Every now and again I have time to pause and think, and to look at the class I'm teaching, and wonder what will happen to them all once they've left school. I try not to do it too often, because it can be a scary thought.
Comprehensive schools can be a cross section of society. This does, however, depend on
where that comprehensive school is. If it competes with grammars or private schools in the
locality, certain strata may be scooped away like the cream from the top of the milk bottle, so
there go the "thick and rich" section of society, the crammed and tutored middle class kids,
and perhaps also the "working class made good"
lot. Other comprehensives may serve inner-city areas where the majority of residents live
in poverty and where other problems like drug abuse pervade, so that these schools serve a
catchment area that would look skewed if held up as representative of society. Then there are
comprehensives that think they are something else, glowing with self-important pride
because of fantastic exam results, whilst choosing to ignore the fact that they serve a
community of privately-tutored Pony Club types. I generalise, of course, but you get the
picture.
Many comprehensives are pretty representative of society as a whole though, catering
for kids from every conceivable background: rural, urban, rich man, poor man, beggar man and
thief. I remember being extremely taken aback when I was first shown round a comprehensive
school. The teacher in charge of the tour opened my eyes to the comprehensive system. "What
you have to remember," the teacher warned, "is that by comprehensive we really do
mean everyone. This building contains your future burglars, rapists and murderers." I was so
shocked! After all, I was idealistic. I believed everyone would turn out alright as long as
they had good guidance at school, they were given the chance at education, they
passed their exams and found good jobs. Poor naïve lamb that I was.
So when I look around my classes and try to see some of the pupils in the not so distant
future, I do worry sometimes. Because it seems to me that the catchment area will soon be
flooded with illiterate vandals with the attention spans of gnats and the word "respect"
torn from their dictionaries and burnt. If they had dictionaries. And if they could spell.
Many of them will sign on, or turn to crime if the dole
doesn't suffice, and see no future except going forth and multiplying, dragging up their
children in the manner to which they have become accustomed. Sometimes I emerge into the fresh
air at the end of a long day and cocoon myself in my car, wishing I had a cave in which to
exist as a hermit, never having to deal with the grubbiness and open sores of humanity again.
The more successful kids will get out. They'll go away to college, or move away to find
jobs that pay more than the minimum wage, and try to forget some of the scumbags they had to
sit next to in double science; the same scumbags who held up every lesson with their
outrageously bad behaviour, and who punched them and bullied them and put chewing gum in their hair.
They'll make sure that they find better schools for their kids, or they'll look back with
rosy-hued contact lenses and decide that a comprehensive school education is "character
building". Well, it is in a way. It certainly educates you in knowing just how many walks
of life there are, especially for those from more privileged backgrounds. It's also a
great motivator for those of a certain mindset to do well, so they don't have to live amongst
scumbags all their lives.
"Ahhh!" you might be thinking. "But children change. Weren't we all a bit scummy at school?
Haven't we all got tales to tell of making teachers cry, disrupting lessons, pulling fast ones?
And look at us! - we turned out alright. It's a rite of passage, isn't it!" Well, dear reader,
this is the one hope that I cling to as I tread the murky waters of the chaotic classroom. That
one hope, that the majority of the kids will turn out alright after all. I know that some will
take many years to shed the layers of shite that cling to them - the abusive backgrounds,
the unsupportive or unknown parents, the hard knocks and permanent blows. Others shake themselves
down just in time for GCSEs, maturing and blossoming overnight. Yet others make mistakes long
after leaving school, and follow very different paths to any that a teacher gazing upon
their charges one afternoon in early spring could possibly imagine. How could anyone carry on
doing a job like teaching if they didn't still retain a smattering of idealism to ward off
total cynicism overload and despair?
added 12/4/04
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