I grew up in very low income community near Liverpool

I did not enjoy my schooldays mainly because the teachers were not very pleasant

The class sizes were large, we had almost fifty kids in mine

A fair number of them behaved badly so it was a constant battle for the teachers to maintain any kind of order

The teachers probably hated their jobs and dreamed of teaching in a school with better behaved kids

The Beatles were hitting fame when I was ten years old and my sister played their music at home

I fell in love with the Beatles sound and wanted to be just like them

I grew my hair long to imitate their looks

I wore a grey polo neck sweater and carried around an acoustic guitar

It had no strings but it was better that playing an air guitar

I remember clearly one day at school

The teacher was trying to explain how education was the foundation for our future lives and how important it was to work hard and learn

I was sitting at the back of the class and the kids around me were chatting away ignoring him

He blew up in a rage yelling silence silence and stormed towards us

He picked on me and dragged me to the front of the class

He proceed to tell the class that I was an example of somebody who was failing at school

He predicted that I would continue to fail and would eventually leave school without any qualifications and be doomed to work my entire adult life in low paid jobs

He criticized my appearance and said it was a symbol of me being a bad student

He told all the other kids that they should work hard in school or they would end up being losers like me

I felt angry that he had picked on me and humiliated because I did not believe I was part of the unruly gang in my class

My parents were much better role models than that cruel teacher

Thanks to them I did well at that school and was one of only two in my class to pass the academic test for eleven year olds to enter a school that groomed us for university

All the other kids went to a school which steered them towards blue collar employment

I eventually became an engineer and had a successful career

In later years I thought about going back to that school to find that teacher and tell him how wrong he was about me

Next time I visited the area I discovered that my school had been demolished

Cruel teacher, bad school but a good little Beatle