The bravest professions

During holidays I enjoy spending an hour each morning reading through the daily newspapers. This  particular story (from The Times) looks at the results when the top military awards were mapped to occupations, showed that teachers were especially brave. Conversely, it is also argued that former soldiers make good teachers. 

 To identify the bravest professions, they recorded the pre-war jobs of hundreds of Distinguished Conduct Medal, Meritorious Service Medal, Victoria Cross and Military Cross winners, and then cross-referenced the data with the total number of men employed in the same professions in the 1911 Census.

The majority of medal winners were miners or agricultural labourers but, proportionally, teachers had the highest number of medal winners.

Miriam Silverman, a senior manager with Ancestry, said that the qualities needed to survive the classroom may have prepared teachers better for the front line. “While teachers, doctors or policemen may have had skills or leadership qualities that could have prepared them better for the front line, what this data really tells us is that it was the ordinary men with everyday professions that made some of the most extraordinary heroes,” she said.

One such was Dugald Blue, who, while a classics teacher at Hutchesons’ Grammar School in Glasgow, had set up the Cadet Corps. He was killed “leading a charge beyond the first line of the German trenches, cheering forward his men, faithful unto death”.

While teachers appear to have made brave soldiers, the Government believes that soldiers could make good teachers. It has launched a Troops to Teachers course which will allow military personnel without university degrees to take a two-year fast-track course into the classroom.