Out of the Woods But Not Over the Hill (11 page)

‘Yes, but –'

‘And have performed yourself in comic operas.'

‘I know, but –'

‘And enjoy classical music.'

‘That does not mean –'

‘The thing is, Gervase,' he explained, ‘I did tell the head teacher that there was no music specialist on the team, and she said the head of department would be very disappointed that no one would be observing his lessons. It is his last term and he so wanted to be inspected before he retired.'

Well, that is a rarity, I thought – a teacher actually wishing to be inspected.

The lead inspector continued: ‘Clearly, the head of music is a very able man, a very popular and committed teacher and the students perform really well in the examinations. He's been in the school all his professional life. The head teacher feels that his is one of the best departments in the school and it would be a pity if some mention was not made in the final report. And, of course, it would be good for the head of music to retire with a confirmation from OFSTED of his excellent teaching – to leave on a high, so to speak.'

Reluctantly, I agreed and, having studied the section on music in the
Framework for Inspection
, the following morning I observed the first music lesson of the week. The classroom was bright, orderly and well equipped, the students were attentive and knowledgeable, and the teaching was excellent. I had no reservations in assessing the lesson as one of the very best.

‘I am so pleased I got someone who knew what he was talking about,' the head of music told me later in the staff room. ‘You hear all these stories of school inspectors with little or no idea of the subjects they are inspecting.' I smiled weakly. ‘Were you at the Royal College of Music, by the way?' he asked. ‘That's where I studied.' I shook my head. I felt it politic not to inform him that my expertise in his subject was gleaned from a Grade 3 pianoforte examination and from the fact that I could play any tune in the key of D. I also knew four chords on the ukulele and, at a pinch, could play ‘When I'm Cleaning Windows'.

The team of inspectors attended the head of music's final concert, a rousing and an emotional affair. Prior to the performance, we were detained by the head teacher until the school hall was full with parents, staff and students, and the instrumentalists had assembled on stage. Then, as we were led by her down the central aisle to the front, to sit on the front row, the band struck up with ‘Colonel Bogie'. The head of the music department glanced in my direction and smiled. I have an idea the march was in the key of D.

Behind the Staff Room Door

The head teacher asked me to wait in the staff room.

‘I need to see a parent,' she explained, ‘but I will be with you directly.'

I was at the large inner-city primary school to collect various documents to read over the weekend, prior to my inspecting the school the following week. The staff room was uncomfortably warm and cluttered, the walls full of various dog-eared charts, posters and guidelines. Unwashed crockery filled a bowl in the corner sink, above which hissed and bubbled an old geyser. There was an assortment of shabby hard-backed chairs arranged around a coffee table, the top of which was hidden beneath an untidy pile of exercise books, magazines and folders. A larger table, free of clutter, occupied a space near the window. My first impressions were not good ones. I sat in a threadbare armchair.

The bell sounded for morning break. The first person to enter the room was a tall thin woman with a pale melancholy beaked face. Her prim white blouse was buttoned up to the neck and she wore a grey pencil skirt from which protruded skeletal legs. Thick white hair was twisted up untidily on her head and speared with what looked like wooden meat skewers. She stared at me for a moment before speaking. ‘Would you mind moving?' she said. ‘You're sitting in my chair.'

‘There are many chairs,' I replied pleasantly.

She bristled. ‘I am aware of that,' she said, drawing in her breath, ‘but that is my chair. I always sit in it.'

‘I see,' I said.

‘I have been a teacher in the school for twenty years,' she told me, ‘and I always sit in that chair.' When I remained where I was, she fixed me with a piercing stare. ‘So will you move?' she said, petulantly. I slowly got to my feet and sat in the adjacent chair. ‘And don't set your books up on that table,' she continued, sitting down. ‘We have our coffee on there.'

‘And who do you imagine I am?' I asked.

‘You're the book rep, aren't you?'

‘No,' I replied. ‘I'm the school inspector who will be observing lessons next week.'

If she was surprised she didn't show it, and she shuffled in her seat. ‘Well, I assume you know what sort of children we have in this school?'

‘I've read a little about them,' I told her.

‘We have quite a number of council-estate children and travellers in our catchment area, and all the social problems they bring with them.'

‘I beg your pardon?'

‘Council-estate children and travellers,' she repeated. ‘You know what they can be like.'

‘Do I?' I asked.

She sighed. ‘Have you taught these sort of children?' she asked, truculently.

‘I have,' I told her. ‘And they are like any other group of children, aren't they? They can be delightful, good-humoured and well behaved and sometimes can be difficult and challenging.'

‘You will find ours fall into the latter category,' she said. Her tone was peevish. ‘We have a great many problems with the estate children and travellers. The standards of reading and number work are poor and their achievements very low. I hope you are not expecting a great deal of them.'

‘I am of the opinion that is exactly what teachers should do,' I said.

‘What?' she asked, tight-lipped.

‘Expect a great deal of the children they teach,' I told her, ‘however disadvantaged and demanding they might be.'

She allowed herself a small smile. It was not a pleasant smile. ‘Really,' she said and rose from her chair, like a queen from her throne, to make herself a cup of coffee.

Had I had the power, I would have taken the woman and her chair and left her in the playground. No children, however ill-favoured, damaged or badly behaved, should be written off by a teacher. Children are too precious to be tarnished by such sour empty critics who expect little of their charges and tarnish them with a rusty cynicism. As Bishop William Temple wrote:

 

Until education has done far more work than it has had an opportunity of doing, you cannot have society organised on the basis of justice . . . Are you going to treat a man as what he is, or as what he might be? Morality requires, I think, that you should treat him as what he might be, as what he has it in him to become . . . That is the whole work of education. Give him the full development of his powers; and there will no longer be that conflict between the claim of the man as he is and the claim of the man as he might become.

The Point of Education

One of my favourite quotes about the very purposes of education is contained in a letter which Haim Ginott, when he was principal in an American high school, sent to every new teacher to help him or her understand the school's ethos:

 

Dear Teacher

I am the victim of a concentration camp. My eyes have seen what no man should witness: gas chambers built by learned engineers; children poisoned by educated physicians; infants killed by trained nurses; women and babies shot and burned by high school graduates. So I am suspicious of education. My request is this: help your students to become humane. Your efforts must never produce learned monsters, skilled psychopaths, educated Eichmanns. Reading, writing and mathematics are important only if they serve to make our children more humane.

 

At a time when the Government seems obsessed with league tables and targets, SAT results and risk assessments, OFSTED inspections and ceaseless teacher evaluation, and intent on covering schools with a snowstorm of paperwork, it is good to know that some schools go beyond the statutory curriculum, involve the pupils in exciting and innovative projects and endeavour to do what Ginott exhorts – to help young people to become more compassionate and caring.

I was asked to launch the splendid book
Ending the Slave Trade with William Wilberforce of Hull
at the Hull Street Life Museum. Supported throughout by the writer and lecturer John Haden, the children at St Nicholas Primary School researched, wrote and illustrated their own accounts of the slave trade, and narrated the story of the life and work of the city's most famous son. In undertaking such a project, they gained a real insight into the dreadful trade and learnt about the part Wilberforce played in bringing it to an end. They also learnt that slavery is still big business around the world (there are more slaves today than were seized from Africa in four centuries of the trans-Atlantic trade) and that slavery does not just exist in far-off places like Brazil, where children are sold into servitude, but that there is people-trafficking in this country.

At the launch, teachers, parents, education officers and invited guests listened in silence as the children sang a selection of traditional slave songs and laments. They heard about the horrors of this shameful trade and of the courage, dedication and persistence of William Wilberforce, who spent his life working for its abolition. It was an immensely powerful and moving experience.

‘The Happiest Days of Your Life'

 

 

Schooldays

‘George, Don't Do That!'

On a visit to the Doncaster Civic Theatre, my wife Christine and I lost ourselves in a wonderfully nostalgic evening filled with a gentle humour we so much enjoy. Caroline Fields, from the BBC Radio 2 programme,
Friday Night is Music Night
, delighted her audience with sketches and songs written and once performed by the inimitable Joyce Grenfell. There was the brilliantly written ‘A Terrible Worrier' and the hilarious ‘Old Girls' Reunion', but the show-stopper for me was the unforgettable ‘Nursery School Sketches', delivered superbly by Caroline.

Joyce Grenfell's perfectly observed nursery school teacher keeps a simmering control over her temper when trying to deal with the recalcitrant infants. As the children's behaviour deteriorates, the teacher's tone becomes jollier and falser, or, as Joyce herself writes: ‘the bright, bluffingly calm, cheerful encouraging manner becomes increasingly desperate.' Those of us who have spent a lifetime in the company of children know only too well how she feels, faced with the little Shirleens and Chardonnays, the Georges and Sidneys of the world.

Joyce Grenfell loved what she called ‘young children's observations, discoveries and individualities', and was fascinated by the way that ‘young children can invariably surprise, confound and delight'.

I have met many an anarchic infant like Sidney and Chardonnay on my visits to schools. One rosy-faced little boy, called Duane, certainly surprised and confounded the teacher at Story Time, but ‘delight' is not the word that immediately sprang to mind.

‘This morning's story, children,' began an infant teacher, ‘is the story of ‘‘The Three Little Pigs''.'

‘I've 'eard it,' said Duane, exploring his nostril with an index finger.

‘Really, Duane, that's nice,' said the teacher, in true Joyce Grenfell fashion.

‘It's all abaat this wolf what gobbles up all these stupid pigs.'

‘Just listen, Duane,' said the teacher, smiling wanly.

‘Little pig, little pig,' began the infant, in the voice of Tommy Cooper, ‘let me in or I'll 'uff and I'll puff an' I'll blow yer 'ouse in.'

‘Duane,' interrupted the teacher, ‘
I'm
telling the story.'

‘But I've 'eard it.'

The smile on the teacher's face was fixed. ‘Well, now you are going to hear it again.'

‘Burr I know wor 'appens,' the child told her.

‘So you said,' observed the teacher,
sotto voce
.