As long as it is not private, I don’t care where our kids go
Unbelievably – because it only seems five minutes since I first held my new-born daughter in my arms in a dimlylit hospital ward, looked at her tiny delicate perfect hands and features, and thought, with tears welling in my eyes, ‘there’s no way I’m going to make my five-a-side football session later’ – Mary has started school.
I’m aware of this fact because Mrs Canavan spent the past year talking of little else but our daughter’s forthcoming education.
Well, that’s not quite true. She’s also been talking a lot about the back bedroom and how it needs decorating but
I’ve been able to deflect that by complaining about an ongoing and mysterious pain in my left shoulder which completely rules out any physical labour of any kind.
So far she’s bought it, though I almost blew my cover the other day by swinging Mary around in the air before remembering my story, saying: ‘Arghhh’ in a very loud voice, and then dropping Mary midair and, as she landed with a thump on the hard concrete path and began crying, saying: ‘Sorry but daddy’s got a sore arm’.
I felt bad about hurting my daughter but it was important to keep up pretences and the doctors say her head wound will heal in time.
But schools. Mrs C was obsessed, mainly over the question of which one to send our daughter to.
It’s fair to say I am a little more relaxed. As long as it’s not a private school – each to their own and all that, but I’m firmly against a system based on how much money and privilege you have – anywhere will do.
There’s a primary school around the corner, for example, which seems fine. ‘Are we sending her there then?’ I asked innocently.
‘Of course we’re not!’ bellowed an incandescent Mrs C looking at me like I’d suggested we strip naked and go outside to do 35 press-ups in the middle of the road.
Apparently its Ofsted report wasn’t quite good enough and a friend of a friend had told her she didn’t like the headteacher’s dress sense.
Now to me I really couldn’t care less where my kids go. All schools have good and not so good teachers, but they all – in my opinion – give a decent level of education.
I went to a crummy school. I got bullied – my ears stuck out and I had acne – but, hey, it builds character and it’s not held me back in life, other than having a sore left ear from where Stuart Booth once grabbed it and dragged me round the playground shouting: ‘Look, his ears are so big I can take him for a walk’.
If I’d known then what I know now, I could have dealt with the situation in a mature and rational way... and punched Stuart in the face, but I was too young and weak to know better so let it happen.
But my point is that school is school, you’ll always get good people and bad people. You just get on with it.
Mrs C is not so relaxed. She has spent about 95 per cent of her free time in the past year on various websites and, as I’m trying to watch a fascinating documentary about the diminishing number of baboons in Senegal, saying things like: ‘Ooh, at (insert school name here) it says they continuously work hard to develop their ever-evolving, exciting and engaging topic-based curriculum,’ or: ‘This one is strongly committed to helping children grow and develop the skills they need to be successful in life’.
If their website said: ‘When it comes to helping children grow and develop, we’re mildly committed,’ I’d be a tad concerned.
I will absent-mindedly reply: ‘Ah right, great,’ to whatever she tells me, then she’ll get upset and accuse me of showing zero interest in our children’s future, and in turn – and here’s the really frustrating bit – I’ll miss what the narrator’s saying about how female baboons tend to be the primary caretaker of the young.
I have some sympathy for her, and other parents in the midst of deciding where their children must go. But come on, there are greater things in life to worry about – global warming, worldwide poverty and hunger, and whether Senegal’s efforts to breed baboons in captivity can help halt their extinction.
Whichever school our children go to, as long as they’re not dragged around the playground by their ears, I’ll be content.