Now, where did that come from?

Where did she come from?

I experienced another unusually vivid and memorable dream at the start of the week (I've had a bit of a run of them just lately).

As in the last one, denial of age and decay (and dissatisfaction with China?) was probably a large impetus: I once again found myself winding the clock back some 18 or 20 years, to when I was still in my twenties.

I was, in fact, back in the period of my life when I was a schoolteacher, my first job after university (that might have been in my mind, I suppose, because I'd recently mentioned it to a friend who's just started teaching high school in America). The school was understood to be the one where I had actually taught - although, in that devil-may-care way of dreams, its layout was nothing like that school; and none of the staff or pupils seemed to be the same. It was an entirely imaginary recreation of what my teaching experience might have been like.

Also, curiously, I was aware that I was just returning to the school after a year or two away. I'd had to quit that job abruptly because of a health crisis. I had half-heartedly considered trying to return there when I got better, but I don't think that was ever likely to come to fruition (my sudden departure was harshly judged by staff and students alike; I learned from ex-pupils I subsequently met in Oxford and London that there was a prevalent rumour I had AIDS). I suppose there must have been some wistfulness in me to return there; or at least to undo, to erase the horrific period of my illness. Over the next few years, I dreamt so often of having returned to the job after a year that I almost began to believe it must indeed have happened. (And in these early dreams, the school and its personnel were always accurately detailed, completely lifelike - unlike this most recent one.)

The dream seemed to start off as a wrestling with the question of whether or not I might return to the teaching life. I think I was not fully recovered from my ill health, and somehow only provisionally committed to a trial term, to see if I could yet cope with the workload again. It was the first day of term, so it was really a bit difficult to back out - but I did seem to be undecided, on the brink of succumbing to cold feet.

But then the dream suddenly branched off in an entirely unexpected direction - a rather pleasantly erotic direction. I found I was feeling a strong attraction to one of the older girls. She was not really very beautiful, but she had a poise and an intelligence that I found fascinating. However, I have always been sternly moralistic about the inappropriateness of romantic liaisons between teachers and students, and staunchly resisted these feelings. Well, I always have done so in real life. In the dream, my ethics proved much less robust. When the girl made it clear that she reciprocated my interest in her, I couldn't resist the temptation for long, and we were soon indulging in a furtive snog. Very nice it was, too.

That was about it for the dream. I soon awoke in a ferment of shame and self-loathing.

I would never have suspected it during my own school days (however, I went to a single sex school), but, I later learned, teacher-student liaisons are a surprisingly common phenomenon. I was startled to discover that many of my female friends at university claimed to have had such an experience, or to have had a schoolfriend who had. And a few years later, these same ladies mostly expressed shock and disappointment that I hadn't enjoyed such a relationship myself when I became a teacher. They joked that it was no more than an expected perk of the job. I was aghast.

I worry that it's really rather too easy to impress a young woman you're teaching - particularly in high school, and most particularly in a boarding school, where they may have a limited social life, limited access to male company other than boys of their own age (and boys tend to be much less mature at the same age; so, rather unsatisfying companions, usually), almost no access to adult males other than their teachers. Familiarity alone breeds affection: you tend to become fond of people you live in close proximity with, see almost every day. And the classroom can be an unusually intense, and an extremely intimate environment. Of course, they tend to admire you disproportionately as an authority figure and a fount of knowledge. And they feel grateful to you for imparting your knowledge to them, inspiring and encouraging them, helping them to get into university. No, it's not surprising that girls fall for their teachers.

I find it harder to comprehend how teachers allow themselves to fall for their students. If you do enter into such a relationship, you are unfairly exploiting a situation of unbalanced power (feminists might argue that there's almost always a situation of unbalanced power between a man and a woman, but it is particularly pronounced between a teacher and a student). And you can never really be confident how much the girl likes you, and how much she likes rather the idea of you, the role that you play in her life. I don't think many of these relationships have much longevity.

Perhaps I was lucky not to feel the temptation all that strongly. Admittedly, girls in their late teens are often in their finest bloom of prettiness; and they do generally seem to be much more 'grown up' than boys of that sort of age. The gap between a young teacher in his early twenties, fresh out of university, and a senior year student of 17 or 18 isn't so very great, is it? Well, yes, I find there is a huge gap in experience and attitude. University is a fundamental rite of passage for most of us, the point at which we begin to emerge into adulthood (although I'd venture that for most people the process is not in fact complete until two or three years into their working life). I couldn't really see myself being interested in a girl of 18 even when I was 20 and still an undergraduate, and certainly not by the time I was nearly 25 and working. (As I recounted on The Barstool the other day, I did briefly go out with a girl of 17 - when I was 31! - but it didn't work out; belated proof of my long-held prejudice.)

Moreover, I take teaching way more seriously than most people. I have a reverential awe for the function, and particularly for the notion of standing in loco parentis. You are not just responsible for your charges' education, but for their physical and moral well-being; it is a sacred trust, not to be abused.

I held myself to that principle, even though I was sorely tempted on occasion. Well, in four years, I suffered two very bad crushes on Sixth Form girls in the school where I was teaching. (We only had girls in the Sixth Form - the upper two years. I think that might have made our circumstances particularly difficult: if you've known a girl from an age where she is definitely too young for you to fancy her, I think you get used to not fancying her, to not allowing yourself to fancy her - even when she subsequently blooms into womanhood. That seems to be how it works with me, anyway.) The second of them I regard as one of the great loves of my life - we got to know each other pretty well over two years: she was a remarkable intellect, a remarkable person. And I did contemplate trying to initiate a relationship with her after we'd both left the school (the episode of life-threatening illness rather scuppered that plan; although I think I'd stepped away from it anyway - not wanting to bother the poor girl at this great transitional phase of her life [reading history at Cambridge], feeling that she could do better for herself than a physically broken down, penniless and unemployable wreck like me). But while she was a student, and I was a teacher, I kept my affections in check - never acted on them, never gave any indication of them (well, I hope; I think she suspected, towards the end).

The only person I could confide in about this moral torment was my best friend on the staff, another novice teacher I would later come to think of as The Arts Entrepreneur. Ever the cynic, he was sceptical of my supposed high ideals, and suggested it was perhaps only embarrassment, the fear of getting caught that was really restraining me. 

He proposed a taunting hypothetical to test my resolve - The Secret Tunnel. Imagine, he said, that there was a hidden underground passageway connecting your room here to hers on the other side of the school, and that you could visit her at any time you liked, with no risk of detection - would you still cling to this supposed sanctity of the teacher-student bond?

It was a very difficult question! Thank heavens it was only hypothetical.