Article | Published in The TES on 10 October 2007 | By: Catherine Paver
'Assembly today is about teamwork. Your teachers work as a team…’
I wonder if the Head really believes that. Every now and again somebody says it, but I don’t think it’s true. Teaching isn’t teamwork.
You survive on your own wits in the classroom.
Then at break you try to reach the biscuit tin while there’s still something in it besides a nice smell. 'This famous story about teamwork is called Chopsticks.' Noooo! Not this story again. 'Hell is a table spread with delicious food. Yet everyone sitting around it is starving. They have been given chopsticks four feet long, so they cannot reach the food...'
Come off it. You mean not one of them said, 'What the hell - why don't we just get up and eat with our hands?'
I know it's a parable, but they really haven't thought this through. People who go to hell tend to be good at breaking things. Would they just sit there obediently starving to death? Ooh, I'm so hungry but my chopsticks are too long.
Better do some more sitting. No! Let's break the bloody things in half! Who cares if they've got 'PROPERTY OF GOD' stamped on them. We're in hell – what more can they do to us? 'Heaven has the same table spread with lovely food. The people have the same four-foot chopsticks.
But here everyone feeds each other, carrying food to the mouth of the person sitting opposite them. In heaven, everyone realises...' Yeah, yeah, teamwork. Well, I think heaven sounds crap. I don't want to spend eternity getting stuff I don't like shoved in my face by some dopey saint.
Look, you've sat opposite me since the last ice age but you still think I like spam!
Then there's the angel feeding everyone cheese slices that have gone curly at the edges. Hey, you harp-twanging cretin!
Haven't you noticed this stuff is 12 billion years past its sell-by date? The seating plan in heaven would be critical. I wouldn't want Sandra Fayde opposite me. That new teaching assistant is so useless that whoever's opposite her would starve to death. The trouble with Miss Fayde is that as soon as you need her, she disappears.
Melinda Sleam would somehow get the best seat: between the angel with the wine list and God. Jennifer Boney would be near the Jammie Dodgers and she'd biff any angel who told her to use chopsticks.
The worst thing about heaven is that you have to be nice to people you can't stand.
It's like the staff dining tables – for ever. Even if you're opposite someone who was a total git to you on Earth you still have to give them the best piece of steak. In hell, at last you can breathe flames of honest loathing at people you hate. Same food, same chairs, but you can sit with your own evil mates. And have great fondues.
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