Handbook Of Suggestions For Teachers

Presenting the book that believes a firm tone, a stick of chalk, and a timetable can hold civilisation together: Handbook of Suggestions for Teachers (1944, Board of Education). Issued in the heat of history and printed with the calm certainty of a staffroom notice, it is equal parts pedagogy, pep talk, and politely worded decree. Offered with polished apples and mild sarcasm by Crappy Old Books.

Here is wartime guidance at its most British: lessons to be taught, spirits to be kept up, and windows to be opened “weather permitting.” The Board of Education strides through the curriculum like a headmaster with good shoes—reading, writing, arithmetic, drill, nature study, citizenship, the mysterious art of getting thirty children to sit down simultaneously. It is astonishingly practical: when to diagram a sentence, how to number the exercise books, which bits of geography are stout for morale, and why handwriting should look as if it could pass an inspection.

Between the lines you can hear the era: air-raid drills filed under “routine,” resourcefulness disguised as “method,” and quiet heroism presented as “ordinary work.” Need to teach art without paint? Use whatever the children have. Short on maps? Draw one. Geography of the world? Begin with the playground and expand, preferably to the Empire, but do stop for milk.

Condition: Good—sound in the binding, clean in the text, and perfectly ready to be waved faintly at unruly tables. ISBN: none, naturally; in 1944 the barcodes were deployed exclusively on munitions of a different kind. The paper has that durable, workmanlike feel of an age that rationed everything except purpose.

Why this copy? Because it’s the operating manual for hope with margin notes for sanity. It reminds you that teaching is logistics married to love; that a classroom is a weather system; and that no one has ever truly controlled glue. It also doubles as a historical time capsule—proof that “best practice” is a moving target and that yesterday’s certainty is today’s charming relic (except the bits that are secretly still right).

Suggested classroom (and civilian) uses:

• Staffroom artefact: place on the table and listen to modern teachers hiss and purr in equal measure.

• Pedagogical drinking game: sip every time it says “should,” “thrift,” or “attention.”

• Life admin guide: timetables, routines, and “useful habits” also work on adults who have mislaid their week.

• Conversation starter: leave it on a coffee table; someone will ask what “drill” meant, and you’ll give a small, wistful lecture.

Key delights within: beautifully stern headings, bullet-point sanity, and the quiet poetry of official prose (“A cheerful tone conduces to work”). It is sincere without being sentimental, organised without being joyless, and confident that a well-kept blackboard can push back the darkness by at least four feet.

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At a glance
• Title: Handbook of Suggestions for Teachers
• Author: Board of Education
• Publisher/Year: HMS, 1944
• ISBN: None (pre-barcode, pro-blackboard)
• Condition: Good—clean, tight, staffroom-ready
• Seller: Crappy Old Books—purveyors of patina, policy, and pedagogical nostalgia

Adopt it for the shelf, consult it in moments of doubt, and remember: somewhere between “line up smartly” and “observe the hedgerow” lies the whole philosophy of education—and, just possibly, of getting through the day.

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