Over Hill And Dale Part 12

By this time I was sweltering and near to fainting with the searing heat. The wretched machine was still blasting out fiery hot air, the windows were misted over with condensation, the metal frames of the chairs were scorching, and the wretched suit was sticking to me. The suit's lining containing 'nine billion microscopic pores per square inch, each one 10,000 times smaller than a rain drop' was beginning to steam. I just had to get out.

"Canon Williams," I panted, 'if you would excuse me, I do have another appointment to get to."

"Oh yes, of course," replied the cleric. "Are you feeling quite all right, Mr. Phinn? You look decidedly flushed."

"I'm fine, thank you, Canon," I puffed, 'but I must be off."

"Well, that was a most satisfactory conclusion to the morning, don't you think? I just know that Miss Barnes will be a great success and I can see that Dr. Trollop is delighted with such a keen and committed addition to his staff." The Headmaster nodded his head lugubriously like a tortoise and gave a thin smile. Clearly heat had no more effect upon him than extreme cold.

"She was certainly the best of the three," the parent-governor said. "She very nearly convinced me of the usefulness of cla.s.sics and, of course, when she mentioned Jesus, she certainly had you hooked, Canon Williams."

"Well, she suited me," concluded Councillor Peterson, stressing the word 'suited'. "When I Just clapped eyes on 'er I thowt she'd not be up to t'job but she 'as a lot about her, that young woman, and I reckon she'll do champion." Then he turned in my direction and his fat face broke into a great smile. "And I could see that Mester Phinn, here, liked the cut of her cloth, didn't you, Mester Phinn?" I did not say anything but smiled and headed for the door and the fresh air.

As I walked to the car I pa.s.sed again the great bronze statue of the school's founder which dominated the main entrance. I paused and stared up for a moment at Sir Cosmo, standing proudly on his large plinth, hands on hips, legs apart and chin jutting out like a mastiff about to pounce. Something seemed strangely familiar about the figure. I looked more closely. Yes, it was the suit he was wearing. Sir Cosmo was dressed in a suit with wide curved lapels, heavy cuffs and large b.u.t.tons. I guess he had done his shopping at Fritters of Fettlesham.

II.

The name, Sunny Grove Secondary Modern School, was singularly inappropriate. It was a grim, towering, blackened building surrounded by high brick walls and set in a depressing inner-city environment of dirt and noise. From the high windows, shabby factory premises and derelict land could be seen by those pupils tall enough to peer through the grimy gla.s.s. Row upon row of terraced houses surrounded the school; street after street of grey, gloomy buildings. The few houses that had been built in the last twenty years had acquired a look of drabness and neglect. Even the air had a sooty, dusty taste. It was a depressing scene of litter-strewn roads, graffiti-covered walls, windowless bus shelters a landscape devoid of trees and empty of colour. The bright morning sunshine did little to make the scene less bleak. The previous term I had marvelled at the awesome view from Hawksrill Primary School the great craggy fells, steep-sided gorges, trickling silver streams, l.u.s.trous pine forests, rolling green pastures and purple moors. It was a world away.

Sunny Grove would have been an ideal setting for a film version of a d.i.c.kens' novel. It resembled one of those dark and forbidding inst.i.tutions described in Hard Times or Nicholas Nickleby. I could imagine Mr. McChoak.u.mchild, the heartless teacher, or Wackford Squeers, the brutal Headmaster of Dotheboys Hall, feeling very much at home here. I was directed across the school playground by a large arrow, following the instructions for all visitors to report to reception. It was just after nine o'clock and the school a.s.sembly was in full flow. Hearing the boys singing the hymn based on Blake's poem "Jerusalem', I thought to myself how apt were the lines: And was Jerusalem builded here Among those dark satanic mills?

As I turned a corner, I b.u.mped into a small, grubby-looking boy of about eleven or twelve who was creeping around the side of the school, as if trying to escape from someone. He had long, lank hair, an unhealthy pallor to his skin and was dressed in a dirty blazer and grey flannel trousers far too big for him. The boy looked up at me with a frightened wide-eyed expression like that of a rabbit caught in a trap.

"h.e.l.lo," I said. He continued to gawp at me. "Shouldn't you be in school?" He nodded. "Well, come along then, you can show me the way to the school office." I motioned him to go before me. Head down and dragging his feet, the boy turned reluctantly towards the school entrance.

The window in the gla.s.s-fronted reception desk slid back.

"Good morning, may I help you?" a woman enquired. Then, catching sight of the pupil skulking behind me, she reached for a large, red book which she flicked open. On the cover was written in large letters: pupils arriving late. "Excuse me a moment." She craned her neck to get a better view of the boy. "Third time late this week, Justin," she declared, shaking her head and writing down his name.

"Yes, miss."

"And what's the excuse this time?"

"Miss, I had to run an errand."

"And where should you be first period?"

"PE, miss," whispered the pupil.

"Well, you've missed a.s.sembly. You had better go straight to your first lesson." The little boy scurried off. The woman turned her attention back to me. "I'm sorry about that. Now, may I help you?"

"Yes," I replied, "I have an appointment with the Head-teacher. My name is Mr. Phinn and I'm from the Education Office."

"If you would like to take a seat, Mr. Phinn, I will see if Mr. Fenton's available. I think he should be just about out of a.s.sembly by now."

A moment later the Headteacher emerged via the school office and held out a large hand. I had seen his face over many a dry stone wall, driving a hundred tractors along the winding country roads, staring stern-faced at sheep auctions, herding sluggish cattle along the farm tracks. It was a Dalesman's face: a thatch of thick, grey hair over a broad, creased brow, weathered features, heavy moustache and brown, good-humoured eyes.

"Good to see you, Mr. Phinn," he said. "Come along in."

I followed the Headteacher into a large, comfortable room. The heavy, dark, wooden bookcases lining three walls were crammed with books, and the rest of the room was filled with a large oak desk and leather armchair, two threadbare easy chairs, three ancient-looking filing cabinets and a small table piled high with reports and files.

"Come in, come in," he said, ushering me ahead of him. He skirted around the two easy chairs and small table and placed himself squarely behind his desk on the large leather chair. "Were your ears burning this weekend, Mr. Phinn, by any chance? I was preaching at Hawksrill Methodist Chapel last Sunday and Mrs. Beighton and Mrs. Brown -we call them "the merry widows" were singing your praises. I'm a lay preacher, you know, for my sins. Anyhow, I was chatting to them after the service and your name came up. I believe you visited the school last term. It's a lovely spot up there, isn't it?" How strange, I thought, when I had only been thinking of the place myself five minutes earlier.

Mr. Fenton chatted on amiably and inconsequentially for a further five minutes, without stopping for a reply. Then, when a pause came and I endeavoured to respond, he jumped up, negotiated the chairs and the table again and disappeared out of the door. A minute later he was back with a tray of coffee. "I'd forget my head if it wasn't screwed on. Now then, Mr. Phinn, you're not here to talk about Hawksrill and my preaching. Shall we get down to business?"

For the first part of the morning I sat with the Headteacher to look through the examination results and discuss strategies for improvement. The pupils' performance was low compared with the grammar school's across town, but it had been steadily improving over the past few years and Mr. Fenton was justifiably proud of this achievement. I soon found that he had strong views which he was not afraid of expressing. When he spoke about his pupils, his dark eyes lit up with a sort of missionary zeal. Then came the sermon.

"The boys arrive here at eleven, Mr. Phinn, having failed their eleven-plus examination. Their parents will have received a letter from the Education Office informing them that their son has not reached the required standard to qualify for a place at the grammar school. In effect, these children will have been deemed to be failures. Some parents have promised their son a bike ifhe pa.s.ses, a sort of misguided incentive to encourage him to work harder perhaps. The bike is not now forthcoming, of course. Many of the boys arrive here, therefore, under-confident, with low self-esteem. Some have seen their best friends heading up the hill in grammar school blazer and gold badge while they have been heading downhill. Our job, Mr. Phinn, first and foremost, is to build up their confidence and self-esteem, continue to have high expectations for them and be sure they know, give them maximum support and encouragement, develop their social skills and qualities of character to enable them to enter the world feeling good about themselves. I want them to use their time at Sunny Grove so they develop into well-rounded young people with courage, tolerance, strong convictions, lively enquiring minds and a sense of humour." He stopped suddenly. "I really am sorry, Mr. Phinn," he said, "I got carried away. I'm sure you don't need to be told all this. I must sound incredibly pompous. I don't mean to be, but I do feel so pa.s.sionately about this and if I have a captive audience .. . It's the Methodist lay preacher in me, I guess."

"That's quite all right, Mr. Fenton," I replied. "I really do enjoy listening to someone else holding forth about education."

"Well, I am sure you are not here for a sermon from me. You'll have to visit Hawksrill Chapel for that. Let's have a tour of the school and then I have arranged for you to join some English and modern language lessons for the remainder of the day. I believe you said in your letter that you would be reporting on the teaching and learning."

Sunny Grove Secondary Modern School was built at the turn of the century. It was a substantial, three-storey edifice of red brick built around a central quadrangle. Movement about the school was by means of a wide, green-tiled corridor running round this quadrangle. Cla.s.srooms, which formed a square around the central paved courtyard on the ground floor, had hard wooden floors and high, beamed ceilings. The windows facing the corridor extended down past waist level, enabling the Headmasters of old to patrol the school each morning, cane in hand, and peer into each cla.s.sroom to ensure the pupils had their noses to the grindstone. Invariably, they would have been hard men who would impose harsh discipline. Punctuality, silence, obedience and cleanliness would have been their bywords and if they could get the pupils placed in their charge to learn to read and write, add up, fear G.o.d and know their station in life, so much the better. The windows facing the street were high, thus preventing any inattentive pupil from staring at the outside world and dreaming.

The school was very different now. Paintwork was in bright blues and greens, and display boards, which stretched the full length of the corridor, were covered in line drawings, paintings, photographs and children's writing. Floors had a clean and polished look, the bra.s.s door handles sparkled and there was not a sign of graffiti or litter. Everything looked cheerful and orderly. The quadrangle was now an attractive and informal lawned area with ornamental trees, shrubs and a small pond. There were garden benches and picnic tables and two large modern sculptures.

Following our tour of the building, I headed for the first lesson, to see Mr. Armstrong, Head of the Modern Foreign Language Department, with a group of thirty thirteen-year-old boys.

Mr. Armstrong was a pink-faced, weak-jawed individual of indeterminate age. As I entered the cla.s.sroom and took a seat at the back, he surveyed me morosely with the pale grey eyes of a fish glimpsed at the bottom of a pond. He moved to the blackboard, stooping heavily, as though carrying some great invisible weight on his shoulders.

"Now, where were we?" he asked the apparently disinterested and extremely pa.s.sive group of adolescents, most of whom appeared to be staring vacantly into s.p.a.ce or were slumped, as if drugged, over their desks. "Ah, yes," he continued, not getting or indeed expecting a response. He then began to chant: "Je vais I'm going nous allons we're going tu vas you're going vous allez you're going il va he's going Us vont they're going, masculine elk va she's going elks vont they're going, feminine on va one's going."

I've only just arrived, I thought to myself, but I wished that this one was going, I really do. The teacher continued to drone on in such a soporific tone of voice that I felt like joining the rest of the drooping listeners. My mind began to wander and my eyelids became heavy. I was brought out of my reverie by a large, thin-faced boy who was sitting next to me.

"Do you speak any foreign languages?" he whispered.

"Yes, I do," I replied in an undertone.

"Do you speak German?"

"Yes."

"And do you speak French?"

"Yes, I do."

He thought for a moment, surveyed the teacher still chanting at the front, and then nodded in his direction. "Which is this, then?" he asked.

The second visit of the day, to an English lesson with thirty-five eleven-year-old boys, proved to be as tedious as the first and, at times, quite bizarre. The teach era Mr. Swan, was an extremely frail-looking old man with wild, wiry grey hair and a strangely flat face. He was dressed in a threadbare sports jacket with leather patches, shiny flannel trousers and a mustard-coloured waistcoat. The pupils had been asked to learn a list of collective nouns and were being tested on them. This exercise seemed to me to have very little relevance or value, bearing in mind the low literacy level of the pupils. They would have been much better occupied, in my opinion, developing their skills in reading and in writing clearly and accurately instead of chanting the various collective nouns.

"The collective noun for sheep?" barked the teacher, strutting between the desks.

"Flock," chorused the cla.s.s.

"Cattle?"

"Herd."

"Sailors?"

"Crew."

This went on for some time until the nouns became rather more esoteric.

"The collective noun for foxes?" cried Mr. Swan.

"Skulk," shouted back the children.

"Cats?"

"Clouder."

"Leopards?"

"Leap."

"The collective noun for snipe?" shouted the teacher. There was no response. I had no idea either. "Wisp," he informed us, writing the word in large capital letters on the blackboard. "Skylarks?" There was another silence. "Exultation." The word was added to the other. "What about rhinoceros?" Still no response. "Crash!" he exclaimed. "Not a lot of people know that."

Well, I certainly didn't, I said to myself. "Crash' would be a very appropriate collective noun to describe a group of bores, I thought. "A crash of bores'. I imagined with horror a whole school full of Mr. Swans. When and how would these youngsters ever apply this knowledge? "Oh, look, our mam, there's a wisp of snipe and an exultation of skylarks flying over that clouder of cats!"

When the pupils had settled down to tackle a very simple and deeply uninspiring comprehension exercise on gla.s.s production in St. Helens, I moved around the cla.s.s examining their books, listening to them read and testing them on their spellings and knowledge of grammar and punctuation. Mr. Swan observed me, stony-faced, from behind his desk. Standards were very low indeed.

Justin, the little late-comer I had met earlier that morning, sat in the corner away from the others, looking nervous and confused. I sat down next to him.

"May I look at your book?" I asked gently.

"Yes, sir," he whispered, pushing a dog-eared exercise book in my direction. He watched me with that frightened, wide-eyed look on his face. I read from the first page an account ent.i.tled "Myself.

"Sir, we had to write that for Mr. Swan when we came up to this school," he explained quietly. "Sir, so he could get to know a bit about us, sir. It's not very good. I'm not much good at writing, sir." I found the description of himself immensely sad.

I'm not much good at anything really I like art but am not much good. I am in the bottom set for evrything and I've not really got eny friends. I don't really like school, Id like a bike When I leave school, Id like to work in a bread fac try I like the smell of bread baking, you get free bread if you work in a bread fac try The man next door told me that.

The teacher's comment at the bottom read: "Untidy work. Watch your spellings. Remember full stops." The boy was given a grade of two out of ten.

"It's not bad at all this, Justin," I said, staring into his large, wide eyes. "You just need to do a bit of work on the spellings and put in your full stops." He nodded slowly. I went through his work with him. "Now, tonight when you get home, you copy out carefully your next draft of this account. Will you do that?" He nodded. "You know, I worked in a bread factory once, when I was a student, and you're right about the smell of freshly baked bread. It is a wonderful smell. My job was to take the tins out of a huge oven with a long pole. I wasn't very good at it. And you are right, we did get free bread."

He smiled. "Sir, are you learning how to be a teacher?"

"No," I replied. "I've been a teacher though."

"Can you come and teach in this school?" he asked.

"No, I can't do that," I said. "I'm a school inspector now."

"I don't suppose you'd want to teach in a place like this, anyway," he told me, gazing up with his wide-eyed look.

I gave Mr. Swan some rather blunt feedback at the end of the lesson when the pupils had departed for lunch. There was little evidence in the exercise books that his pupils had improved at all in terms of spelling, punctuation and presentation in their writing during the half a term he had been teaching them. There were a few short accounts, an essay, a couple of simple comprehension exercises and no poetry. Whilst there were plenty of critical comments in red biro at the end of the work, there were no suggestions about how the pupils might improve. I explained that I saw little value in teaching the boys about collective nouns when they did not have the first idea what a noun actually was, and many were incapable of spelling the very simplest of words or using the full stop correctly.

"Well, I don't agree," he said, bristling at the criticism. "I think that a knowledge of the different collective nouns is very important."

"Why?"

"It's useful for them to know these things."

"And when would the pupils be in a position to apply this extensive knowledge of the collective noun?" I was getting irritated by the man's manner.

"That's beside the point. It's part of our cultural heritage. Anyway, Mr. Phinn, these boys are very weak academically. I mean, what can you expect?"

"The moon?" I replied.

"I beg your pardon?"

"Sir Alex Clegg, former Chief Education Officer of the West Riding of Yorkshire, once said that "the good teacher expects the moon"."

15.8.

Mr. Swan smiled cynically and there was a long, deep in-drawing of breath. "Did he indeed?"

"And do you set homework?" I asked.

"Homework? No, I do not set homework. What is the point? These boys would never do homework."

"Well, I would disagree!"

"Mr. Phinn, have you ever taught pupils like this?"

"Yes, I have."

"Well, I've taught them for rather longer, I think. They're not your grammar school high-fliers, you know. These lads will end up in manual jobs, that's if they're lucky, and not become university professors and brain surgeons. You can't make silk purses out of sows' ears. It's all very weD school inspectors coming in telling teachers what they should and shouldn't do, they don't have to do it. Anyway, I'm only here to help the school out."

"In what way?" I asked.

"I took early retirement a few years ago but was asked to come in to take the cla.s.ses of Mrs. Simkins who is on maternity leave. You just can't get teachers to come in to take this sort of pupil. I'm doing the school a favour, if you must know, and precious little thanks I appear to be getting for it."

"Really." Some favour I thought. "And what is the development of this lesson?"

"How do you mean?" His face was white, his mouth tight with displeasure.

"Having got the pupils to learn the various collective nouns, what do you do next?"

"I teach them that the collective noun always takes the singular form of the verb." He then launched into a diatribe. "You hear so much misuse of the English language on the television and radio. People seem incapable of speaking correctly. Newspapers are full of spelling errors. Teachers come out of college these days with no training in grammar.

I blame all those trendy methods teachers have been forced to use. I never took any notice of the hare-brained ideas churned out by lecturers and inspectors." I could see by his expression that he felt I was part and parcel of this trendy movement.

I sighed. "But you are dealing with a group of boys, Mr. Swan, who have very limited language skills. They need to develop their command of basic reading and writing through clear, structured and appropriate work."

He seemed undaunted by my comments. "Well, that's what I've just been saying, isn't it? They are incapable. These boys are very weak academically. In fact, this cla.s.s are the weakest in the year."