Is this man too hot to be a teacher?
|
Version 0 of 1. Even as an adult woman, I still feel a tiny bit giddy when I think about the man who used to make me draw Tippex hearts on my pencil case. He was tall, greying at the temples and had a moustache so impressive that I occasionally wondered whether he was standing in front of a screen smeared with a perfectly square bit of black dirt, like Father Ted did. He taught history by shouting it at us – I can still give a play-by-play account of everything that happened at the Battle of Messines thanks to his fact-focused approach. He was – we thought – in his late 40s, and was rumoured to have been married anywhere between two and seven times. He was the class heartthrob. But then, I went to an all girls school, and he was the only male most of us saw with any regularity. You could have drawn a beard on a balloon, pushed it through the window and we would have screamed louder than the audience at a One Direction concert. The only effective way to get Mr History's attention involved writing an A* essay on the Bay of Pigs Based on what Mr History (not his real name) had to put up with, I feel deeply sorry for poor Pietro Boselli. The maths teacher is a part-time model, and ever since his students discovered his other career and posted the evidence (topless Abercrombie & Fitch shots) on Instagram, his UCL lectures have been besieged by people more interested in his muscles than mechanical engineering. Boselli told the Times: “I thought they were coming to my lessons because they wanted to learn something. Then I saw people taking sneaky pictures of me and I’d be, like, why are you taking pictures? I’ve prepared this lesson for you and you don’t care. I hope you’re taking pictures of the whiteboard.” A male friend who started teaching geography at an all girls school told me his experience was slightly similar. He’s no underwear model, but he was a bit taken aback by the number of crushes he had inspired. When he started the job, he was trained in what to expect and how to deal with it, and laughed it off until he spotted scribbled, hopeful hearts on students’ homework. He described the situation to me as “legally terrifying, at best” – he wanted to be a friendly, approachable teacher, but hated the idea of causing any lovesick students emotional damage. Eventually he had to ask his girlfriend to give him regular lifts to work, in order to make it clear that he was completely unavailable. Related: Lessons in life that online dating taught me | Daisy Buchanan As a teenage girl, I know that the most comforting aspect of my crush on Mr History was that it was completely one-sided. Rolling up my skirt and putting on a bit of contraband eyeliner wouldn’t have helped my cause at all. The only effective way to get his attention involved writing an A* essay on the Bay of Pigs. But if he belonged on a billboard, and not the Mastermind chair, it would probably have been much harder to get him out of my head, and for him to get facts in it. I suspect that even the smartest, most diligent student out there would have trouble concentrating on what their teacher was saying if they had seen his nipples. I’m sure Boselli is hoping that his biceps can do a bit of good and inspire a passion for mathematics, but unless I shut my eyes throughout, I don’t think I’d be capable of writing my own name after one of his lessons. I have no doubt that he’s a talented educator, and judging someone’s abilities on their looks is never OK, even if “you’re too hot for maths” might, in some circles, sound like a compliment. But given that female students will find an excuse to fancy their teacher even if he looks a little bit like Winston Churchill, putting a toned, topless model at the front of the classroom is asking for trouble, or at the very least a “See me”. |