I mentioned elsewhere my first English Literature teacher at high school around 1985.
He was definitely a hippy type but a very good teacher – he would often show interesting video documentaries to the class, and was more like a European teacher, he would encourage us to call him by his first name (not normal in UK schools) and was very progressive in his views. Everyone liked him and even those who made mischief would rarely do so in his class.
In those days VHS video tape was used, the big colour TV sets used in school classrooms were expensive (they only had about 5 for a very large school with 1500 students), these sets were shared between the arts and science blocks. They were either based on a British TV set or a Scandinavian model (posher schools got the ones from DK/SE) and had all sorts of connections not commonly found in that era (SCART connector was not yet invented) and a switching panel (the set could be used as a normal TV, or a monitor to play back video tapes or even to relay its signal to another set at the end of a long coax cable (for big groups).
The school did have an AV technician but she was a petite young woman in her late 20s/30s, TV sets then were very heavy (even on trolleys) so the janitor would be given the task of bringing the set to a classroom.
Very often the switching panel and/or the connection leads had often been changed by the science teachers and not returned to normal operation, so the English teacher would find the tape was playing but the screen blank or just showing noise and would get confused by all the buttons and switches (some of which were in odd places including also on the video recorder). He knew I had an interest in AV/multimedia, thus I often managed to get extensions on homework (and sometimes blatantly not do it at all some weeks) for getting the TV working correctly, he knew I could do good work and was also very aware of Oriental culture and that schoolkids of my ancestry are put under enough pressure as it is by their parents.
he later left high school teaching and now teaches some martial arts (the ones where you eat good food and exercise but don’t do violent stuff), and in the late 80s went to China (which wasn’t that easy to do due to Cold War) and became the very first white man to get the title of sifu for these martial arts.
He still teaches them today and travels between China and SW England, I will email him the pics of the housing co-op and the community radio station (he realised wanted to do these things even then but it wasn’t possible in England) and it is probably because of his teaching that I am able to do many things today both at work and for hobbies.
