School Days
One of the sad inevitabilities of teaching is the overpowering stench of lethargy. And the real sadness is that those who are the most lethargic are those that can least afford to be.
You can tell them till you’re blue in the face that education can change everything but, if they don’t really care about changing their circumstances or their futures, there is no point. With exam season upon us I am having my annual meltdown with those who just don’t care.
We began revising after the Easter holidays.
‘Hands up and be honest,’ I began my first lesson back. ‘How many of you have done any English revision over the holidays? Any revision at all?’
The majority sat there, hands down, smirking.
‘Come on, Miss, it’s not as though we’re taking these exams seriously,’ one child said to me. These are Year 11s, facing up to their GCSES. And this particular group does need to work. The students do not find it easy but they won’t understand that the harder they find it, the harder they must try.
The problem is, as so often, not with the school, nor with the students themselves. The problem is, alas, very often with the lack of aspiration, and that comes from home.
Last term, an organisation called Speakers for Schools sent us Mariella Frostrup. Full of ease, confidence and charm, she talked to the Year 10 students for an hour about her life and work. While the majority of them may not be interested in books – and probably hadn’t heard of her – she did have something most of them like: celebrity.
And she also has what a lot of them also have: a background that is not rich, glitzy or privileged. Her background was very much like many of theirs. She also (this bit made me a little bit nervous) left school without many qualifications.
But she was marvellous. Her whole message was about engaging with life opportunity and learning. She talked about leaving home with very little, and her determination to succeed. No stench of lethargy hung around her. As she spoke, I saw how they straightened up, listened, shook off some of the lethargy and sweetened the air around them with the breeze of hope she let into the room.
These children need us, their teachers. But they need more than that: to see that people outside their little world exist, and might even mind about them. They need to see that the bigger world is open to them. Speakers for Schools has a rich and varied collection of experts from all sorts of areas who come into state schools to tell our children that there is more for them out there than what might appear to be inevitable.
One teacher I knew used to turn on children who did not work and say, ‘Well, I’m not worried. I’ll always need someone to flip my burgers.’ Mariella’s approach was so much better. Her message made the students believe they weren’t destined to flip burgers after all.
And that belief, from parents, teachers, and outsiders, is the most important ingredient they need right now to help them succeed.
Among the letters of condolence are beige Post Office telegrams with their now faded white bands. And heartfelt missives from his many Fleet Street colleagues and beyond. A reminder of the lost art of letter-writing – ink pen on embossed notepaper; the red masthead of the Sunday Times; the Beaverbrook Express logo; the salmon pink of their foreign desk; the green portcullis of the House of Commons…
Other letters come from his legion of loyal readers, who shared Bob’s disdain for the views of what is now termed ‘the metropolitan liberal elite’. He had coined his own word for their equivalent in the Sixties – FORJ (the Friends of Roy Jenkins). His Times obituary noted he had little time for the consensus of intellectuals (Bob called them ‘pale lilacs’ since they were neither true blue nor deep red), whose concern for criminals superseded their concern for their victims.
It is strange to think my father never lived to see the moon landings, own a colour television or tune into more than three channels. What a pity he never got to see The Muppet Show or buy a better cabin cruiser to sail on his beloved Thames (at least he was spared the Dubai-ification of the London skyline). And how sad he never saw his four children become adults.
What would he have made of Thatcher? (Initially pro, reckons the Aged P). Blair? (Anti). How brilliantly he would have skewered the current crop on both sides of the House. Not to mention the cultural pseuds and mediocre celebrities.
As another obituary noted, he ‘hated pomposity and the second-rate, which so often disguises itself as real ability’. If he was alive today, I am quite sure he would be sending the Twitterati apoplectic with its customary self-righteous indignation. And he would almost certainly be no-platformed at universities, wearing it as a badge of honour, while deploring the curtailment of free speech.
I’ve placed all the 50-year-old paperwork back in the box and returned it to the cupboard. I look forward to the day when his grandchildren take it out and read his old articles, and the letters with the Aged P’s notes. Such as the following from his Sunday Times colleague Godfrey Smith: ‘He was one of those men who always made life richer and better – not to mention funnier – whenever he touched it. During the 20 years I knew him, I never remember him do anything that was not kind and generous. We shall all miss him very much.’