ABSTRACT
I once heard a child say about me, ‘He’s all right. You have a laugh, but he makes you work’ and, to my chagrin, I’ve remembered this with pleasure for about thirty years. This is partly because you don’t get many compliments in this job, but I believe it’s also because it contains the germ of quite an important idea about inspirational teaching. It’s a sort of paradox, and in that respect it echoes other things we say about good teachers – for example, the old cliché about being firm but fair.
