I'd like to share with you an experience from my time as a child at school. It is a story about a teacher, a lesson, something I learned. You can put the handkerchief away as this isn't a sob story, and you don't need to jot anything down as it doesn't represent a masterclass in teaching from a lost age. It is an experience that was accidently inspiring and formative, in spite of what may have been intended, rather than because of it. It is the story of Mr Collins, a ping pong ball and a DT lesson. First a bit of context. The date is a little fuzzy, but it was possibly 1988 (once I've explained you'll see it certainly has a 1988 feel to it) and I was in Year 2 at my first school in South Staffordshire. That's what upwardly mobile Eighties families called (and still call) parts of Wolverhampton. I was probably seven years old and was a child fairly unmoved by the whole 'school' thing. My class teacher was the aforementioned Mr Collins. At this ...