Carry On Teacher (1959)

 "They've taken the pea!"

My very, very slow marathon of the Carry On films continues with this fascinating third film. It's still the '50s, of course, and the format hasn't settled down to that we will soon come to expect. The film is good, but not great. Funny, but not quite hitting the potential that will soon be realised.

The plot is simple; the popular headmaster plans to lreave, so the kids set up a series of practical jokes during a school inspection to ensure he stays. Meanwhile, two comical romances between inspectors and teachers are pursued. That's it. The jokes are quite funny. The cast is superb, but constrained by a certain early tameness in the material.

More fascinating are the social mores on display here. 1959 was only eighteen yesrs before my birth, but it's a world away. The opening sketches evoke St Trinian's and the Bash Street Kids, a hintat the gulf in time that is to come.

The school is a Secondary Modern. Discipline is far stricter than would be thinkable today. Child psychiatry is caricatured and mocked. and yeah, the beating of children is an unbridgeable gulf. In 1959, it was routine correction of children. In 2023, it's kinky sex and decidedly adult. It's interesting to note that all but one of the teachers dislikes caning children, but they all reluctantly accept it as necessary. We can only shudder.

This is quite good. But, more than that, it's fascinating both as an early Carry On and as social history.