Every Loser Wins, Or How I Became An Academic

When did I first realise that I was destined for a career in academia? Obviously as teacher of sorts I should add some qualifiers: 'career' is a hollow joke and I'm not entirely convinced I'm really an academic, so perhaps the question is 'when did I realise that I was unsuited to what people habitually refer to as normality?.

A few clues appeared early on. I recall being invited to a meeting with the head teacher and my parents on the subject of reading. Aged 8, I'd exhausted the school's entire stock. I'm not sure I understood it all, but I'd read it. I gather that a donation was secured and more boring books about children learning practical and moral lessons were procured. A similar thing happened at the local library a few years later. I moved on to the adults' books and – perhaps slightly weirdly – decided I may as well tackle them alphabetically. The advantage of this was that I became very widely read, though not very discerning. Additionally, some extremely heated discussions ensued when my parents – hugely intellectual but entirely uninterested in fiction – took offence at some content. They objected to science fiction in its entirety, as well as anything with bad language in. Imagine their displeasure when they found me tucking into an SF novel whose protagonist was called Porno! (If anyone can tell me what that title was, I'd be very grateful). Having 4 sisters and a brother, I also worked my way through the complete works of Enid Blyton and similar authors, and now have an unparalleled though perhaps slightly misleading understanding of a) boarding schools and b) horses.

I don't have any regrets about finding science fiction early. After reading some pulp stuff about rockets, I got to B in the adult section and found Douglas Adams and JG Ballard, which made me realise that science fiction wasn't really about technical details and dematerialisation, but about the possibilities and horrors of what we're already doing to each other: utopians and dystopians using future frameworks to hold up a mirror to capitalism, imperialism and all sorts of other -isms. And being entirely indiscriminate, I read all the sub-genres and strands going. I also read Catherine Cookson and Jilly Cooper and Miss Read and all sorts of other things you wouldn't expect a schooled to be reading, which is why I'm not a total snob.

I know that beyond your socially-constructed definitions of quality (and I do think there are differences in quality between say Gawain and Goldfinger), there are socially-constructed contexts and uses for all sorts of text that are all worth taking seriously (one of my friends told me all about Stalag Fiction: Hebrew-language Nazi concentration camp erotica, so nothing about human behaviour gives me the vapours any more.

Playtime at school was rather binary: I was either reading a book or being beaten up, usually for reading a book, which apparently was an outward sign of being 'bent' (teenagers then weren't known for their liberal qualities) or a coping strategy for being bad at sport. After a while the thugs got bored and it was accepted that as long as I kicked the ball back when it came near me, my presence would be tolerated. It also led to another distinct occasion on which I realised that I wasn't Normal. Not having a VCR at home (the devil's work) I headed off to a mate's house to spend an entire day watching Vietnam movies. After taking four hours to watch Full Metal Jacket because they kept rewinding it to view heads being blown off in spectacular fashion, I noticed that I wasn't watching it for the same reasons. My friends liked a) gory deaths and b) spotting continuity errors. I didn't care for the explosions but was thrilled by the idea of an anti-war war movie, even one which didn't care about the Vietnamese in the slightest (as Caroline Magennis says, this is why academics can't have nice things – they can't help picking holes in them). I remember sitting there wondering why it felt like my friends and I were watching two different movies: even now I run sessions on reader-response with students in which we talk about where their interpretations come from and why extreme boredom is a perfectly acceptable response to a text as long as you're prepared to analyse its origins.

After a while (a very, very long while: 3 high schools and a university entrance via the Clearing system later), the advantages of doing nothing but read became apparent academically. OK, I lacked any social skills whatsoever and couldn't keep up with a bronchitic slug and was constantly disappointed by the real world's lack of style, manners and car chases, but I had acquired some critical faculties independent of the philistinism of the educational system and national curriculum. I'd read all of Jane Austen because she was near the start of the alphabet, not because I'd been told her work was Classic and Important. Rather than being turned off by veiled comments delivered over tea, I found a sarcastic, worried and witty voice which had plenty to say to me despite me being very far removed from stately homes and muddy petticoats.

Getting to university after this kind of self-education meant that I was in the right frame of mind to work independently, to resist regurgitating the opinions of others, and to dive heading into any text I was asked to read, then read even more off-piste. It didn't feel like work: Clarissa led to Pamela led to Shamela; Shakespeare led to Gammer Gurton's Needle, The Chester Noah Play and all the other Mystery Plays, but also to Edna St. Vincent Millay, the Harlem Renaissance, and Anne Lister; the Brontes led to Radcliffe and Beckford and Edgeworth, Kate Roberts and Rose Macaulay… It also helped that Bangor University's English department, while being fairly conservative in many ways, was packed with interesting tutors who encouraged people to head off into the unknown, and to take chances: I acquired an education in philosophy, performed (terribly) on stage, got some rudimentary Welsh and ended up doing an MA and PhD. The result is that I still spot odd things and patterns in texts and how people relate to them, but now I get paid to point them out to other people rather than beaten up. Take that, former classmates!

Which is all a long-winded way of saying: if any of this sounds like you, you have a bright future as an academic ahead of you. Well, a future anyway. Wait 'til I tell you about the admin. You'll love that bit.

PS: recent reading recommendations: I've just read Rose Macaulay's The Towers of Trebizond and Shirley Jackson's We Have Always Lived in the Castle. The former seems like a slightly dotty period piece, with one of the most famous first lines ever:

“Take my camel, dear,' said my aunt Dot, climbing down from that animal on her return from high Mass.”

It's on oddity which mixes Brits-abroad comedy, a tinge of Cold War fear, an obsessive interest in the minutiae of relations between Anglo-Catholics, ordinary Anglicans, Catholics and Muslims, which suddenly and belatedly takes a very dark turn. Funny and very moving. Jackson's novel isn't funny at all. I picked it up on a whim and was hooked immediately. It manages to combine light, conversational style with the darkest of psychologies: the 'secret' can be guessed within the opening pages but it's a horrifying, Gothic novel like distilled Faulkner.

I'm going back to random reading over the summer: I've a shelf or two of old orange Penguins. I've put them in order of publication and I've started at the beginning. Next up is Rex Warner's The Aerodrome. 

Tales from the Christian Madrasas

Now that Mr Gove tells us that we're to look out for Extremists and Fundamentalists in schools, the kind of people who don't teach British Values, I start to wonder which of my teachers I should report to Special Branch. Come to think of it though, they were all white and Christian, which doesn't count. Nor, apparently, do the Market Fundamentalists to whom the government has handed schools. Seriously, people: we've given the education of our schools into the hands of liars, spivs, tax-evaders, low-pay merchants and con-men. Remember Robocop, and the police strike called because public order was being privatised? This is far more worrying. Just wait until your kids learn about slavery in their Corpo-School: "profits must be maximised. Labour costs need to be kept down. They got subsidised food, free accommodation and free travel to America. What's not to like?".

But I digress. Back to my schools. I was taught by the Sisters of Mercy, the Christian Brothers, some lay Catholics in a mixed comprehensive – and educational and social oasis compared to the other places I attended – and by the Benedictines. Segregation? Yes. Violence? Yes, official and unofficial. Sister Rosario wielded a rounders bat which was deployed for such sins as sheltering in the porch from driving rain or having a loose tie. Many years later, I was caned once for allowing a much older group to mess around in the library - they got off scot-free because they played rugby. A library, I should point out, that was subsequently closed and sold off because hey, schools don't need books! (I should confess that a certain English teacher 'dropped' the keys a night before it was stripped bare, allowing me to remove a couple of wheelbarrows-full of select favourites). The vicious nature of the official school regime was, predictably, reproduced unofficially amongst the pupils, who internalised the system's use of random terror to enforce a hierarchy.

Fundamentalism? Certainly. It was accepted that non-Catholics existed, but they weren't discussed. The roots of our religion were not examined, nor were our practices. Things were true (what we did and/or believed) or they were Not True (anything else). Debate was not on the curriculum. At the Benedictine school, I came to believe that my name was Shutup, as that's how I was habitually addressed. Religion was a matter of repetition, not examination or belief, and it informed much more than theological matters. Attitudes towards women, social structures, the kinds of responsibilities we had – or not – to our fellow humans, morality, politics…all filtered through a prism of rigid, undemocratic and unforgiving dogma.

Ah, but the teaching standards were rigorous? I'm afraid not. The Sisters of Mercy couldn't spell. The Christian Brothers helped me achieve 4% in a maths exam, having spent an entire term putting me in detention for refusing to copy out an exercise book neatly before I was allowed another one. The Benedictines divided teaching between wholly unqualified and bitter monks and wholly unqualified lay teachers, many of whom were failing to cope with alcoholism, with two massively inspirational exceptions. You haven't lived until you've witnessed an ex-SAS monk violently attack his colleagues and pupils while in the midst of an alcohol-fuelled crisis. I was made to take a Latin A-level. Despite being the only person in the class, I barely passed, having repeatedly pointed out that I didn't actually know any Latin at all. Whole subjects were passed over in silence: politics, citizenship, and in particular sex education, which consisted of one diagram in one book over the course of 7 years of secondary education.

Were we socially isolated? Yes - as Catholics the whole way, and as a sex except for a short and civilised sojourn in a comprehensive school. The other schools were like poor-quality madrases. Ritual performances formed the mainstay of the educational process, whether that was religious services, violence, sport or humiliation. Rigid hierarchies were encouraged officially and amongst the pupils, with savage punishments for those who couldn't or wouldn't conform (the homosexuals, non-sporty types, readers, ethnic minorities, non-believers). Rules were both cruel and arbitrary, designed seemingly to enforce control rather than ensure safety and development. In particular, I remember being held down by the prefects while the headmaster cut my hair, to which he'd taken exception. This was the day before a university interview. He claimed it was 'too long', despite several of his favourites sporting much longer styles. So I turned up at Cambridge looking like a battered mess. I also had an interview at Derby University. The lovely head of English ended our chat by saying 'We'll definitely take you. You're nothing like your head's reference indicates'. Turns out the vindictive bastard had written that I didn't deserve a place at university at all because I was a lazy troublemaker. I didn't go to Derby but I'll always be grateful. A year later, the school was closed down, amidst scandal aplenty on matters sexual and educational.

The result is that these schools produced two types of people on the whole: triumphant conformists who ruled the roost and broken conformists who got by, or ensured their survival by meting out to others what was meted out to them. None of us were rounded individuals equipped to cope with a world which wasn't structured or simple. No doubt the bullies and conformists found niches in which these skills served them well (such as in politics), but I suspect a lot more struggled outside. We weren't trained to empathise, to care for others, to respect a diversity of views, to argue for what we believed rather than to simply insist on its truth. we were good at put-downs, at excluding the weak and the different. Our world was Manichaean. Simple. Predictable even in the areas which were arbitrary. I – and I suspect many others – were emotionally and intellectually stunted in a variety of ways, and it took many years to adjust to the outside world, to a barely-known family, and to catch up with all the things we could have learned instead of being indoctrinated. I had some advantages - having been to a number of schools, I was used to making my own way, keeping quiet and disappearing at opportune moments, or simply enduring. I found my salvation, too, in books which offered an infinite range of alternatives, but also provided templates for life inside and outside the institutions. And I also had a reserve of bloody-mindedness of my own, from some unknown source. Perhaps I'd internalised the interminable stories of martyrs and resisters and turned it against them, because I found that there were limits to what I'd withstand or witness without intervening, whatever the consequences. I'm still shy and nervous about most things, but I do still have those limits.

Reading back, this is way too self-obsessed, too narcissistic (and these are just the highlights). Apologies for that. But I think there is a wider point just about detectable. My experiences made me a secularist and a socialist. I don't think there's any excuse for monocultural, unsupervised education, whether it's religious, single-sex or class-segregated by class. Such places reinforce social and intellectual isolation. They don't bolster genuinely held beliefs by justifying them: they enforce them. They produce rigid thinkers rather than reflective ones, people incapable of coping with a world that doesn't automatically find room for them. They may well attempt to reproduce the structures of feeling enforced at such schools in their adult lives, with often disastrous consequences for themselves and others.

When I'm dictator for life, there will be no religious schools, no fee-paying schools, no segregated schools. Religious and political indoctrination can be carried on at home if required, and the kids will be able to test such beliefs in the cauldron of a secular, democratic education in which they meet people of all classes, creeds, sexualities and sexes rather than being protected from reality by a damaging wall of separation and suspicion.

I only know one person from my schooldays now, from the comprehensive I briefly attended. We exchange Christmas cards. As to the rest: I occasionally Google staff and students in the fond hope that they're dead or imprisoned. So I guess I'm not entirely recovered yet…

More nostalgic educational tales

My favourite school was the comprehensive one in Stoke. It had its fair share of weirdos - like the kid later caught on CCTV…nicking CCTV cameras from a lorry.

The teachers were on the odd side too. There was the very camp art teacher who asked me, after the first class, whether I normally wore spectacles. I knew I couldn't draw, but that was a bit much. He tested my eyesight and then suggested that 'art wasn't really for' me and excused me for the rest of my time there. Though I enjoyed textiles - I've still got the kite and shorts I made, and the scars  from sewing the kite to my leg while I was putting the final touches to it. Shame he didn't let me off bloody technical drawing, woodwork and metalwork too.

Another rather wittily told my parents that my exam result 'didn't reflect the standard of [Vole's] work' - turned out I'd come 3rd rather than bottom, after handing in precisely no homework and using class time as an opportunity to hone my punning skills.
Best of all was the metalwork teacher. Always a bit handy with sharp or heavy objects and possessing the breath of Satan's goats, he eventually got a bit desperate. Disappearing from class one day, it turned out that he'd sent a note to Tesco demanding money or he'd put glass in the yogurts. The way I heard it, the court decided he was mad rather than bad, as he'd put his home address on the note, though this may be an urban myth. Still, he taught me to make a passable screwdriver, shiv and other weapons which came in very useful on the school bus (in self-defence, obviously). That scene was bad, man.

Hands off our schools

I'm not a parent, as far as I know (joke, mother), but y'know, kids are the future and all that. 


So I'm a bit worried by the government's plan to privatise 'free' schools from local democratic control. Michael Gove's big idea is to let all schools run themselves or pay companies to do it for them. Parents unhappy with their kids' school can set up a new one, to be run by private companies (even though this means there'll be wasted capacity). 


I like local authority control because: a) I can vote against a party which is screwing it up, and hopefully turf them out b) a school backed by a big council can get better deals on services than a single school c) I don't want schools to become profit-centres for businesses d) 'free' schools are a way for a small group of loudmouths to get rid of the poor, dark, disabled and annoying kids.
e) local authorities will make decisions which are right (hopefully) for the community, not to privilege a small bunch who shout loudly. Also, it's part of this 'big society' thing, which is a huge red herring for the middle classes. The Tories/Lib Dems aren't offering us control over the really important stuff - interest rates, regulating the financial sector, defence policy, environmental regulation, transport etc. They simply want to be left to get on with the stuff that really benefits their elite group, while middle class, Daily Mail-reading parents think they're 'empowered' by negotiating with the lawyers and accountant from the hard-nosed companies (Capita? Securicor? Serco? the usual suspects, anyway) who will run these schools. 


It's privatisation+deceit.


I'm also not impressed by government dictating state school policy with a 66% privately-educated cabinet, most of them multimillionaires (Cameron, Clegg, Osborne to name just some) and most of whose kids are at private schools. Porridge for us, caviar for them. 


If your kid's school is crap, get involved and improve it. Don't buy yourself out of it, with your own money or with ours. Read this.

Too cool for Schule?

I spent some of Monday in a German state high school. Ladies and gentlemen, I was stunned (by them) and ashamed (by us). There were no laptops, no interactive whiteboards, relatively few accoutrements of the kind we've come to expect here.

There were incredibly enthusiastic (and glamorous) teachers with a lot more freedom over the curriculum, an inspirational manner, and a range of students who seemed range from interested to very interested. Completely fluent in English, many were also equally fluent in Spanish and Japanese. They were an elite lot - being educated bilingually in English and German, but this was still a state school. My friends, they could easily have coped with the curriculum at my university, and in some cases actually were doing very similar things. I did try to encourage them to apply to this august institution, but their teacher implied that there are better places to choose - perhaps because I'd informed her of recent changes.

How have we gone so wrong? Why do we have an education system designed to churn out mobile phone salesmen and drones when clearly any child can achieve better when given the attention, resources and encouragement. Sure, parental aspiration helps, but it was plain to me that the average in this school was far higher than the average in Britain.

The essential difference, it seems, is that these German students were explicitly encouraged to become independent thinkers - research, synthesis and creativity were built in to every class, whereas our students are trapped by league tables, centralisation and standardisation, forcing teachers to teach-to-the-test. The results are obvious at university entry-level: many students have lost whatever love of literature and study they may have had. Over-dependence on teachers, lecture notes and study guides is widespread, and it takes a lot to regain enthusiasm, or to inspire people - something I intend to work on this year.

What were your experiences of school? And how should I change my approach to, say, Shakespeare or critical theory?

This is what little girls are made of

This is what a few little girls did for their homework - invented ways to kill a classmate. 'Sugar and spice and all things nice'. The soundtrack (Hannah Montana) is probably the worst feature of the affair. Still, their artistic skills are remarkable - or South Park's makers are working for about 20 minutes a week.

Mind you, I'm imagining inventive ways to despatch the students who've tortured to death the English language, in the essays I'm marking.