any lesiuere activities she wanted, so I would think she was well able to spare 1/10 of it.

As far as going to the pub goes, it was traditional in my school for the sixth form to invite the staff to the pub during lunchbreak on the last day of school, and pay for their drinks. Some kind of 'welcome to adulthood' ritual... Rolling Eyes

#21: Author: Holly,

Posted: Sat Aug 25, 2007 10:20 pm
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Mel wrote:

The boarding school set-up would be fine for any old girls joining the staff. Also at the time girls would progress from girls-only schools, then University/College with all-girls Halls of Residence, so teaching at a girls boarding school would be more of the same familiar routine.

I would have thought that that wouldn't be the best idea; spending your preteen and teen years in school, going away to college to get your degree and then coming back to the same school to teach students who would remember you as a pupil?

I don't know about the rest of you, but I'd rather my first years of teaching were with students who didn't know me as a peer.

Quote:

It is a tiny world they live in which I would hate apart from the ludicrous teaching in three languages.

That could be part of why Old Girls ended up getting the teaching jobs; can you imagine how difficult it would be to find teachers with enough fluency in English, French and German to teach their subjects?

#22: Author: Sunglass, Location: Usually London

Posted: Sun Aug 26, 2007 10:37 am
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[quote="Pado"]

Quote:

Maybe the indentured servitude ends when Guides apparently doesn't transfer to the Oberland! Frankly I'm astonished Biddy doesn't turn out to be some kind of sociopath - she's an orphaned runaway in foreign parts who gets summarily adopted by a school Guide company, with the notion that she gets sent to the local peasant school and trained as a maid, then it's decided that she's clever enough to attend the school and ricochets addictedly back there after university as a mistress, despite the fact that it means teaching alongside people who appear to remember her primarily as a foundling or nuisance Middle. Yet she's presented as an icon of normality compared to Grizel Cochrane...

#23: Author: JayB, Location: SE England

Posted: Sun Aug 26, 2007 10:43 am
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She doesn't go straight back after university. She spends some time in Australia, as companion to an invalid girl who eventually dies, and then with the girl's parents as a kind of surrogate daughter, I think. Was it a friend of hers from university? I can't recall the details. I think it's talked about in Carola.

#24: Author: Sunglass, Location: Usually London

Posted: Sun Aug 26, 2007 11:25 am
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Yes, but she only goes there out of pity for the sick friend (someone she knew at Oxford?) and stays on only because the parents ask her to teach their younger children until they are old enough to go to boarding school. She makes no secret in Carola of not having much liked her experience of Australia, and says she wrote to Miss Annersley (rather than, say, an agency!) to find her a a job 'at home', which turns out to mean a return to the CS, which I suppose is her home. I'd look on that as a beeline back to the CS...

#25: Author: jennifer, Location: Taiwan

Posted: Sun Aug 26, 2007 4:43 pm
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I would separate life at the CS into three phases.

During the Tyrol years, the school has much more of a family atmosphere than a business. The school is still small, Madge has either control, or a strong interest in it, and the school is connected to the community around it. The mistresses can walk or take a short train ride into town to run errands. There is a strong chance of promotion, as the school is quite new. Miss Annersley goes from New Mistress to Head Mistress in about four or five years, for example. There is also St Scholastica's there for a while, and a thriving vacation industry, which provides some level of non CS/San related blood in the area, particularly other teachers for the mistresses to socialise with.

In England the school is probably closest to a traditional boarding school environment. This is also when the percentage of really old mistresses and old girls returning to teach peaks. The English environment would give a wider social circle, as well.

Its in Switzerland that the school gets really isolated and insular. There doesn't seem to be much to do around the school - there's the San, some holiday homes and hostels, and a few places to get coffee and snacks while hiking. Getting down to town would take a bit of planning, and be more for a day off than a few hours break. Basically, it seems that the social highlight of the place for mistresses is school entertainments and English Tea at Joey's. Rolling Eyes

Fewer mistresses get married during this period, and there are no major school rearrangements, leaving fewer opportunities for advancement.

#26: Author: Tiffany, Location: Is this a duck I see behind me?

Posted: Sun Aug 26, 2007 9:15 pm
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I don't know what the mistresses in Switzerland were meant to do with whatever time off they had - if you only had an afternoon or evening, you couldn't go off the Platz, so you either had to stay at school, or socialise with Joey and the former mistresses who had amarried. There was no chance of non-school related friendships, was there? It strikes me as horribly claustrophobic, but I suppose it wouldn't be so bad if it was what you were used to and expecting.

#27: Author: Alison H, Location: Manchester

Posted: Sun Aug 26, 2007 9:33 pm
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It's a shame that the nurses and the admin staff at the San aren't mentioned more: there's the odd mention of some of the nurses attending services at the school chapels, and Matron Graves as Hilary's sister-in-law presumably knew people like Nancy and Biddy quite well, but they don't really feature.

Or maybe they just didn't want to be friendly with anyone from the School because they were jealous about the way that the CS mistresses got all the single doctors Laughing

#28: Author: Maeve, Location: Romania

Posted: Sat Sep 08, 2007 9:43 am
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Concerning poor Pam Slater, it's Biddy, whom I generally like, who seems to set out to provoke her colleague. The first instance is in Carola, when the staff are complaining about the girls' lack of fluency in German and Miss Slater says she sympathizes with the girls:

Quote:

Biddy, who had always had a gift for languages, stared. ‘But it’s an easy enough language to learn,’ she argued. ‘Look here, what you want to spend a holiday in Germany or Austria with the natives. You would soon pick it up then. Why don’t ye? I can give ye a half a dozen addresses if that’s all.’
Miss Slater looked coldly at her. Biddy O’Ryan might be a mistress at the School now, but the maths mistress still inclined to regard her as one of the girls who had been a regular nuisance in maths lessons.

They have another small tussle at the beginning of Changes when some of the staff, including Miss Slater, are complaining about the girls' carelessness in written work:

Quote:

Miss O’Ryan, the history mistress, who had carefully refrained from giving any written work to anyone below Lower VI, and had been curled up on the window seat, placidly embroidering a tea-cloth while her confrères sweated and groaned, put down her work with a superior smile. “It was bound to happen. Sure, you couldn’t expect anything else from the creatures! ... I decided ’twould be no use to ask them to use their brains overmuch for the next fortnight or so, so I’ve given their memories a spot of work. I saw no reason for loading myself up with piles of written work to no purpose.”
Miss Slater gave her an exasperated look. “I suppose Derwent could have managed all right; but just you tell me, Biddy O’Ryan, what sort of prep I could have given the three Fourths in maths without making it written. I can’t stick to geometry all the time, you know.”
“What’s the matter with revising tables?” Biddy demanded sweetly. ... Miss Slater seemed about to choke with wrath. “Really, Biddy, you haven’t much more sense than you had when I tried to drive some idea of maths into your own brain! They’ve had their tables hammered in until I should think they could say them backwards in their sleep!”
Biddy gave a rich chuckle. “You always did undervalue my abilities!”
“Did I? I only know that when you were in the Sixth you idea of maths used to drive me nearly frantic!” her elder retorted.
“You be thankful you never had Joey Maynard to teach,” Biddy replied, quite unperturbed.

But the infamous scene which others have referred to comes later on in the book when Miss Slater says that she is not going with the school to Switzerland. She explains that she will now have the chance to be head of a department instead, to which Biddy and her peers respond as follows:

Quote:

“Oh, no!” she said in awed tones. She tossed down her pencil and jumped up. “I say, you people, do you think we ought to be lounging around like this in the presence of anyone so important?”
“Lounge?” Peggy Burnett was quick to take the hint. “Of course not! We ought to be kneeling!”
The three younger mistresses promptly plumped down on their knees before the embarrassed Miss Slater, heads bent meekly, hands folded before them.
“Please, Teacher, be kind to us!” Miss Derwent wailed. “Remember we’re only humble assistants and you’re going to be Head of a department!”
“You’ll condescend to let us know how you’re getting on sometimes, won’t you?” Peggy Burnett added.

Joey's remarks seem mild by comparison. I find the whole scene appalling and wonder what on earth EBD was thinking?

#29: Author: Kathy_S, Location: midwestern US

Posted: Sat Sep 08, 2007 2:08 pm
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Well, it's not the sort of response you could make to anyone who wasn't a close friend! It wouldn't be atypical for American GO books of the 30s and 40s, in which teasing and wisecracking of that sort is regularly portrayed in a positive light. It's normally led off by the stereotypical "madcap(s)" of the group.

#30: Author: Maeve, Location: Romania

Posted: Mon Sep 17, 2007 5:47 pm
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I'm just reading CS and the Oberland (for the first time, it seems! - I can't think how I missed it before!) and after reading of one interaction between Bill and Gill Culver am wondering how difficult it was to transition from being a pupil into being at least a kind of equal (of course, there was a staff hierarchy of some kind). Gill has been saying that she's not sure that she would marry someone with an ugly surname, or if she did, she might insist that they use her surname instead.

Quote:

Miss Wilson gasped. “Well, really, Gillian! You don’t marry a man for his name but for what he is—at least I hope so!”
“Oh, I know. Still, if I fell in love with a man called, say, Scroggs, I think I’d suggest it would be a good idea if he took my surname instead of my taking his.”
“You’re talking a lot of nonsense,” the Head told her severely. “Instead of standing there talking of things you don’t understand, you’d better run along and let Matron know that Peggy will be here some time to-day."

You could argue that this is a reasonable exchange for two close adults, but it reads awfully like an annoyed mistress talking to a schoolgirl. Is there anyone who has, or who would like, to go straight back to work with one's secondary/high school teachers as colleagues?

Last edited by Maeve on Mon Sep 17, 2007 6:57 pm; edited 1 time in total

#31: Author: Kate, Location: Ireland

Posted: Mon Sep 17, 2007 6:26 pm
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Maeve wrote:

I'm currently working with my primary school teachers as colleagues, which is a bit weird. But it's been a year now and I think we've all gotten used to it!

#32: Author: Miriam, Location: Jerusalem, Israel

Posted: Mon Sep 17, 2007 7:42 pm
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Gill Culver didn't go straigght back - it was four years since she had left school, which would give her a certain amount of time to define herself as an adult. She spent some time in Kenya with 'a married sister' and then came back to England to do a secraterial course. During this time time she completely lost touch with the school, and only knew about St Mildreds because Gay told her.

I think it would take time to adjust relationship patterns, but with time they can develop a new relationship, though the old one will always remain an element of it. She may always feel feel more respect for her ex-headmistress than a regular secratary may have felt for her employer, but as long as Miss Wilson respects her as an adult as well, it could work out well. The onus of developing the new relationship would be on Miss Wilson, but Gill would have to be mature enough to respond.

#33: Author: Rosalin, Location: Swansea

Posted: Mon Sep 17, 2007 11:15 pm
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I helped on a first aid course in my old primary school when I was 16. That was quite weird. I can't imagine actually working with them.

#34: Author: Mel, Location: UP NORTH

Posted: Tue Sep 18, 2007 11:14 am
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I have worked with pupils I used to teach and it is the older person's responsibility to put the younger at ease. Nell should not have spoken to Gill like that, especially as she was expressing an opinion; it was nothing to do with her job.

#35: Author: jennifer, Location: Taiwan

Posted: Wed Sep 19, 2007 2:33 am
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In a way I imagine it could be like developing an adult relationship with your parents, and progressing to the point where they treat you like an independent adult who can make her own decisions, and you regard them as independent adults who have a life outside of caring for you. Some people manage it easily, others take years to do so.

There's also a scene where Miss Slater is said to be regarding Biddy mainly from the point of view of a former student who was bad at maths, and resents Biddy's comments, which are more in the line of those from a colleague.

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