EX-TEFL TEACHERS DON'T MAKE GOOD SOLDIERS - PART 3

With the momentous decision to try to become an Army officer made, the eighteen-month escalator whirred into life and, for a time, I became a single-minded Sport Billy. I jogged daily, mountain biked, walked everywhere with a hefty backpack on like a total arse, gamely doggy-paddled the width of the local swimming baths - all based on Robin Eggar’s Royal Marines Fitness Course book, which allegedly duplicates the psychopathic regime employed when “beasting” potential Commandos on the inhospitable Devon moors. Of the five levels of intensity, I reached level three and decided to stay there – a man has his limits, and I have mine, too. (Incidentally, seven years on, I had to undergo back surgery to treat a herniated disc, something I still haven’t ruled out demanding MOD compensation for.)

Then it was on to Beaconsfield, the Regimental HQ of the Adjutant General’s Corps, for a mock-up of the real officer recruitment tests. We were greeted by a Colonel and his bouncy young female Captain sidekick. The former was an angular, reedy man with a post-traumatic glare that suggested he’d been not one, but several bridges too far. His manner was tart, and the suspicion grew over the following two days that he was edging ever closer to resigning his commission and emigrating in disgust at the quantum lack of decent officer material the country was capable of producing. Looking at the rabble of which I formed an integral part, I couldn’t fault his misanthropic logic. Whilst the glamorous regiments such as the Coldstream Guards and the King's Royal Hussars vacuumed up most of the decent public school candidates, our Col. was left with people like us, TEFL misfits and state school teachers with unachievable delusions of grandeur.

Comprising our inglorious company there was a five-foot policeman, a whiney harridan from the north-west, a spindly Intelligence Corps aspirant, an airbrushed aerobics teacher, a rather large young lady whom I could only assume was there to win a bet, and myself, a desperate TEFL escapologist. If I was determined to act like an officer and a gentleman and at least show some decorum, it was a resolution apparently not widely adopted by my brethren. As we were receiving the Col.’s briefing, the whiney harridan abruptly piped up, “I think I need a wee”, stunning even the camp commandant into a narrow-eyed, smouldering silence.

I was glad I’d put in the physical training. After a lavish breakfast of scrambled eggs, tea, cereals and croissants (this was getting better and better), we were ordered to get into PT gear and follow our leader on a damp stumble around the camp perimeter and down into a natural valley behind some trees. There we were put into pairs (being a TEFL teacher, this part was a cakewalk) and told to give each other a piggy-back up the slope ahead of us. I had been paired with a big-boned pit pony of a school-leaver, which was fine when I had the reins, but nearly had me lobbing the continental contents of my stomach up and over my new, Army-issue pumps when commanded to return the favour. On our way back to HQ, the large girl was found projecting her insides into the brambles, but the Col. ordered us to merely hurdle her and drive on regardless. This was the kind of tough decision Army officers have to make every day, I reflected ruefully.

One of the things that hinders any possibility of TEFL teachers making a success of themselves in a real job is the fact that we are not encouraged to hold opinions. Teacher trainers drone on endlessly about cutting down “Teacher Talking Time”, as if we are all supposed to behave like some shadowy mime in the classroom, simply “facilitating” the mumbo-jumbo that students talk to each other because they haven’t heard enough correct language to be able to express themselves in any meaningful way. Debates never involve interesting, controversial opinions for fear of offending someone, so we end up discussing inane, plastic subjects nobody has anything to say about whatsoever that a literate child hasn’t already pondered and dismissed as inherently without significance.

So when we sat in a group and were asked by the bouncy Captain to discuss America’s influence in the world, I found myself deferring politely to everyone else’s opinion, instead of shouting down my contemporaries with confident assertions that we should “demand UN sanctions, and definitely not rule out the military option.” If I was to sail through the Regular Commissions Board, I was going to have to ramp up my assertiveness by several warp factors.

PART FOUR TO FOLLOW SHORTLY...