When I finally retire from teaching, there are many things that I shall miss greatly: most kids’ freshness of outlook, unprejudiced by preconceptions or fashionable poses; those keen insights arising from open, curious minds; the friendliness, which arises from trust & no sense of personal advantage to be gained; the idealism, optimism, imagination, humour… All of these qualities – undiminished across time, in spite of current representations of the young as drug-addled sexual athletes – have made, & still make teaching an exciting & enriching occupation.
There are, however, two areas of the teaching experience from which I shall remove myself at a speed that will bely my advancing years. I shall miss at no time & in no way increasing government interference in the teaching process in the form of SATs, CATs, TESSAs, ISAs, ALISes – all the ‘test everything/reveal nothing’ paraphernalia that wraps itself around day to day procedures like bindweed, exasperating teachers & demoralising kids. But even more I shall miss at no time & in no way…male adolescence.
Now, before embracing Pissed-Off Middle Age too indiscriminately I’d better draw out my territory here. The vast majority of male & female human beings aged between 13 & 18 that I encounter are down-to-earth, straightforward & entirely tractable. In fact, a significant number of them would make a much better job of writing university references or supervising lunch queues than a significant number of their teachers.
But within that particular sub-stratum of the school community there lurks, shuffles, droops & sprawls a rogue version of the species, the male being, in almost all respects, deadlier than the female. The progenitors of this now ubiquitous troglodyte minority emerged, the theory goes, in Suburbia, USA in the mid-1950s. All current manifestations are clones of that original sample. So, whether dressed in biker jackets with upturned collars, white t-shirts, Levis with deep cuffs & loafers or baseball caps the wrong way round, American football sweats & baggy jeans belted below their arses, the organism within is identical. It is widely rumoured that, like the Invading Bodysnatchers, they are impregnated into mothers by aliens. The unwitting mothers then bear them & rear them until suddenly pustules, foul language & incoherent speech contained within impenetrable urban accents burst out of them one dreadful morning.
Somehow the accelerated activity of hormones is not explanation enough for the comprehensive awfulness of the condition. In its most potent manifestations it has the elemental savagery of a force of nature. Adolescence can germinate & spring into full, rank flower within the hitherto fresh-faced, gentle computer-game-playing geek with frightening speed. After the initial seismic shock a brief Jekyll-to-Hyde flurry of shape shifting & contour changing takes place followed swiftly by the brutal emergence of the fully-fledged persona. (This process has been likened to a reversal of the life cycle of the butterfly, moving swiftly as it does from downy & innocent beauty to sluggish & primordial ugliness).
Both research & my own observations over time have identified three basic types, which will be considered carefully one by one. They are:
- The Know-Nothing Fuckwit.
- The Proto-Brando.
- The Tortured Soul.
There is seldom any subspecies crossover, nor have I ever witnessed transmogrifications from one persona to the other. That having been said, there is grudging to comfortable coexistence between all three. Indeed, they will make common cause readily, frequently constituting a kind of alternative universe Three Musketeers, their dark strengths pooled against the forces of Unfairness. The first of the three types pans out thus...
The Know-Nothing Fuckwit. Conversion from bright, lively, wholesome, motivated pre-teen to KNF is in some respects the most heartbreaking of the transformations. In order to adopt authentic KNF status it is necessary to forget entirely every item of knowledge, every moral precept & every notion of common sense, logic or rationality that home, school & the wider world have ever inculcated. From how to tackle simple equations to the whereabouts of basic articles of clothing, the KNF must profess total ignorance.
Mealtimes will be disregarded & day-long grazing from the fridge & mysterious stocks of toxic sweets & vegetable-based snacks in bags stored in the foetid swamp that is now the KNF’s room will take their place.
That room, & the house that sustains it, will pound regularly to the beat & yammer of hardcore hip-hop, most of which will be lyrically incomprehensible to other members of the household. However, such will be the volume & so carefully pointed will be the utterances that all instances of serious profanity will be entirely comprehensible – frequently to most of the neighbourhood too.
Personal hygiene will be abandoned entirely & cleansing will occur only by chance when the KNF is caught in the rain whilst sharing a spliff with friends. Regular farting & belching at frightening volume will take place around the house, their frequency, volume & gaseous qualities intensifying in the presence of visitors.
Musculature & skeletal structure will cease to operate in the manner determined by centuries of evolution & the KNF will spend the greater part of any 24-hour span draped across furniture or coiled on floor or equivalent horizontal surface, depending on location. When chairs are utilised (almost invariably at the insistence of adults) they will be tipped back onto one leg & swivelled to and fro until either balance is lost or the chair collapses. Either way, the KNF will crash to the floor with maximum impact & a full & prolonged display of a rubber-limbed inability to rise will be presented.
Speech will be rendered incoherent through the simple devise of omitting all consonants from words. The resultant pig-Hawaiian will be further encoded by the reduction of all adjectives & adverbs to an Orwellian minimum. Those retained will be drawn from a small range of pop-cultural patois further encrypted by being made subject to variously convincing versions of received accents, generally of Caribbean origin. (NB Continuous prose utterances will be evident only via uncannily accurate renditions of entire hip-hop lyrics, delivered complete with beatbox accompaniment).
Sartorial transformations will be made too. At the time of writing these will include:
· enormous hooded garments such as would not be out of place on peasants in one of Breughel’s pastoral paintings, these worn with hoods raised & NYC baseball cap peak protruding like a duck’s bill;
· multi-seamed calf-length denim jeans, looking like sail maker’s cast-offs, with crotches hanging between the knees & expanses of patterned designer boxer shorts bubbling out above a waistline located at mid-buttock level;
· genuinely distressed designer trainers with laces undone & trailing.
In addition to the obligatory clothing (as essential to the creation & sustaining of KNF persona as is a mason’s apron & black suit), various impedimenta will be on display. A loop of stainless steel chain will hang, largely obscured in the folds of the jeans. Various piercings might contain shrapnel-like chunks, darts & hoops of silver. On the most committed of KNFs tattoos might display the names & logos of various hip-hop artists &/or nu-metal bands.
Schoolwork will cease. Sports will be abandoned. Hobby materials will lie around neglected. Bikes will rust in the long grass. Friends who do not subscribe either to NKF persuasion, or, at a pinch, one of the other faiths, will be deserted. Parents will exist only to cook, drive & supply sums of money.
It will be, for all concerned, a long, dark night of the soul…
(To be continued)
