Banning ‘sir’ and ‘miss’? Schools aren’t a lab for your social experiments

I remember when I was a kid I really wanted to be a teacher. This was in primary school, mind you, when teachers were the most powerful people on the planet; beings of pure light and energy who exercised ultimate control over my tiny little world.

Getting to high school quickly disabused me of that notion. Between 2001 and 2006 – the years I attended – my high school was consistently ranked as the worst performing school in the UK, and teachers went from being our social betters to the unfortunate targets of our working-class teenage ire. We terrorised them, routinely bringing them to tears in the classroom and causing several to leave the profession altogether.

But we still called them “Sir” and “Miss”; because as terrible as we were, we knew there were some lines you just don’t cross.

For one school in central London, however, all bets seem to be off, as the school’s executive principal James Handscombe has announced that teachers will now be referred to by their surnames (as in “Mr Coogan”) instead of the arguably more direct “Sir” or “Miss”. His reasoning for this is that those terms are too formal, and help to reinforce certain status and gender roles which are quickly becoming outdated in the 21^st century.

Handscombe posted a video of the assembly in which he announced the edict on Twitter, where it drew the expected mixed reactions, though did also garner a fair amount of support from female teachers who agreed with Handscombe’s assertion that “Miss” is somewhat infantilising.

At various points in my career, I’ve taught the gamut from primary school to postgrad. If I’m being honest, I preferred teaching sixth form onwards, in part because that’s usually the point at which convention changes and students are free to drop the pretence of “Sir” and “Miss” and finally open the forbidden door on first name usage.

By that age, it really does help to foster a sense of mutual respect. After all, that’s the age at which students are electing to continue their education voluntarily; relaxing the rules a little helps to create the impression that they’re adults now, making conscious choices, rather than vassals of the state who are forced out of bed every morning against their will.

I also briefly taught at a university in the US. Their graduate system is a little different to ours, where they don’t just specialise in one particular subject but also have to take a few mandatory classes like Math and PE (when I found out about that second one, I audibly gasped). As such, it’s like an extension of high school for them in a lot of ways, with one of the key differences being that change in address between student and teacher. Every time they do it, you can tell they feel like they’re violating some taboo. It’s an interesting dynamic, and shows the power those kinds of formalities hold.

In an ideal world, that would be the case for younger children as well. Teaching at the secondary school level, I’d always feel a little bit weird when kids called me “Sir”. Handscome hits the nail on the head when he says the word calls to mind something a little too grand, like an Arthurian knight. It’s a weird mode of address to use for somebody whose most noble achievement is pointing out all the animal imagery in Of Mice and Men.

But in this decidedly un-ideal world – the world of climate change and Twitter bullies – children are, for the most part, feral little monsters who are just searching for an excuse to band together like a gang from The Warriors and wreak havoc across the Coney Island that is my English classroom. Formalities like “Sir” and “Miss” are a thin blue line between respect and chaos. Sure, they’re the equivalent of a poppadom trying to stop a bowling ball, but they’re better than nothing.

I remember once, during my PGCE, I addressed a teacher who was sitting in to observe my lesson by his first name (since that’s how I knew him). It was like throwing a live grenade into the classroom. Total pandemonium. I don’t think I’d have gotten a more violent reaction if I’d said a swear word, or told everybody how Breaking Bad ended (I did my PGCE in the early 2010s).

Do you remember the first time you saw one of your teachers outside of school when you were a kid? Like, you’d be shopping with your mum and you’d see Mrs Morrison at Tesco in a band t-shirt with her hair down? It’s world-shattering. It’s like finding out the tooth fairy isn’t real.

That’s because a lot of a teacher’s authority comes from an air of mystique. We don’t know their names, we don’t know about their personal lives. They’re abstract entities that command respect. Certain modes of address help to reinforce that aura – and contribute in some small way to their ability to administer discipline in the classroom.

Handscombe’s proposal is the kind of thing that sounds progressive on the surface, but doesn’t really have that much depth to it. It’s like banning school uniforms: sure, let the kids express themselves, but what happens when some of them can’t afford nice shoes or name-brand clothes? It’s a way of staying neutral in an environment that tends to be fairly volatile and highly strung.

It will be interesting to see how this new initiative develops, but I have my doubts about it. Regardless of how it turns out, I don’t love the idea of using the classroom as a testing ground for some half-baked ideology that only sounds viable on a surface level. The fact is, schools are all different. Some require a firmer hand than others. Even if this particular case – trialed in a selective school for high achievers – is a success, I’d hate for it to become the norm in places like the one I grew up in.

Apparently, Handscombe is a fan of Taylor Swift, peppering references to her music throughout his book A School Built On Ethos, and even including her song lyrics in the assembly where he announced the change. In that case, I’ll put this next part in words he might understand: if you find that this experiment blows up in your face, then hi, it’s you. You’re the problem, it’s you.