Class act - Gary Cunliffe
Former teacher at Broughton Business and Enterprise College who now runs Yellow Factory media business
There are some things you just know. That sore throat on waking up will turn into the world's heaviest cold before teatime, Brucie's jokes on Strictly will be wooden as Long John Silver's bad leg and I was 'got' by that speed camera. There are some things you just know!
A responsible teacher can't afford the slightest scandal nowadays.
Thank goodness there were no mobile phones in the olden days to upload the future headteacher dancing drunk in the fountain.
So, to avoid the column headed "Teacher fined for speeding only a tidgy bit over the speed limit" I went down the speed awareness course route.
Many a teacher would give anything for a class like we were – quiet, too embarrassed to look up much at first and totally well-behaved.
Pretending to be an Ofsted inspector seemed a good way to cope with the slightly pedestrian pace of the lesson and the pen sprang rapidly into action when sir began writing on the flip chart "COMMEN SENSE, PROCECUTION, MILAGE." (sic) He'll be throwing in rogue apostrophes next!
But when the statistics of fatalities caused by excess speed began to sink in, our reasons for speeding seemed so trivial.
The course leader said one of those things you remember: "Driving is only a blink of the eye in evolutionary terms and demands total concentration.
"I can improve all people's other driving skills 100%, except concentration. There seems to be a 20-25 minute genetic limit!"
So that's why my daughter can't listen to a CD track all the way through in the car? That's why the year eight boy puts his bag and blazer on the chair next to him and creates Mr. Baggy.
Yet these are the pupils who somehow manage to pull off great exams results, learn musical instruments to the highest level and become doctors and scientists.
This suggests to me that when we really need to, we can all try that bit harder to concentrate longer; which of course was the message we were being taught by sir when we are behind the wheel.
I now know, thanks to the speed awareness course, that the difference between 30mph and 40mph in an urban area means a jump from 20% to 90% in pedestrian fatalities in collision with cars, many of whom are children.
The biggest jump comes between 30 and 35 when we might not be concentrating enough or fiddling with the CD – now that should be on the list of one of those things that we all just know!
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Thursday 24 May 2012
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