Top buttons open, tie at an angle, occasional glances to the top desk. Reminds you of a dog off the lead, swift glances to check that his master is still there. Enough of simile — or is it metaphor? Fingers poking at calculators to multiply 7 by 3, to add 15 and 8; pens in mouths or twirled expertly between second and third fingers; glances at wristwatches — how much time left in this lesson?
Tom has no idea what to do, looks around in the hope of inspiration from the bowed heads of his classmates. 'Come up, Tom.' Tom is a big lad, second row of the scrum, too much time with his head stuck up a ... Never mind. Concentrate, you're the teacher.
He reminds you of the lad from Tangmalangaloo — knocks the benches all askew, upending of himself. Is that another simile? 'Sir, what does "solve the equation" mean?'
Oh God. You have been doing this for three weeks and he has never missed a class. But you explain it to him again, the rote set of steps that mysteriously rolls out an answer.
'Is that the answer, sir?' 'Yes, Tom, now you do exactly the same with the next two and come up again when you have done those.' But why are you sitting down anyway? Shouldn't you be moving around, looking over shoulders, pointing at little errors, whispering encouragement, monosyllabic hints?
But then the thought comes: is this any way to spend your life? Will it matter to Tom in ten years time that he cannot solve a quadratic equation? Will it matter to any of them?
Actually, it probably will, because someone has decreed that 15-year olds should be able to do this and if they cannot, they will fail. Well, not fail, that word has gone out of the school vocabulary, but they will be guided into a stream that says hod carrier, professional footballer, backbench MP.
Tom comes up. He has done what you showed him and got the answers. He is smiling. 'I can do this now, sir.' There is no bravado in that, just genuine pleasure. A small triumph, the one that explains why you love this job. Tom may not have many more classroom victories that day, but right now he is happy.
These are earnest kids: keen, wanting to succeed. And society has told them that to succeed they must be able to