Master

The answer to yesterday's question was that there is only one Master - the rest are Beaks. Today however, there is one Master and the rest are Teachers. Beak is no longer used. I discovered this a couple of years ago when I used the term in a sermon and was quietly told afterwards by the chaplain that I was showing myself to be deeply out of touch at just the point at which I thought I was being relevant. Another example of the decline of slang in the modern school world about which I have blogged in the past.

Part of it may be that the staff is now, as is to be expected in a coeducational school, about half women, and maybe Beak seems a bit masculine. When we were in the process of appointing the new Master, there was some discussion in the interview panel about what Council would call the post should the successful candidate be a woman. It was pointed out that Cambridge Professor Sandra Dawson was until recently 'Master' of my other alma mater, Sidney Sussex, and that the name need not necessarily change.


Gerald Wilson, who gave me the question about Master(s) writes: "just after Christmas I reviewed a book on Amazon about the post-war aircraft industry.  Before doing so, I perused the other reviews and saw one from someone who recalled a lesson at school where everyone's attention was drawn from the "beak" droning on about Caesar's Gallic Wars to watch the latest fighter jet passing the window.  I e-mailed him to enquire whether by any chance he had been to Haileybury and it turned out he was in my house, Melvill, a year after I left."