Memories of a Violent Teacher
Posted on Saturday, November 10, 2007Murray was a distant and rather slow lad who arrived into our fourth class. We were nine. He wore a black, cut-down suit. His shaven head always hung down, and he looked up at you from under his eyebrows. I don’t know what he had witnessed in his life, but though he was only nine like the rest of us, he had a grown-up’s frown. Somehow, through that strange bush telegraph that schoolchildren operate, we all learned within hours that Murray had no father. Murray’s father was dead.
Marrinan the teacher was an arsehole who used to hit us with a wooden coat-hanger. He hit me once for not drawing a map of Ireland exactly right. He wasn’t very old, though — perhaps still in his twenties — and he had a stock of interesting facts about scientific discoveries and Greek mythology. I learned a lot from him, because I was a quick learner, and I must admit that he told us many fascinating things when he didn’t have the urge to attack us us violently.
I was lucky: I only got the usual arbitrary, unfair slappings. Marrinan never singled me out for the special kind of bullying some kids received, though it did annoy him that I never showed any reaction when he hit me, and he would occasionally hit me a little harder. I wouldn’t show the shit-bag he was hurting me.
Poor Murray, on the other hand, was not smart, or quick, or alert. He didn’t have a circle of friends, and most importantly, he didn’t carry the threat of some father in the background who might come to the school and smash the bully’s face in if he went too far.
One day, Marrinan drew a diagram of the solar system on the blackboard.
Murray, come up here and show me the Sun.
Murray looked up at Marrinan from under his eyebrows. Marrinan caught Murray by the ears and slammed the back of his shaven skull against the blackboard where the Sun was drawn.
Now, Murray. Show us where the Sun is.
Murray said nothing, so Marrinan picked him up again by the ears and pounded the back of his head against the blackboard, five or six times.
Show me the sun
Thud!
Show me
Thud!
Where
Thud!
The
Thud!
Sun
Thud!
Is!!
We all saw that, and there wasn’t a single damn thing we nine-year-olds could do about it. Whatever about poor Murray, it certainly brutalised me, and it brutalised all the other young boys in the classroom.
Murray didn’t come back after the Christmas break.
It was savagery.
Murray’s name has been changed to protect the poor devil, but Marrinan’s has not. He wasn’t a Christian Brother, and he didn’t sexually abuse anyone. He was just a piece of shit who made a habit of terrifying small people, and I’d face him down now if I ever met him. I wouldn’t actually hit him, though: that would give him the satisfaction of claiming he was assaulted.
He was bigger than me in those days, the cowardly prick, but I expect things are different now, and I’d have no problem confronting the ignorant bastard, if he’d be kind enough to make himself known to me. However, as he preferred beating children, I imagine he wouldn’t have the guts to face a grown man.
I’d have no problem going into court and testifying this under oath. No doubt I’d be able to call as witnesses some of the forty other people who saw what he did.
The prick.
Note: this is a re-issue of a piece I wrote over a year ago. Forgive me if you’ve read it before, but I had a smaller readership at that time, and I think this sort of story needs to be put out there.
Stumble it!
November 11th, 2007
That name rings a bell, I’m pretty sure this guy may have been working in CBS Sexton St, at least up to a few years ago, I left the place in the 90’s and he wasn’t there then but I remember his name being mentioned after. Maybe not as a teacher but in some role.
(I might be wrong)
November 11th, 2007
Oh, that poor boy. He’s probably still haunted by the abuse.
Why is it that so many teachers grow to hate and torment children? It brings to mind McCabe’s “The Dead School.”
November 11th, 2007
Cupid Stunt: I doubt he was still working there in any capacity. I think he left within a year or two of the incident I described, by which time management and pupils were of one mind in their view of him.
Medbh: I don’t know if teachers grow to hate children. This guy was pretty young when he taught us, and was probably a vicious, violent bastard from the day he took up the job.
November 11th, 2007
perhaps your re-telling will jog a memory, if not of that sick bastard, another equally as foul. perhaps some poor soul who was victimized as a child will find solace in knowing he/she wasn’t at fault and can find some help in dealing with the residual trauma.
it never ceases to amaze me how cruel people can be, just because they can
November 11th, 2007
:o poor murray :( too much of that shit has gone on for too long, not so much now, but it did!
I remember my dad telling me of a priest who was a bastart too, beating the living daylights out of him and the other kids when he was small, apparantly though when the boys in the class grew up it wasnt forgotten, and 3 of them saw him on the street years later, and beat the shit out of the fucker and left him for dead!!
I dont condone violence but they certainly deserve their come uppins!
November 11th, 2007
Human beings can be the most miserable fucking creatures sometimes. It gets you down. Poor wee fellow. I hope some cosmic justice has put him somewhere he can forget all that.
November 11th, 2007
[…] at Bock the robbers place he writes a memory about an abusive teacher to a not so bright boy in his class, its a shocking read and it jogged my memory about primary […]
November 11th, 2007
“Human beings can be the most miserable fucking creatures sometimes.”
That’s a subject close to my heart. I love animals, and get annoyed when a human is said to be “behaving like an animal”. Who invented and refined torture?
November 11th, 2007
We had a perverted Christian Brother who used to batter the shit out of one of the lads with the blackboard duster, fortunately for the lad he was thick as two short planks in the skull bone and he used to smile back at the brother as if to say more please. The same brother tried to feel up me and half the boys in my class. I don’t know what became of the bastard, I just remember the swish of the long skirted gown they used to wear as he was running after some young lad and the sweat rings under the arms turned white through the black cloth. He made plenty lads lives miserable.
November 11th, 2007
I remember being punished for being ‘thick’, and I wasn’t particularly thick, just hadn’t always grasped whatever was going on, probably due to bad teaching.
I was caned for cocking up my Latin, caned for mathematics, terrified of the nuns (some of them anyway), AND I was a good girl, always polite, obedient, always did my homework and spent half the school days praying.
This is a bit of a rant, your story is awful, mine was just ‘normal’.
November 11th, 2007
Yes, I remember reading it, Bock. It’s no less shocking now for the re-telling, and you’re right to keep on telling and telling it.
It’s no wonder people HATE teachers. That saddens me, because some are good. I think too many are pushed into teachers as a “safe, pensionable job”, and the watchdogs - inspectorate, management, principals, other teachers, parents and pupils just don’t deal with the mad and the bad. The system we have makes it a bit impossible…
I witnessed very little violence at school (in the UK) and odd slap, but I was terrified of the spectacle. I think I would have fainted clean away if I had been present at your story, and I’m not joking. My hisband tells horrific tales of his schooling - a huge male teacher punching a third class girl in the nose and breaking it, no-one ever said a word to him. Another madman kicking and punching a 12 year old out of a glass window… this chap is now teaching our own children and he’s a reformed man. My kids really like him!!! Different times now, he wouldn’t dare touch a child of mine, I promise. Long ago though ( not so long!!) our parents were as scared and as downtrodden as their poor children, and some were nearly as violent as the teachers. Different times, but that’s no excuse, NO EXCUSE.
Keep up the good work, Bock.
November 11th, 2007
God, my spelling is very bad this morning! Sorry - late night!
November 11th, 2007
Ah, fond memories of “De Akadamy of Fine Arts and Lernin”, that shithole CBS Sexton’s Street, left it in 1970, have not been back since, and, no intention of ever returning. Fond memories of 2 teachers, Jim Liddane and Eric Lynch, the rest are best forgotten, I just get too angry.
November 11th, 2007
Ah yes - the good old days! - I remember a teacher every bit as sadistic as the shit you describe! And incidentally he wasn’t a religious but he was religiously brutal. Teaching, like the church, attracts these disfunctional human beings. It is sad that the few destroy the reputation of the many but then the many should stand up and be counted and not leave children to bear the brunt and call the perpetrators to task. Sadly this message has still not filtered through. How many colleagues teachers/priests have shopped their abusive co-workers? I suspect not too many. As one who got more than a few clatters in his time I appreciate you raising this subject again Bock.
November 11th, 2007
I hope murray is okay and has a good life, I would like to meet one or two teachers now that I am an adult, not because they beat me, but the humiliation the caused so many students who were weak at certain subjects.
November 12th, 2007
Many of the nuns in my school were just as vicious, only they focused all their physical abuse on the boys. I only knew them to beat up on one girl, and she was poor like most of us, but not one bit bright.
November 12th, 2007
Yeah Bock,
The first time you wrote this brought back some haunting memories which I had laid aside deliberately and drawn a line over, however in my case it was of savage beatings (physical abuse only) one of an acquaintance of both of ours, which we have discussed at length.
You even said to me one night that I was very angry about it all, a fact which I hadn’t even realised myself until it was put to me in your usual blunt fashion. However it was not lay teachers but Two Bloody Brothers, just two, at different times, who tainted the name and memory of the rest of them who were great and did some fine work.
Both had passed on before I finished in the so-called academy mentioned above, into the nether regions of whatever circle of hell and misery awaits bastards like them, a pity, because I would like to confront them now, and let them know what they actually wrought in the name of a so-called Christian god… and show one of them the hairs and pieces of scalp left behind on a coat hangar on a wall from a young fifteen year old kid.
He was saved (His life was saved) by a Lay teacher in the room next door. There’s a Guy I’d like to meet again for exactly the opposite reason, to shake his hand and have a drink with. I’m told he jacked in a few years later and became a contractor in the states.
The legacy of damage fuckers like them left behind taints a lot of us still, even though we might not realise it until something like this post slaps us in the face with it, and the anger comes again….
November 12th, 2007
There was a git like that where I went to school, I got away too, but one kid got clocked by a rather solid leather bound bible by the git. I will say that one difference was this git was a religious zealot and reacted poorly to any slight to the church, whereas your teacher was just a prick who knew he couldn’t do his job and took it out on others. My view is life is hard enough as it is when you get to be an adult, everyone should be entitled to have some joy, imagination and innocence as a kid without twisted self hating fucks like that bloke screwing it up for them.
November 12th, 2007
And we were forced to go back into the care of these butchers, by our parents who didn’t believe us or did, and didn’t know what to do. Shame on these bastards, shame, shame. No outing can ever heal the wounds inflicted by these malignant abusive animals, these monstrous acts of violence perpetrated on defenceless children. That the Marrinans and Vaughens should come back as shy boys from poor families ( it never happened to rich kids ), and be forced to meet themselves and be disfigured and marked by these cunts. An eye for an eye.
November 12th, 2007
Unfortunately, this is not a one-off as the same happened to a kid in my class in the same school. This time around it was a gobshite called [name removed by moderator] (Lay teacher not brother) who fostered both fear & ‘grassing’ (Informing). To cut a horrible story short it involved one poor fucker being kicked around the classroom & being hung out by his feet from a first storey window.
In fairness to the place he did disappear from the place but only after two weeks or so.
November 13th, 2007
Anyone remember Brother McCullough “You wreeeetched creatur”.. he was an evil shite. I cant remember but he either is dead or had a stroke. Delighted to hear that.
November 13th, 2007
There’s a lot of anger surfacing here, by the look of it.
November 25th, 2007
Hi Bock
Poor Murray. It’s incredible the torture those bastards inflicted on little kids. I endured five years of verbal abuse from a twat called Clifford in a school in Caherdavin when I was a teenager. he basically made out I was some kind of prostitute, the pervert. I still think he is teaching.
Much, much worse is the story of my good friend Peter who was sexually abused by a brother/priest at the age of 10. His life was riddled with shame and emotional torture until he took his own life last year. Poor Pete was the most beautiful man you could ever hope to meet. The fucker who did is is still working and being protected by the church. Here’s to Pete with love. Yes you’re right Bock, a lot of anger.
Val
November 25th, 2007
Good on you Val. Write about it, why don’t you? Spread the word.
August 8th, 2008
I have so much anger towards those fuckers it seems no amount of rage or violence I could inflict on them would ease my pain. Only to see them dead by my own hands
October 30th, 2008
In the village near where i grew up there was a sadistic bastard school master. He managed to terrify generation after generation of children. He beat up on the children of ex students still too afraid to stand up to the old master. One man was so traumatised by his experience in the primary school that he would cross the street rather than pass in front of the mastes house. This was when he was in his late twenties. He committed suicide in the end.
October 31st, 2008
Was in the last class of kids ever to attend Creagh Lane C.B.S. Man there were some sadistic cunts ‘teaching’ there! I remember being about 7 years old, late for school by about five mins, and being marched up the outside stairs to the headmaster to be ‘leathered’!! Bastard! Always had the leather up his sleeve ready for action. Can’t think of his name, but remember he was a little cunt with wavy hair. When the school closed and we were transferred to the new one, St. Sennan’s, on the Island Rd., the little wavy haired cunt came with us! Another cunt who didn’t transfer to the new school was a fucker I remember as Bro. Skelton? That might not be the correct spelling, he taught piano and accordion to kids after school hours. It was only years later that I realised why! He would have one of us on his lap while the other was doing scales, and he was , what I now realise, touching us and who knows what else I can’t remember.
I know there must have been good kind teachers, but I only remember the cunts!
My kids today love school, love their teachers, love the whole system. It’s a great consolation.
October 31st, 2008
Mapstew….i believe Bro. Skelton went on to teach in St.Kieran’s school on the roxboro road (now demolished)…he was an evil bollox as far as i remember