My song today is ‘To Sir with Love’. This was the theme song from James Clavell’s 1967 film, ‘To Sir with Love’. The song was performed by a young Lulu and was written by Don Black and Mark London (husband of Lulu's long-time manager Marion Massey). The song was produced by Mickie Most and reached Number 1 in the United States record charts, besides becoming the bestselling song of 1967 in the US.
In October 1967, the song reached Number 1 on the ‘Billboard Hot 100’ chart, where it remained for five weeks. The single also ranked Number 1 in ‘Billboard’s year-end Chart’.
Canada's ‘RPM Magazine’ put the song at Number 2 for the year 1967. ‘To Sir with Love’ did not chart in the UK, as it appeared only as a B-side to ‘Let's Pretend’ (released in the UK on 23 June 1967), and which reached Number 11 on the UK Single’s Chart’.
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I will always remember seeing the film of the same name and being instantly in love with this song. There are not many songs that form the theme of a film in which the song-lines perfectly fit what is being watched on the big film screen, but this song does that.
I know that it was a more common schoolboy pastime from the 1980s onwards for pupils of a young age to develop a crush on their dolly-looking female teachers. With the short-skirted female fashion of the 1960s, I can well imagine the daydreams of a young teenager, taking History in the classroom, trying to keep his mind on the image of the Great Chinese Wall that seemed to stretch from the ground to the high heavens, as his eyes became fixated on the beautiful legs of his young teacher in her mini dress at the front of the class. I have no doubt that young girls in their teens also had crushes on some of their more handsome male teachers too.
I frequently regretted going to school twenty years earlier. My female teachers were more like old battle axes with grey hair that was knotted with razor-blade ribbon and bound tightly in a circle of anger around their crowns. They wore long dresses of drab colour and non-see-through heavy texture befitting a 55-year old-maid who still lived at home with her aging widowed mother and their two cats called Abigail and Gertrude.
I have personally come across several teachers as a Probation Officer in Huddersfield between 1970-95 (both male and female) who, for whatever reason, entered a sexual relationship with their teenage pupils. I have known of three or four relationships between teacher and pupil which at best (where the school pupil was 16 years or older and the relationship was consensual) resulted in the loss of the teacher’s job. In cases where the pupil was younger than 16 years old, no consent is ever considered by law to be possible and the imposition of a prison sentence on the teacher invariably follows. I have even known an imprisoned teacher of a 15-year-old girl who proclaimed love for her teacher and proceeds to marry him after his prison release and after her age of being able to marry him arrived.
I have also known of teachers who physically sexually abused children of ten, eleven and twelve, and who deservedly got imprisoned for many years. I am aware that even if the pupil is a university graduate and willingly consents to a sexual relationship with their tutor or lecturer, that an abuse of power and position is often considered to be behind the commencement of the relationship.
Occasionally though, university relationships between a thirty-five-year-old lecturer and a twenty-year-old young woman have gone on to prosper. I knew of one such relationship between an Ofsted Inspector of schools who met his wife while he was a university lecturer and the couple went on to marry despite their 15-year-age discrepancy. And despite losing his lecturing post when their sexual relationship first became known, it did not stop him rising to one of the highest educational positions in the land fifteen years after the couple married.
Love and peace Bill xxx