Two retired colleagues help our school out because of the teacher shortage. The pupils sometimes have difficulty with the outdated language used by one of the pensioners. For example, he called a student a ‘bolleboos’ and when a student came to class too late because he was kissing, the colleague asked the boy about his ‘rendezvous’. And that ‘pretty’ has two meanings, became clear again when the teacher told a girl in math class that she was prettier than her sister. “Sir, I don’t want to hear that from you!”
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A version of this article also appeared in the newspaper of November 29, 2022