The best teachers make you fall in love with a subject

My brother’s Classics teacher Mr Maynard had a pet rock called Lithos (Greek for stone); his teaching methods included ‘subliminal learning’ sessions, during which he’d walk around the room conjugating verbs in a soft voice while everyone else suppressed giggles. He was also fond of a physical demonstration, hurling himself across the room with no warning when describing how Aegeus had thrown himself into the sea. As a result, most of his class at school chose Latin or Greek for A-level.

Another of my brothers is surprisingly knowledgeable about plant virology because he was taught by a man who threw pot plants at people when they weren’t listening and who made his students chew diseased tobacco to demonstrate the point that viruses cannot be transmitted from plants to humans.
I learned maths from Mr Harrison, whose motto was ‘tell ’em a story, teach ’em maths’. I don’t remember him doing anything but regaling us with tales of his very short professional football career, but somehow, by stealth, he turned us into pretty competent mathematicians.

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Teaching ought to be a profession filled with mavericks and optimists, with people who adore their subject and are bored by the trivial, people who can deploy wit, cunning and showmanship to lure children into learning maths or Latin.