I just wanted to reply to an article on The Mag on Sunday morning by GToon (‘Mr Curtis or Mr Knight, which is Eddie Howe?’)
Mr Howe has both motivated underperforming pupils to results no other teacher thought possible (to the point they chose not to even interview for a position at our Premier school) and he has pushed all of his pupils to achieve excellent results year after year.
I mean, on what planet in the ENTIRE UNIVERSE is reaching the last 16 of the Champions League and giving Barcelona a real scare, a C grade?
That’s what Mr. Eddie Howe did in a supposedly poor school year, after he’d had to deal with things like his star pupil setting fire to the building, and doing the job of cleaner, Headmaster and dinner lady, alongside his actual job, a teacher.
Pieces like this are the real problem. Mr. Howe has earned the right to be judged ONLY by pupils who actually know who he is and what he has done for the school. As anyone paying even the SLIGHTEST ATTENTION IN CLASS should know how laughable it is to cast Eddie as the affable fun loving people person type teacher. If anyone has that role , it’s the P.E. teacher, Mr. Tindall.
As Eddie Howe has shown his pupils time and again, alongside the very obvious fact he is a decent human being capable of acting with class, humility, empathy and all round affability (hence why he is such a popular teacher), he is also a serious, results driven man. All his pupils know what is expected of them.
The standard is the standard. It is clearly not a goddamned C grade. It is to fight, compete, dominate, win, and all importantly, win in a way that satisfies all the parents on the sidelines watching Little Jonny represent the colours.
Failing to meet that standard does come with consequences. You will be placed in detention. You will be held back. You will be worked harder. You will know you have disappointed. You will, in extremis, be asked to leave the school. With regret. But leaving all the same. Replaced with a superior kind of pupil, one with a higher ceiling, the potential Mr. Howe is known for harnessing to A grade levels. Pupils regarded as nearly worthless by teachers at far more prestigious schools.
But since Mr. Howe is neither a Mr. Curtis or a Mr. Knight, all of his players, even the fire starter, do not complain. They do not accuse Mr. Howe of being unfair or abusive in how he conducts his lessons. They have never let it be known, either in public or by writing it on the toilet walls, that they think Mr. Howe isn’t a fit and proper teacher. There’s a reason for that.
Eddie Howe has the fondness, respect, admiration and fear of his pupils. If only he could say the same of some of the parents. I wonder why that is. Is it because parents by and large these days have NO RESPECT?
Raised on a diet of instant highs. Chicken dippers and sugar rushes. Never having to answer for their own actions, such as booing a class of underperforming students or otherwise being openly disloyal in a venue where UNITY is proven to be the only recipe for real success. People who are in some cases totally unfit to even be let into a school’s grounds, such is the content of their character, if the standards of my generation were still the standards of today.
Eddie Howe is far younger than me but I’d have been so proud to have been his son. His pupil.
As the Amazon documentary showed all but a glimpse of, Eddie’s kids are happy and well loved, inspired, at that critical footballing age, even though their father’s total commitment to NUFC reduces the time he can devote to their own formative years.
What a man. A real man.
He deserves much better. He’d be well within his rights to tell us all to eff off and stick our job up our backsides, he doesn’t need this nonsense. But he has far too much class.