Episode 2: Incidental Humour in Technical Colleges
The Lighter Side of a Serious Profession
Episode 1: Setting the Scene
Episode 2
Student Life Through the Ages
Leaving the comfort of school and beginning college can be a daunting experience for many students. Some take time to settle into the new regime, while others take to it like a duck to water. Even mature students can be wary of stepping back into education after a long absence. Lecturers, many of whom entered further education without a formal teaching qualification and with little understanding of course management, are often appointed, purely on the basis of their vocational background and skills. The rewards, however, are abundant for both learner and lecturer, though many obstacles lie along the way.
Lecturers teaching vocational subjects would typically have spent well over ten years in industry before entering college teaching. This often comes with the humour of the office, the construction site or workshop floor. It usually borders on not being politically correct and might appear offensive, even though it is just banter.
The anecdotes in this section illustrate some of the daily challenges facing staff and students alike.
Getting to College
Most students will live locally, while others travel within the region or further afield for specialised courses. Increasingly, in recent years, many colleges have set their sights on attracting students from overseas; China and the Middle East are significant sources of enrolment. Overseas students are generally sponsored by their government, with some paid for by their parents.
Most colleges that have been involved in teaching overseas students for several years have developed considerable experience in understanding the cultures from which the students come. Where colleges are enrolling large numbers of students, often a couple of hundred, they have set up departments to manage all aspects of students’ experience; this will include help with travelling from overseas, arranging accommodation, and extra help, should it be needed, while studying.
In the early days, when experience was thin on the ground, and often surpassed by the enthusiasm of a few staff, directions for students on how to get to the town or city were inadequate. One such college, Barry College, is close to Penarth, on the coast of south Wales. One tired student, having travelled for 20 hours, phoned his tutor at about midnight:
‘Can you help me? I am lost; can you give me directions back to Penarth?’
The tutor says he will see what he can do and asks where he was, only to be told…
‘I am not far away’, the student replied confidently. ‘I have seen the signposts, so I know I am very near’.
‘What’s on the signpost?’ asked the tutor.
‘Penrith’ came the answer. ‘That is the next town to Barry, isn’t it?’ the student remarked.
Those of you with GCSE Geography or who have relatives just south of Scotland will know that Penrith, while sharing the first three letters with Penarth, is in fact 280 miles north of Penarth.
Unexpected Absence
An ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages) student, with wealthy parents, called to see his tutor to inform him that:
‘I will be out of college for the next four days, as I am going to my dentist for a check-up’
‘Four days, just for a check-up’ the tutor exclaimed, ‘how come?’
‘My dentist is in Switzerland’ was the terse reply.
Late Again
Students are not best known for punctuality. One apocryphal tale tells of a student perpetually late for morning classes. One day, he turned up 15 minutes late for his first lesson, out of breath. The lecturer, in exasperation, demanded an explanation. The student’s excuse went something like:
‘I am sorry, sir, but not wanting to be late for your class again, I set my alarm especially early. Unfortunately, I still could not wake up, so I rushed to get up and jumped on my bike, determined to get to college on time. I was pedalling as fast as I could, confident I would make it. However, I was going so fast that I overtook a motor bike. When I looked back, the rider was in a heap on the ground, and the motorbike had crashed several yards down the road. Being concerned, I cycled back to the scene and asked the rider what had happened. He replied saying that he was so surprised when I passed him that he thought his motorbike had stalled, so he got off to see what was wrong.’
In the end, the lecturer could only stare at him, torn between disbelief and a creeping admiration for the sheer audacity of the story. The student, meanwhile, stood there panting heroically, as if he’d just completed a stage of the Tour de France. No one ever verified the fate of the startled motorcyclist though, the class quietly agreed that, for once, lateness on that scale probably counted as an achievement.
The Escape of Williams
Naturally, even in the strictest systems, small rebellions occurred. One common act of defiance was slipping away before evening classes. Most attempts passed unnoticed. But every generation had one story that became legend.
Williams, a motor-vehicle apprentice, confident, restless, and rarely short of ideas, announced, after a particularly long day, that he was leaving before the evening session. The class gathered in the car park as he climbed into his car, waved triumphantly, and drove toward the exit, straight into another vehicle entering the yard.
Out stepped the evening lecturer.
Surveying the damage, he turned to Williams and said:
‘Williams, I know you’re a poor student, but what I didn’t know is that you’re an even worse driver’.
Williams did not miss the evening class. In fact, he learned more that night than he intended.
Far and Wide
To help colleges foster an interest in attracting overseas students, an organisation led by participating colleges created CollegeWales. Its purpose was to market Welsh colleges abroad and to support administrative matters, such as fees and visas. The first group of students under this arrangement was a UEA cohort needing to learn English before moving on to a specialist engineering college in the west of England.
A few memorable events marked the six-month English language programme:
All students were surprised by the wintry weather. To keep warm, on their own initiative, they all bought the same cheap jackets from the local market and wore them like a uniform.
There was a marked increase in the sale of adult magazines from a local newsagent.
The wealthier students wanted to know how far Harrods was from the south Wales college.
They all finished the English course, ready for their engineering training with beautiful south Walian accents. As they bade farewell, in unison they said ‘tara, then see you’.
So much for learning English in a working-class town of south Wales. No other UEA students followed.
All Under Control
Most students are well-behaved, courteous, and attentive, though some often engage in their own conversations whilst the lecturer is in full flow. A typical response to this behaviour ranged from ignoring it to sometimes proffering a sarcastic comment, or, more commonly, in days long since gone, hurling a piece of chalk at offenders. If the lecturer had a reasonable aim, this usually drew the offending student’s attention, and the lesson would continue.
There was one occasion when a student in the front row, with his head bowed, was speaking softly to his neighbour. From the lecturer’s vantage point, which was an elevated laboratory-style podium at the front of the class, he was able to identify the source of the disturbance clearly. In this instance, however, the projectile at his disposal was not a piece of chalk, but the old-style wooden board duster, an implement about five inches long, one and a half inches wide and one inch thick with fibre padding on one face.
Conscious of not wanting to hurt the culprit, the lecturer gently lobbed the object in the offender’s direction. The aim was perfect and hit him on his left shoulder, leaving a cloud of white chalk dust in its wake. The onward journey of the projectile did, however, have unintended consequences; bouncing off the first student, the duster continued its journey like a heat-seeking missile and landed squarely on the forehead of an unsuspecting, innocent student sitting behind, from whom, moments later, a trickle of blood ran down to his nose. Students were far more tolerant in those days, largely because anyone who objected risked being told, quite sternly, that it was character‑building and they should be grateful for the practical demonstration.
Titch and Co
Coming into FE with the expectation of teaching 16 and 17 year-olds straight from school seems an enticing prospect. What often comes as a surprise is not their mixed ability but their physical size. Typically, there would be a range of physiques in any given class, but this particular year included ‘Titch’. Sometimes humour dictates that such a sobriquet is reserved for the largest in a group. Sixteen-year-old ‘Titch’ was indeed of substantial size, about five-foot-ten-inches and 13 stone, he was however named such because he was the smallest in his sub-group. Others included ‘Grunt’ who was of similar height but a few stone heavier, a six-foot-six-inch slender basketball player with size 14 feet, and another well over six feet being an accomplished rugby player who played flanker for his local club. Also in the group was the son of a local club cricketer, an intimidating 18-stone fast bowler who had trialled for Glamorgan; his son, whilst not of the same sporting prowess, gave no quarter in size.
But even these ‘monsters’ were dwarfed by ‘Spaceman’. A true giant amongst boys, ‘Spaceman’ was typified by his legs of tree trunk proportions, so much so that sewn into his jeans, by his mother, was a gusset about six inches wide at the crotch.
Daunting as it was for the lecturer to control such a batch of potentially troublesome students, this group proved to be amongst the most likeable you could ever hope to teach.
Let Us Talk About Tadpoles
While coal mining apprentices were at the top of the apprenticeship pile, their lack of knowledge of sperm in sexual intercourse placed them firmly at the bottom of the pile with apprentices across other industries.
Dealing with the sexual reproduction process with men-like adolescent boys is doomed to a lesson called sex education. The classroom would be full of red faces, shuffling feet and the kind of suppressed laughter that can derail a lesson in seconds.
There was a better chance that mining apprentices would learn about contraception by leaving embarrassment on the other side of the classroom door if the teacher taught with humour, diagrams, and coloured chalk.
During the 1970s, condoms were called French letters or Johnnies. This was about the extent of student’s knowledge, or at least the amount they were willing to share with the the class.
No whiteboards fifty years ago. But God bless the chalkboard and coloured chalk. A diagrammatic vagina and uterus showing sperm with wobbling tails, being the image of excited tadpoles, gave two perfect examples of the tadpoles trying desperately to avoid being poisoned by spermicide or drowning in desperation to circumvent the copper coil.
Lesson objectives achieved. Coal mining apprentices now understand three forms of contraception: condoms, spermicides, and copper coils.
The relationship of the menstrual cycle with pregnancy was as distant as the ether and back. Maybe best left until next week’s General Education lesson.
Abstinence was not on the curriculum. Not relevant to those in late adolescence!
The Man Mountain
As a team of lecturers, one section had its own resident man mountain. He stood well over six feet tall, boasted a 48‑inch chest, and, if his own hype was to be believed, tipped the scales at over 20 stone. He favoured heavy leather boots that made him sound like approaching industrial machinery. He once told the story of a visit to his doctor, who enquired, ‘how many units of alcohol do you drink in a week?’ ‘Twenty to twenty‑five’, came the reply. ‘That’s quite a lot’, said the doctor. ‘How many times a week do you drink’? His deadpan response of ‘Just the once’ left the doctor speechless and the staffroom in awe of both his capacity and his commitment.
Not long after joining the college, he asked a colleague to pop into his class and tell the students to get on with a set of tasks. One student, still learning who was who on the staff, looked up and asked with genuine curiosity:
‘Is he the big bastard with the cowboy boots?’
The colleague, keeping professional dignity for a full three seconds, relayed the message in the staffroom later that day. The resulting explosion of laughter shook the windows. Several staff agreed it was the most accurate physical description ever uttered on campus, far more precise than anything HR had managed in years, and since his business card already carried more letters than a small post office, one wag suggested it deserved pride of place on the next reprint’.
Seek and Ye Shall Find
Some lecturers are particularly adept at embracing new initiatives with enthusiasm. A large, recently merged college was preparing for yet another merger with a nearby, smaller institution. These were the early days of computerisation, and the smaller college was especially proud of the data-capture and student-tracking system they had developed.
During a presentation to his soon-to-be new Senior Management Team, the IT manager explained that his system would allow course leaders to access student data on enrolment, retention, and attainment.
He proudly introduced its acronym: FIFY - Find It For Yourself.
It was an impressive claim, and one lecturer, in particular took the idea very much to heart.
Having heard about the system, he decided to adapt the approach for his own teaching. At the start of each lecture, he would give the class a research task and send them off to the library; his own enthusiastic but misguided interpretation of the directed study approach the VP Curriculum was keen to promote.
His staffroom colleagues, on hearing of his adoption of FIFY, were distinctly unimpressed. They quickly offered their own, rather more cynical rebrand: FOFO - F*** Off and Find Out.
Springtime Dupes
Lecturers are always looking for ways to make their classes memorable. Some succeed. Others create legends.
One lecturer taught critical path analysis. All went well, and the class understood the use of nodes, dummy activities, float and resource planning. Finally, the lecturer introduced a new concept: frail loops, which he explained, with great seriousness, could be used to integrate recurring activities into a programme of work.
Throughout the lesson, the students worked through several examples and made many notes to supplement the lecture. It was only at the end of the session that the lecturer reminded the students of the date and that, in fact, ‘frail loops’ is an anagram. The date was 1st April. It took a while, but it was worth it, as each student slowly solved the anagram April Fools. Time will only tell if the students remember the ruse, or if some still believe that frail loops are indeed a tool used in critical path analysis.
On another occasion, during a lecture on financial procedures, one lecturer spent some time explaining the word contango to describe a situation when the forward price of a futures contract is higher than the spot price. A second word explained was ‘pillofoar’ – a term used when expecting the firm tendering for work to fix their price for the duration of the contract. It wasn’t until the end of the lecture that the reveal happened, once again pointing out that ‘pillofoar’ was in fact an anagram relating to the first of April. The teller of this tale was a student. It says a lot, that nearly 50 years on the word ‘pillofoar’ stays in the memory when so many other far more important terms are long forgotten.
Jargon, Slang and Paste
Students do not always get the jargon when studying a new field. There was one occasion when the question in a test of ‘What is a rising butt?’ the expected response of a hinge that lifts a door to make clearance for the floor covering was not forthcoming. The student in question, obviously more familiar with the combative side of life, declared that it was a situation whereby ‘when getting up from a sitting position, you head someone on the chin’.
Sometimes students manage to outwit even the lecturer. On one occasion, a lecturer admitted to the group that he didn’t know a particular aspect of the course and joked that he was ‘treated like a mushroom and kept in the dark’. One bright spark at once replied, ‘really sir, I didn’t think you were a fun guy’.
The lecturer regretted the comment instantly. The student did not.
The onset of modern technologies, whilst providing obvious research advantages, does have its downside. Students have become experts in ‘cut and paste’, with little or no regard for plagiarism, and are happy to pass off any old publication, often American, as their own.
Spellcheck should be another benefit for the correct presentation of the written word but, all too often, students fail to review their work before submitting. One notable example was a female student who prepared a piece on site investigation, which included a description of boreholes. Unfortunately, the spellcheck not recognising the technical term decided that ‘brothel’ should be the correct spelling. A soft embarrassing blush confirmed it was incorrect and she had not intended to discuss the hospitality sector.
Nothing Like Being Prepared
All good lectures require thorough preparation, and many are supported by suitable props that clearly explain the point being made. In the days before PowerPoint, one lecturer was giving a lesson on airflow, and particularly Bernoulli’s principle, which states that fluids, including gases, in an area moving faster than the surrounding area have lower pressure. The classic demonstration is to hold a narrow piece of paper in front of the mouth and blow across the top of the paper as it hangs down in front of the lips. This creates an area of faster-moving air. The slower-moving air under the paper now has higher pressure, thus pushing the paper up towards the area of lower pressure.
All went well, and the lecturer was pleased with his explanation until one mature student remarked, ‘b***** me, that explains what happens when my missus blows on my old boy’.
The demonstration ended there. Some learning outcomes are best left unassessed.
The Lock In
During the old BTEC days, it was common to set ‘phase tests’ as a means of ongoing assessment. It was, however, not uncommon for students to fail these tests and be allowed to resit them in the evening. On one occasion, only one student had to retake the test.
It was arranged for the student to come into college on a separate evening to do so whilst the lecturer was taking another class. The student arrived at the appointed time, and to ensure privacy and prevent cheating, the lecturer decided to ask the student to take the test in a storeroom at the back of the class. This he willingly agreed to.
However, at the end of the lesson, when it was time to go home, the lecturer locked the storeroom, forgetting that the student was in there. It was only when he was at home, some time later, that he remembered the locked-in student and returned quickly to free the ‘prisoner’. Tempted though he was, the lecturer did not penalise the student for overrunning the allotted time for the test!
A Collection of Classroom Clangers
Further education has always prided itself on being a broad church, but even by its own generous standards there were days when the staff wondered whether they were running a college or a travelling circus.
Take, for instance, the lecturer who returned from long‑term sick leave to discover that his adult students had arranged a birthday surprise. They had pooled their resources, exercised their democratic rights, and booked, of all things, a female stripogram. She arrived mid‑lesson, full of enthusiasm and tassels, only to find the poor man frozen behind his desk like a rabbit in the headlights. The class, meanwhile, behaved as if this were a perfectly normal pedagogical intervention. One student even asked whether this counted towards their key skills.
Then there was the plumbing lecturer whose behaviour management strategy owed more to medieval deterrence than modern pedagogy. He wandered the workshop swinging a lead bashing lump hammer with the casual ease of a man carrying a baguette. Disruptive students occasionally received what he called a ‘gentle reminder’ to the nether regions, light enough not to cause injury, firm enough to encourage reflection. Estyn never saw this, of course. They always arrived on his best‑behaved days when he limited himself to tapping radiators.
And who could forget the lunchtime incident above the staffroom, when a group of students were making such a racket that a lecturer marched upstairs to investigate. On opening the door, he discovered four lads trying their own amateur re‑enactment of the ancient punishment of quartering, using an unwilling ‘volunteer’ who was clearly not enjoying the attention much. The lecturer, unimpressed, declared that ‘the playground is outside,’ then, perhaps, carried away by the moment, strode up to the largest student, and delivered a swift backhand to the cheek. The room fell silent. The student blinked, considered his options, and then announced, ‘Fair enough, sir,’ as if this were all part of the timetable.
Looking back, these encounters were not so much isolated clangers as a kind of unofficial curriculum: Behavioural Psychology Through Chaos. They also served as a reminder that, in further education, no matter how many policies, procedures, and laminated posters one might produce, the students would always find new and creative ways to test the limits of human patience.
Still, the staff took comfort in one thing: whatever happened, however bizarre the day became, at least none of it was boring. And in FE, that counted as a win.
Episode 1: Setting the Scene |
