Out of the Woods But Not Over the Hill (12 page)

She continued with the age-old story of the foolish pigs that built their houses of straw and sticks and were then gobbled up by the wolf.

‘Then the Big Bad Wolf came to the house of bricks. He crept down the little path on his bristly grey legs and came to the door and scratched on it with his long sharp claws. “Little pig,” he growled, “little pig, let me in, or by the hair on my chinny, chin chin, I'll huff and I'll puff and I'll blow your house in.” '

‘'E dunt gerrin,' volunteered Duane.

‘Thank you, Duane,' said the teacher trying to stay calm.

‘'E tries gerrin in t'winder burr 'e can't gerrin.'

‘Duane,' said the teacher sharply.

‘'E gus on t'roof,' said the child.

‘DUANE! Listen to the story!' snapped the teacher.

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

‘If you are a really good boy,' the teacher told him, ‘you can tell us all what happens, but you must be quiet until near the end. The wolf climbed on the roof . . .' she continued.

‘I said that,' added Duane.

The teacher decided to ignore the interruption. ‘He looked down the chimney into the sooty darkness. “Little pig, little pig,” he growled, “I am coming down the chimney to gobble you up.” ' The teacher paused. ‘Now, Duane, what would you do if a wolf came down your chimney?'

‘I'd shit myself,' replied the infant.

A Life in Rhymes

I had another long letter from Liam recently. Liam, aged thirteen, is a student at a college for the blind, and he wrote in Braille (with a translation) that he is really enjoying life there and doing well in his studies. He sent me his first published collection of poems,
My Life in Rhymes
, an inspirational anthology which makes the reader smile, think and sometimes feel a little sad. It was two years ago that I received his first letter with some of his excellent poems. The poems were heartfelt and sincere and inspired by his experiences of living with blindness and deafness.

In that first letter, he wrote: ‘I am not enjoying school because I am being separated in most of the lessons. My favourite subject is science but it's impossible for me to learn. The experiments aren't accessible for me where you have to use sight to determine so much and handle dangerous equipment. The teachers use gestures and pictures and signs on the whiteboard and I cannot see these so learn little. I am excluded from cricket and rounders – health and safety issues they say. At break and lunchtimes all I do is walk around the playground with a support assistant. I have not had a friend since I started mainstream school.' Liam asked me if I could help realise his ambition to attend New College.

Along with his determined parents, Liz and Dean, his doctor, his psychologist and many other supporters, I wrote with my backing and, eventually, Liam was successful. I knew that Liam would be happy and would thrive at New College because I had inspected the establishment some years before.

I had visited New College with a team of HMI, and the OFSTED report we produced was excellent. Twenty years ago, blind students would no doubt would have been making lampshades and weaving baskets. Now they achieve as well, and often better, than their sighted peers, as a former Home Secretary and Secretary of State for Education from Yorkshire will vouch.

I remember meeting Ruth. She, like Liam, had been desperately unhappy during her time in a mainstream girls' high school. A clever, enthusiastic and good-humoured young woman, she had experienced a catalogue of indifference and unkindness from some of the other students. Chairs were deliberately placed in front of her so she would stumble into them, her greeting of ‘Good morning' when she entered the classroom would be greeted by silence and few helped her as she went around the school. Ruth had no friends and led a lonely, unhappy life. Some of her teachers were sympathetic and the deputy head teacher frequently asked how she was getting along, but others were blatantly unfeeling and were irritable and lacked understanding. Someone suggested that Ruth really should not bother going on the Geography field trip because, she was told, ‘you won't be able to see anything'. When her classmates were asked by the form tutor what were the most irritating things about being in the school one girl remarked, ‘the blind girl with her white stick'.

At the college for the blind, Ruth had flourished, and was studying for four ‘A' levels and hoping to study English at Cambridge. Her work was of a quite exceptional standard, as this poem, which I published in a collection, reveals:

 

I see with my ears.

I hear the leaves in the tall trees, whispering in the night.

I hear the sea, dark and deep, and the splash of the dolphin's leap.

I hear the flames crackling and the window frames rattling in the wind.

I see with my ears.

I see with my nose.

I smell the blossoms pearly-grey and hay new mown.

I smell the ploughed earth, cows in the byre, the smoky fire.

I smell Grandpa's pipe, Gran's lavender room and Mum's faint perfume.

I see with my nose.

I see with my mouth.

I taste the strong black coffee and the thick brown toffee between my teeth.

I taste the yellow of the lemon, the green of the melon and the red of the tomato.

I taste the orange of the carrot, the purple of the plum, the gold of the sun on my face.

I see with my mouth.

I see with my hands.

I feel the sharp edges, slippery floors, smooth ledges.

I feel lemonade in cold canisters, hard wooden banisters.

I feel hands to hold, arms on shoulders, faces to touch.

I see with my hands.

On Report

My mother was a hoarder, and I am so glad she was. After her death, I discovered a treasure chest of letters, postcards, swimming medals, badges and, to my delight, my school reports. I guess I share with many others the common experience of finding (with something of a shock) that my school reports were by no means exceptional, but pretty lacklustre. My leaving report from Broom Valley Juniors had the pithy and somewhat ambiguous comment from J Leslie Morgan, the headmaster: ‘Gervase is a little trier.'

School reports of the past make much more interesting reading than present day examples. Modern school reports are often produced from a standard ‘Statement Bank', with key words and phrases helpfully provided for the frazzled teacher, who has to complete a comprehensive booklet on each pupil's attainment, progress, conduct, contribution to school activities and significant achievements, and fill in a whole grid of predicted grades. Such earnest and restrained documents are anodyne compared with those written in the past. Perhaps it is a good thing that the funny, acerbic and sometimes brutal judgements have gone, but they were much more entertaining.

In this litigious age, no teacher would dare write in such an unprepossessing and sardonic manner as David Owen's master at Bradfield College, who described the future political grandee as ‘a scruffy urchin', or John Lennon's teacher at Quarry Bank School in Liverpool, who predicted that one of the world's most talented composers is ‘certainly on the road to failure . . . hopeless . . . rather a clown in class'. Eric Morecambe's teacher at Lancaster Road Junior School forecast that the future great comedian ‘will never get anywhere in life', and Jilly Cooper's teacher at Goldophin School in Salisbury resorted to sarcasm, something which was often favoured by the teachers of the past, when she wrote that ‘Jilly sets herself an extremely low standard which she has failed to maintain'.

Some teachers predicted their pupils' future successes with great accuracy; others got it startlingly wrong. Winston Churchill's teacher at St George's, Ascot, asserted that the boy ‘has no ambition' and the headmaster of Westminster, where Peter Ustinov spent his schooldays, remarked of his pupil: ‘He shows great originality, which must be curbed at all costs.' Princess Diana's teacher at West Heath School recommended that, ‘she must try to be less emotional in her dealings with others', and Judi Dench's teacher at The Mount School in York observed that she ‘would be a very good pupil if she lived in this world'.

Recently, when I spoke at the Bradford Grammar School Old Bradfordians' Dinner, the president's wife said she well remembered the final, wonderfully terse comment on her school report: ‘Sally must bestir herself.' An inspector colleague recalls his report for mathematics: ‘Exam result 4 per cent. Effortlessly achieved.'

I was told the story of the housemaster at a Yorkshire public school who struggled to find something positive to say about a new boy on his end of term report. He wished to reassure the parents but felt he had to be honest in his assessment of his pupil, and it was proving very difficult. The boy had made no progress in any of his subjects, took no part in sports, lacked any musical ability and rarely contributed in class. The medical that all pupils underwent after the first term revealed that the boy, rather than shooting up in height like many of his adolescent peers, had in fact shrunk by an inch. This helped the housemaster out of his dilemma and he could truthfully report that: ‘Rupert appears to be settling down well.'

An Encounter

Now that I have got my bus pass, and wish to be a bit more environmentally friendly, I have decided to make greater use of public transport. The bus from the village where I live into Doncaster is comfortable, smoke free and regular, and, after nine o'clock, I can travel free of charge.

Last market day, I took the bus into town and was wandering around Market Place when a loud voice stopped me in my tracks.

‘Hey up, Mester Phinn!'

It was a young man behind a large fruit and vegetable stall.

He saw the look of incomprehension on my face, so reminded me. ‘It's me – Jason. Tha' use' to teach me.'

‘Ah yes, Jason,' I said, recognising in the large bearded face the boy I used to try to teach English.

‘I were no scholar, were I Mester Phinn? Left school wi'out a certificate in owt.'

‘You were a good lad, Jason,' I said, remembering the good-humoured and friendly ex-pupil who caused me no bother.

‘Come over 'ere, Mester Phinn, and I'll sort you out wi' some fruit.' He then proceeded to fill brown paper bags with apples and oranges, pears and plums. Then he held up a banana and laughed. ‘Does tha remember t'incident wi' t'banana?'

I smiled at the memory. Jason's French teacher had a bowl of plastic fruit on her desk. She would hold up an apple and ask, ‘
Qu'est-ce que c'est?
', and students were supposed to shout back, ‘
C'est une pomme
'. Then she'd pick up a pear and ask, ‘
Qu'est-ce que c'est
?', and they would shout back, ‘
C'est une poire
'. Once, she had a plastic banana in her hand. ‘
Qu'est-ce que c'est?
' she asked, but caught sight of Jason talking at the back of the classroom and let fly with the visual aid. The banana arced through the air like a missile and hit the boy straight between the eyes. It then ricocheted off his forehead and flew back to her like a boomerang. The teacher put up her hand and caught it. All the class jumped to its feet and gave her a standing ovation. Jason was, of course, sent to me, but, having related the story of the banana, must have seen by my expression and the stifling of a smile how amused I was.

‘So you're a greengrocer then, Jason?' I asked now.

‘Aye, in a manner o' speakin'. I've six market stalls. “High Class Fruit and Vegetables”. Started wi' one stall in t'outdoor market and built up ovver t'last few years. I 'ave twenty folk workin' for me now.'

‘You've done really well.' I said. ‘I'm really pleased for you.'

At this point, drops of rain began to fall.

‘It's goin' to chuck it down in a minute, by t'looks on it,' Jason said, staring at the grey sky. ‘Are you in yer car, Mester Phinn, or can I give you a lift?'

‘I came into town by bus,' I told him, ‘It's very kind of you to offer me a lift but . . .'

‘Nay, not a bit of it, Mester Phinn,' he interrupted. ‘I'm knockin' off for t'day any road. I can go that way 'ome.'

I made my way to a small white van with his name printed in bold letters on the side, but Jason called me back. ‘Nay, nay, Mester Phinn, I'm not in t'van.' He opened the door of a brilliant white, shining sports car with tinted windows. My astonishment must have shown. ‘I can see that tha' thinking, “What's a gret big bloke like 'im doin' driving a piddling little car like that?” Well, I'll tell thee. Wife's got t'Merc today, so I've got 'ers. Come on, Mester Phinn, before tha' gets soakin' wet.'

The Man in the Box

When I was a lad (I can hear my children wincing), my school seemed to be populated by eccentrics. There was ‘Snotty' Wilson, the teacher who used to wipe his nose on the sleeve of his gown, having taken a generous pinch of snuff, and one nicknamed Dr Death, whose white skin stretched across his bony face to give it the appearance of a skull, a deeply frightening teacher who talked in whispers. There was ‘Cliff' Davis, the chain-smoking head of PE, who put the fear of God into everyone, and ‘Smiler' Simcox, who leered at you over steel-framed spectacles with a grin as wide as a frog's.