Sunday 26 July 2015

The vast majority of parents in the UK swallow the usual nonsense about school being education, without the slightest questioning of the system at all.  Even worse are parents who see private boarding-schools as the 'gold standard of education', completely ignoring the wishes of their children, the vast majority of whom hate the idea of school, let alone living in one, sometimes very far from home and friends.  What continues to stagger me is that even the most intelligent, caring parents still cling to the propaganda and myths above the real wishes of their child.  This, to me, is bad parenting.
I have known only three pupils who relished being at boarding-school, and viewed it as some kind of cross between a leisure park and a place for free academic and sporting facilities.  Only three.  The rest of the people I have known or met who spent time at boarding-school, sometimes from the age of six, have told stories of misery, cruelty and loathing. 
It is illegal in the UK to abandon your children - unless you abandon them to a carpeted prison run by many dubious people.  Then abandonment is seen as a thoughtful and caring action.  This reveals how twisted thinking can be.  On top of being exiled to a place they don't want to be, most graduates of boarding-school I have spoken to, felt abandoned by the people who ostensibly loved them.
One friend of mine told me the story of his first day at boarding-school, at the age of 12.   I have met his parents and they are fine people and generally good parents.  However, they decided to send their son to boarding-school, a school only forty miles away from their home.  There was a local day school, which seemingly produced well-rounded and successful graduates, and where most of my friend's friends attended.  Incredibly, the parents bowed to pressure from family and friends, who fervently, but stupidly, believed that boarding-schools were better for 'educating' than any other type of school.
My friend told me how he sobbed all the way to the school, begging his parents not to consign him to the place.  All of them in tears, and deaf to his pleas, his mother and father said their unnecessary 'goodbyes' and drove off.  He said he felt as if he'd done something wrong to deserve this punishment.  Worse still, my friend kept begging his parents, over five 'horrible' years he was at the school, all to no avail.  Deaf to reality and submission to fantasy!  Very bad parenting!
Since the very rationale for board-schools has evaporated, it is time to abolish these anachronistic institutions once and for all.

Sunday 19 July 2015

The other day, Fred came to mind.  I'm not sure why, but it has prompted this post about him, one of the most admirable people I have known.


In my young, naïve days, I took up a position as English/History teacher at a small boarding school in Kent.  I was greeted in the driveway by a plump, jolly Dutchman called Fred.  I was soon to learn that Fred was on the bottom rung of the levels of importance in the school, the pupils being the ground on which the ladder stood!
Fred was about 50, married, with grown-up children.  He lived locally and was employed to clean the boys' shoes, heave heavy trunks up and down staircases, and as a general dogsbody for jobs nobody else wanted to do.  He was always cheerful, smiling and joking.  Whenever I asked him how he was, he'd reply, in a mock Yorkshire accent:
"Mustn't grumble!"
At night, Fred would dress very smartly and go for a couple of pints at his favourite pub.  It was considered by the school staff  'not correct' to associate with Fred in the pub, a place where several teachers drank, but never with Fred.
Because of his uncompromising position in the school, the boys felt free to jibe him, joke with him, and, more importantly, know that there was a shoulder to cry on, someone who would listen sympathetically as they poured out their private misery.
Fred really loved the kids and they loved him.
Years after I left the school, I met up with an ex-pupil, now 28.  During our conversation, Fred's name cropped up.  Charles regaled me with stories of Fred's kindness, patience and wisdom.  He then added:
"Fred was the lowliest in the school, but he was loved more than anyone else in the school.  If I hadn't had Fred to lean on, I think I'd have gone mad!"
The gratitude the boys felt for this wonderful man will last throughout their lives, and for much longer than their teachers' influence.



Sunday 12 July 2015

Two years ago, I had a small skin cancer removed from my scalp.  It was not life-threatening, as many melanoma conditions are.  The doctor who operated told me that I had most probably got the cancer about 40-50 years ago, when I was living in Australia.  It had taken that long to 'mature'.  Of course, in Australia in the 1950s and 60s, it was common for people to lie on the beach half the day, doing what Australians correctly call 'sun-baking'.  I avoided that but wore no hats.  My mother died of melanoma cancer.
Recently, my brother, who lives in Sydney, raised the issue of ignorant Australians roasting themselves in their own sweat without any protection, and how it is continuing.


I used to present a story called Kid In A Bin to my English class of 12-13 year olds. It is a curious story with a strong message.  The author left the story unfinished, so that the pupils could end it themselves.
The story is about a boy who lives in a garbage bin in a branch of McDonald's.  He hides in the bin all day and emerges at night to make himself a meal in the kitchen.  We come to see that he has paper-clippings in the bin with him, newspaper articles that reveal that his father and sister have been searching for him since he left home, immediately after his mother died.  She had died of melanoma, and, sadly, the little boy overheard a doctor say to another doctor:
"When will people learn that the sun can kill you?"
So the boy decided to stay out of the sun - permanently!  And the best place he could think of to hide was in one of the McDonald's bins.
One night, as he is creeping to the kitchen , he sees his father and sister staring through the window at him.  He has no option but to let them in.  At this point the story stops - for the pupils' ending.
Most wrote that his father explained to him that a little sun is good for you, but a lot of sun is bad.  Reassured, the boy returns home with his father and sister.
One pupil I recall vividly, a natural lateral-thinker, wrote as his finale:
"When the boy had finished explaining to his father and sister why he had hidden in a bin, they agreed that it was the best place to be, and so all three now live in a bin in McDonald's."

Sunday 5 July 2015

"Soap and education are not as sudden as massacre, but they are more deadly in the long run".
When I first read these words of Mark Twain, when I was young, I laughed at the apparent nonsense of such an idea, as well as the juxtaposition of something as tangible as soap with something as abstract as education.
Over my adult life, I have come to believe that Twain uttered something very profound.
'Soap' symbolises hygiene and cleanliness, and 'education' knowledge and conscious thought.
So what's wrong with  being clean and knowledgeable?  On the surface, nothing, but soap and education have come to dominate and near destroy many of our human qualities over millennia.
Of course we are all glad that we live in a generally cleaner society than in the past.  Unfortunately, it has made just about everyone neurotically concerned about germs and disorder.
Education is more complicated.  Since the message of my blog is that school is anti-educational and that a real education springs from curiosity and the willingness to live and learn from life's experiences, I should baulk at Twain's cynicism.  But I think he's referring to something deeper than knowledge or thought.  He is referring to the conscious mind and its awareness, as opposed to the subconscious, the real driver of our lives.  Our society over-values knowledge and awareness to a level where the cerebral overtakes our lives.
I know this is a huge issue and one open to debate.  I welcome other interpretations.
I rarely quote the Bible these days, but there is a great truth in the Book of Ecclesiastes, Chapter I, Verse 18:
"For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth  knowledge increaseth sorrow".