Teacher’s Pet [1990]

  • Teacher’s Pet  – Judy: #1574 (10 March 1990) – #1583 (12 May 1990)
  • Artist: Julio Bosch (Martin Puigagut?)

Plot

Anna Norman gets on well in school until the arrival of a new teacher Miss Johnstone. Her new form teacher, starts favouring her immediately, earning Anna the name of “Teacher’s Pet” from her classmates. Even when Anna tries to get in trouble it makes things worse, such as when she is late to class she expects to be punished, like her other classmates were, but “Stoney” Johnstone just lets her away with it, and everyone else just thinks Anna’s taking advantage. When it comes time to elect a form captain Johnstone makes it clear that she thinks Anna has the right qualities for the job and commiserates with her when she lose out to Lucy. No amount of objections from Anna can convince her friends that she never wanted to be captain. It continues to get worse, on a museum trip, Johnstone implies that Anna told tales on Lucy and Anna rues the day the teacher took a liking to her. One good thing comes out of the trip is that her old friend Ros has gotten suspicious of Johnstone’s motives and points out to Anna that everything she does gets her in trouble and perhaps Johnstone doesn’t favour her at all!

Anna puts this theory test by speaking in slang to Johnstone when no one else is around, and gets a more typical “Stoney” response, but in class when she does it, Johnstone suggests she’d be perfect for reading the lead Pygmalion. She enlists Ros’s help to find out why Johnstone is doing this, Ros agrees to help but doesn’t want to get too involved for fear of losing friends. So in secret Ros and Anna start investigating Miss Johnstone, they find out where she lives and theorize that Anna may look like a sister that she dislikes. That theory is soon disproved as Johnstone is an only child. While Stoney is away for the weekend they do more snooping where she lives and gets talking to a neighbour of hers. Seeing a letter in a book she lent the neghbour, they think they have a new clue. It involves the local dramatics society and they think Stoney is upset because she lost out to a younger actress similar to Anna that also has the same name. Again this theory quickly goes nowhere, as the letter actually was Mrs Greys’, the neighbour.

Johnstone assigns Anna to the school disco committee, despite Lucy volunteering, not winning Anna any favours from the others. The theme is to be the 60s, so Anna asks to borrow some of her Dad’s records, but he won’t let his precious collection out of the house, her mom says he had them even before they met (some foreshadowing here!). Then while setting up for the disco, Anna gets in Stoney’s bad books temporarily for playing “Twist and Shout” by the Beatles. Stoney ends up scratching the record in her hurry to turn it off. Wayne, the owner of the record, blames Anna for putting it on. Ros thinks they finally have a clue to Stoney’s past and they must find out why she hates that song so much.

Things look up for Anna, when Ros introduces her to her cousin Tom and they hit it off, but of course Stoney tries to cause problems. Anna then tells her mom that she she is having problems with Miss Johnstone praising her all the time, so her mom says she will have a word with her on parents night. But on the night Johnstone leaves suddenly with a headache before meeting the Normans. Ros who has smoothed things with Tom, reckons that Stoney had a broken romance, and wanted to break Anna and Tom up, though it doesn’t explain why she’s targeting Anna specifically. She soon finds out the reason why, when they get a chance to look in Johnstone’s flat while Mrs Grey is looking after her cat. Anna finds a picture of young Johnstone with a man whose face is crossed out, but she recognises the car in the background. A visit to her grandmother and looking through old photo albums, confirms her suspicions, the man in the photo was her dad! Mr Norman had never made the connection with the name but he was once engaged to Jean Johnstone but broke it off because of her jealousy and moodiness. They contact the headmistress and Johnstone doesn’t even deny it when confronted, she is happy she took her revenge. Learning the truth her classmates are sorry for how they treated Anna, she forgives them easily as she doesn’t want to end up like Stoney holding a grudge for years.

Thoughts

This is an interesting hate campaign story, there are several things that make it stand out from similar stories. Firstly that it is an adult campaigning against the protagonist rather than a peer. Miss Johnstone is in a position of power, she abuses this terribly and has no regrets that she punishes an innocent girl for the perceived wrong doings of her father. She also doesn’t regret ruining her own career because of this. Even without her revenge plan, Miss Johnstone isn’t a nice person, she soon earns her nickname “Stoney” with her tough discipline and hard attitude. We later learn it is not just being dumped that has turned her into this bitter person (although it certainly doesn’t help!) as even as a younger woman Johnstone was prone to jealousy and moodiness. Seems Mr Norman had a lucky escape!

Another thing that makes it stand out, is that it is not clear that there is a hate campaign against Anna to begin with. Other stories have had the “friend” of the protagonist turn out to be their secret enemy, but here because of Miss Johnstone’s strategy it’s not clear there is a hate campaign. Certainly it is a devious scheme, by praising and acting like she thinks Anna is great, she causes trouble without suspicion. It is nearly half ways through the story before her motives are actually questioned. Some of the girls thoughts on why Johnstone is after Anna are a stretch (such as looking like a hated sister) but they don’t have a lot to go on, so they have to think of some reason. Anna was lucky to find the photo and recognise the car and end Johnstone’s revenge. I like that Anna’s parents are supportive too, because often adults in these stories can be dismissive, especially considering Anna’s complaints are “Johnstone’s too nice to her”! While her mother doesn’t think it can be that bad, she does say she will talk to Johnstone and when they find out who she really is, they go straight to the Headmistress.

Anna’s friends are a bit quick to judge her, even Ros at first when she agrees to help, she doesn’t stand up for her in public. This might be excused if she didn’t want to put Johnstone onto their investigation but she also says she doesn’t want to get involved and lose her friends. Although as Ros becomes more convinced of Johnstone’s motives, she does become more active in supporting Anna, even introducing her to Tom, her cousin. I’m sure Anna, as a nice person, would have forgiven all her friends anyway, but it’s good to see it tie in with Johnstone, as she doesn’t want to become a bitter, unforgiving person like her. It brings the story to a satisfying conclusion.

17 thoughts on “Teacher’s Pet [1990]

  1. This story replaced “Be Nice to Nancy!”, which was also a bullying story.
    There have been plenty of stories where a teacher bullies a pupil because of a long-standing grudge against a relative, but the teacher’s strategy sure is different, which I like. Instead of just bullying the pupil outright in front of the others she sets out to turn them against her by making her teacher’s pet.

  2. Thank you, I was curious about the story that replaced “Be Nice to Nancy!”. Does Stoney get the sack or is she forced to resign?

    1. She is suspended, but she says she won’t be back she took her revenge and it was sweet! One would hope if she hadn’t quit, and she was showing no remorse that she would have been permanently dismissed.

      1. Thank you. From the sound of it, she had a track record of being a mean teacher anyway, and probably picked on other pupils.

  3. According to my notes, which I made in the British Library many years ago, an earlier printing of Teacher’s Pet appeared in JUDY between 1267 (Apr. 21 1984) and 1277 (Jun. 30 1984). The latest issue that I own in that run of the serial is 1275, the next being 1278, so I can’t check here, but I genuinely don’t think I have made a mistake, so it would appear that one episode must have been left out of the 1990 rerun.

    1. Skipping an episode seems to often happen with reprints, with more episodic stories it is easy to drop one without affecting the overall plot.

  4. They are two quite different stories. As we have all assumed that because the titles were identical the second would obviously be a repeat, in order to clarify the matter I have this morning extracted both serials from my collection in order to compare them. Here is the initial information panel at the head of the first instalment in both cases.

    1984 :- It had taken Tansy Peters two months to get accepted at her new school, Denwood Comprehensive, where her father was the headmaster.
    1990 :- The holidays were over, and Anna Norman was returning to Beaumont Academy.

    I would have spotted this anomaly eventually, when deciding which serials will make the cut for inclusion in my new book, because every one is being considered. At the moment though I am still selecting from MANDY. In the new year I will apply the process to DIANA, JUDY, and BUNTY. I’ve already made my choices from the other seven titles.

    1. Having a few episodes of the 1984 story and short post on this site, I should have realised they were different, but sometimes hard to keep track! There are some story titles that are popular to reuse so it’s not always safe to assume they are just reprints.

      Well done on the progress for your book, even with some of the bigger titles left to do, that’s a lot done already.

  5. I’ve just completed my MANDY selections from 1985 so I might just have time to get to the end of 1986 before I go to Cornwall. I should come back refreshed, and ready to take on what you call ‘the bigger titles’. Can I just wish you, your family, and all your blog readers a Merry Christmas.

  6. Just five minutes ago I completed my full list of selections from MANDY. I may make a start tomorrow on DIANA. Then again, I need to pack for my holiday in Cornwall so I might leave that till I get back early in January, sufficiently refreshed.

  7. Miss Pringle in Judy’s “Hard Times For Helen” was a bully head whose conduct was never explained, much less punished, because the final episode does not devote enough time to it; it’s too crammed with other stuff. Helen’s mother eventually sees Miss Pringle for what she is, but that’s it. It would have been nice to see what Mum does about it, especially after she is informed that Miss Pringle’s accusations about Helen (jealous, lazy, behaving badly, “not at all like [her] mother”) are completely wrong.

  8. In “Prefect’s Pet” in Bunty annual 1999 a nasty prefect did the same thing as Miss Johnstone because her father missed out on the promotion that was given to the protagonist’s father. The protagonist manages to collect evidence of this with a hidden recorder and the prefect loses her position. I wonder if “Teacher’s Pet” and “Prefect’s Pet” had the same writer?

  9. Funny that these other possible reasons they look into for Stoney’s conduct have been used elsewhere in bully teacher/grudge stories.

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