'Careers as beauticians were considered excellent because you got free make-up'

IN THE early 1960s, before Maeve Binchy began writing, she was a teacher at various secondary schools in Dublin. She gave lessons in history, religion, French and Latin, among other subjects.

In her mid-twenties, as she moved into what was to be her new career, she practised what she later advised other budding writers to consider; she wrote what she knew.

She drew on the lessons she had gleaned from her time at the head of a classroom.

In one of her earliest articles, “Parents and teachers”, published on November 9th, 1964, she wrote in defence of teachers and advocated parent-teacher associations.

She was particularly critical of fathers who might “sow the seeds of doubt in the child’s mind about the competence of his teachers”.

“To weaken potential enthusiasm by lessening a child’s respect for his teacher is to check his progress in a manner that can never be undone,” she warned.

She was prepared to acknowledge that teachers might have flaws, and in a second article noted some teachers might “after a day of talking down to children” find it was “genuinely difficult to re-adjust to normal adult conversation” with children’s parents.

She was strong on the importance of mutual respect.

“However hard it may be, parents and teachers must cooperate. The child is at stake,” she wrote.

After articles about holidays, she returned to her favourite subject on April 30th, 1968. In a piece entitled “Career women”, she spoke of her alarm at the “cloud cuckoo land” opinions of pupils.

“They seemed to live in a world where jobs were dull but being a doctor’s receptionist was full of promise; doctors are all apparently young, single, lean-jawed and charming.”

“Careers as beauticians were considered excellent because you were kept up to scratch yourself and you got free make-up.”

While her pupils decried the idea of proper vocational guidance, they thought schools should be co-educational so they didn’t “waste time and effort getting to know boys” when they should really have been “choosing a husband”.

“We won’t be having another careers discussion for some time,” she concluded.

By 1970, teachers were coming in for greater criticism when the paper ran a writing competition on the theme of “A teacher’s day”. There were 43 entries, she wrote, and most were “really bad”.

“Half of them were simply unreadable because they were written in biro on pages obviously torn from the children’s exercise books and the other half were full of terrible phrases about opening up young minds and golden gifts of knowledge.”

She was at her best, though, when observing pupils, which she did with affection and humour.

In “The school outing”, published on July 27th, 1968, she described taking a class on a trip to Wales where a visit to Caernarvon Castle would be outweighed by “the lure of the foreign Woolworths and the alien sweets”.

“Exploring the boat took most of the first hour, settling on a place for the mammoth eating of sandwiches brought us up to about 2 o’clock. Then there was an hour of everyone rubbing themselves with Nivea cream. After this the Welsh coast was sighted . . . ”

The trip, she told readers, was a great success. As was the article.