MY PARENTS DIVORCED before I was six. During the years when my father worked in America, I came to think of my stepfather as my real father, and it seemed only natural then that I should take his surname. Problems surfaced when my father returned to Britain and, after much bitter wrangling between my parents, my surname — which had never been legally changed — was returned to what it had originally been.
By then that name seemed strange to me. I was 11 and just starting secondary school with a name that I was not used to. I asked my mother if I could change it back. I approached my teachers and explained that although I would be Gilbert on the register, I wanted to be called by another surname. My teachers were sympathetic and agreed. My classmates were confused. Then my father learnt about what was going on and my name was changed back to Gilbert. A cat-and-mouse game thus began whereby I seemed to have a different name every week. As a test of my loyalty, I was constantly called upon to express my desire to use the name of the parent I was with.
I became confused and upset. I didn’t know what I wanted to be called and, at a fundamental level, didn’t know who I was. Now I am glad that my father fought to keep my surname, but at the time I didn’t understand his motivations.
The only neutral person I could confide in was my housemaster at school. One afternoon, in his study, after years of bottling up my feelings, I blurted everything out. I was sobbing by the time I had finished. Talking to him made a big difference. I knew I was talking about a taboo subject, but rather than being struck by lightning, I found that a weight had been lifted. By articulating my worries, by shaping the inchoate anxieties that I felt into words, I was able to come to terms with my feelings.
I recalled this incident when I was writing my book, I’m A Teacher, Get Me Out Of Here!, which details my early career as a teacher in a couple of inner-city schools, where I encountered some tricky situations and some very difficult children. Writing about this made me search for reasons why I became a teacher.
It was then that I remembered the way my housemaster had listened to me and the therapeutic value of talking to him. This short talk profoundly changed the direction of my life; it led me to think that words were magical, that problems could be solved by human interaction, that teachers were there to help.
That must be the first reason why I went into teaching. I wanted to help. The poor, misguided soul that I was believed that I could cure society’s ills by listening to disaffected youths. Now that I have taught for more than ten years in various London comprehensives, a part of me still believes this, but only a small part.
Times have changed a great deal since I went to school in the early 1980s. Teachers are under pressure to get results, and results are usually put first in most institutions. I know this from bitter experience as an English teacher. When I started teaching in the early 1990s, league tables were unheard of and most teachers did not think much about their classes’ results. This changed when the first league tables were published in 1992. I remember the day I learnt that I was teaching in a school which was officially the worst in England — only 3 per cent of students achieved five or more GCSEs at A-C grades.
Most of the staff, as they sat amid exercise books in the dog-eared staffroom, hunched over chipped mugs of coffee, were unutterably glum. No one said much. Only one jokey teacher alleviated the gloom by pronouncing proudly: “We are like Millwall. We’re bottom of the league but we’re hard.”
It was tough teaching in that school at that time because it felt as though all the staff’s efforts to educate the underprivileged, difficult children who filled its classrooms counted for nothing and were not recognised. Even worse, we were pilloried in the press because of our low ranking. The way that society viewed schools like these made me revise my views about wanting to be a parent to troubled children, which was my initial reason for joining the school. I saw that I would get no thanks for this, and would become unhappy if I persisted with this altruistic attitude.
So I changed. Toughened up, one might say. I left the inner-city school and taught at a succession of schools where results were pretty good. Now I keep a vigilant eye on my results, because I have to. As a result, I find that sometimes my head is in conflict with my heart. I know that most students who want to study English at A level benefit from the experience, but I am also aware that some will find A level difficult and will fail to get a good grade. The idealistic teacher in me would like to sign such students on to the A-level course, but the hardened realist with a beady eye on his results exclaims: “No, no! They are bound to land up with a rotten grade. Don’t let them on the course.”
This sort of conflict occurs a lot today. What is best for the student is not necessarily best for the institution that wants to be top of the league tables. The obsession with results makes teachers forget why they are teaching.
Some of the greatest successes I have achieved in teaching do not look impressive on paper. Jimmy O’Leary was a wiry, bright-eyed lad who had his shirt hanging out and smelt of cigarettes. His home background was unstable, and this affected his attitude towards school. He was notoriously obstreperous: he had flung a chair at one teacher, been excluded, been caught smoking and was suspected of much worse. I taught him for two years, and every lesson was a battle — I had to make sure that he was sitting on his chair, stop him beating up the boy next to him, and prepare my lessons in an effort to try to make English language and literature interest him.
I confess that there were students with whom I would not have tried so hard, but I spotted that Jimmy was both sensitive and intelligent behind the tough-boy exterior. His combination of quick wit and bad behaviour made me vigilant. He was forever moaning that I was “breathing down his neck” and “watching him too much”. But we also had some interesting conversations in which I got him to articulate his feelings of anger at the world, which, in turn, led him to committing them to paper. These pieces were the best in his coursework; stories of getting into gang fights, family rows and taking drugs.
Jimmy attained a C grade at English GCSE. That might not sound like much, but if you had seen him at the beginning of the course you might realise the magnitude of his achievement. That grade gave him the confidence to study at sixth-form college and gain some A levels.
A far deeper thing also occurred with Jimmy. I believe that he learnt, albeit at a subconscious level, about the therapeutic power of words and of writing. I think he left the course feeling that he always had someone to talk to — even if it was only himself.
Francis Gilbert’s memoir I’m A Teacher, Get Me Out of Here!, Short Books, £9.99, www.theshortbookco.com.
Available from Books First at £8.49 plus 99p p&p, 0870-160 8080
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