‘GOODBYE BABY, & AMEN…’ part two
Prior to the whole school assembly on Friday afternoon - convened as usual to give the teachers who were leaving an opportunity to bid farewell - we were advised rather nervously that each person would have no more than two minutes to speak. At the beginning of the year only two of us were due to go, both into retirement. Within weeks of the term starting a wave of redundancies was announced, some forced, a handful voluntary. Many of us questioned the manner in which this process was carried out, the overall feeling being that it was handled clumsily & callously, both in execution & aftermath. Much bitterness resulted amongst & around those who had lost their jobs & the general atmosphere of fear & insecurity engendered at the beginning of the term was greatly intensified. The nervousness on the part of the management was, in the circumstances, understandable.
In fact, only one of the departing teachers actually mounted anything resembling an attack on the new regime & its actions. The rest of us concentrated on thanks & valedictions to friends & colleagues. However, I was – as it turned out subsequently – injudicious enough to attempt at the end of my short speech a little play on the words ‘special’ & ‘school’ & ‘special’ & ‘needs’. I made the point that in my own experience both as a pupil & a teacher at a number of progressive schools, one became accustomed to having the term ‘special school’ applied to us by those in the locality unable to accommodate the application of non-traditional educational methods. The absence of uniform, the first-name terms between pupils & teachers, the informality, the devolution of authority through measures of pupil democracy, the family-based structure of boarding – all these elements frightened & baffled our more conventionally-minded neighbours. Clearly these were strategies designed to deal with the ‘special needs’ of troubled pupils within a decidedly ‘special school’!
I declared, maybe a little too passionately, that I had long since given up being bothered by this inevitable nomenclature. Look around this theatre, I demanded of my audience. There isn’t a soul here, child or adult, who doesn’t have special needs above & beyond what is provided for by their basic schooling or their salaries. In a scholastic environment dominated by the processes of testing, appraisal, verification, assessment, prediction & examination, there seems to be no provision made for such special needs as the cultivation of the imagination, the nourishing of the spirit & the education of the emotions. This, I stated (warming to my theme, as they say in novels) is our specialism here. For 90 years we have emphasised the nurturing of the whole person – not just the mind, but the heart & soul too. At this point I might even have swept a hand across the vista of faces before me. You, I told them all, are the heart & soul of this community & it’s up to you to ensure that the school remains a special school for another 90 years. With which heartfelt declaration, I turned & stepped into the wings.
A week or two earlier I has asked the Headmaster whether I might be permitted to offer Speech & Drama sessions to individual pupils next year. This would involve my coming in &, during breaks & after school, working with pupils on individual speeches & scenes from plays, either as preparation for the LAMDA or Trinity College Speech & Drama examinations or simply for the participants’ own recreation & enjoyment. I would be paid by parents much as they would pay for instrumental tuition & the activity would in no way impinge upon or duplicate what was being offered by my successor (with whom I had cleared the idea previously). The Headmaster seemed not unfavourably disposed & the one member of the Senior Management Team with whom I discussed the proposal felt that, rather than cramping my successor’s style (an entirely reasonable concern), it might help to ease his load now that the requirement is that next year he teaches a Drama timetable & mounts a production schedule that, for 12 years, has been shared between two. I was promised a response by the aforementioned Friday.
Today I received a formal letter from the Headmaster informing me that, following discussions with the Senior Management Team (or SMT, as we are encouraged to call it), ‘we all agree that it is in everyone’s interests for this not to happen’. He continues: ‘I do not doubt your commitment to your view of the school. However, it is very clear that you have found it difficult to come to terms with the events of the last few months’.
In Morrissey’s famous words, ‘Big Mouth strikes again’. Had I confined my valedictory two minutes to a handful of cherished memories & a couple of crap jokes, I might be contemplating the relative financial security of a little extra-curricular teaching in a familiar environment. Now I am persona non grata, condemned by my own public sedition, a potential agent of chaos rather than an old cricketer leaving the crease for the last time.
Well, I can’t claim in all conscience to have been always a fierce defender of the right, speaking truth to power fearlessly throughout a long career. There have been times when, forced into the pragmatic course by economics & a family to feed, I have ducked issues that have needed confronting. But I don’t regret Friday’s bit of boat burning. During this momentous year I had, in fact, kept my counsel, sharing my strongest views only with a small circle of friends & colleagues, &, when pupils expressed immoderate anger at the major changes shaking the school, I had always offered the alternative or mollifying perspective. However, those who can work only within the traditional parameters of power & authority are, by nature, paranoid, fearing ever the destabilisation of their tenure. It takes very little to activate that sense of threat & the need to respond to it with draconian measures.
In the final analysis, my only real regret arises not from the severing of any working relationship with my school. It would have been relatively easy & congenial to have been able to occupy a small & occasional corner for modest remuneration, but I am so out of sympathy with the current dispensation that relief outweighs regret. It’s simply that I had hoped, with a little innocent & excusable egotism, that I might terminate 37 years of teaching with some appreciation of a job decently done. As it is, my departure from this my last school will be a somewhat sad & ignominious one. Whilst I had no ambitions for something of a bang at the end, the whimper seems poor recompense for what has been, for better or worse, passionate & committed service.
Consummatum est, friends. If you struggled through this far, thanks for your patience. School as repetitive theme is now at an end. A world awaits…
11:23:23 PM 
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