Part Five. Don't get hit by Mr Stitt.

The concluding part of my Old School Days article.

In every school, those in authority achieve their position in the respect rankings in different ways. A teacher can project implied consequence through nothing other than demeanour. 

I think my perception of Mr Stitt was shaped in such a way - a man, imposing, though not overly threatening. You just sort-of knew he had to be taken seriously. Mind you, I wouldn’t want to give the man too much credit though, as there was one particular event that really did stay with me, not just because of the treatment he was dishing out, but also because of how I decided to respond at that time.

Beginning of class, and we all sat patiently, quietly, waiting for the science lesson to begin, Mr Stitt obviously had other things on his mind. He asked one of our pupils to go and fetch him a specific student–let’s call him “Brown”–from another part of the school. When brought in, Stitt began to question, well, more like interrogate him. 

“Were you throwing mud during the dinner hour?”, Brown denied all knowledge. He was told to hold his arms forward, hands face up. The question was repeated; this time upon his plea of innocence he received an almighty thwack across the palm with a ruler. 

Then came the same question, followed by the same denial, followed by the same physical consequence. This continued ad infinitum, and with every blow, in accordance with the laws of human nature, the hands recoiled as the boy backed away and Stitt moved forward towards him. 

There was something slightly sickening about this display of power taking place before an entire room of school children still waiting for their lesson to begin, and despite my churning stomach, this was a whole new kind of lesson - an opportunity to examine the moves, the expressions, the posturing. Once it had all finished and the desired amount of pain had been administered I had an important question to ask.

The boy was sent back to his class, I raised my hand. “Yes?”, asked Mr Stitt. Taking a deep breath, “Sir, did you enjoy that?”, I asked. For a few moments it was as though time stood still. I knew I was safe though, you see, I wasn’t a first, or second, or even third year student now - he would have to give me an answer. And what would that answer be? - Oh, nothing at all surprising - the usual and predictable, “We have to maintain discipline”, etc., etc. 

He did appear a little caught off-guard though. For me it was important to send a message, to let him know that these things were being noted, not just accepted. For a moment, hopefully, he’d felt as though a mirror had been held up before him. 

In the face of such behaviour from those allowed to inflict their arbitrary chastisement on many half their size, my instinct of what lay behind their motivation has moved on from what was then suspicion, to what is now a full blown belief - a certainty that there would indeed have been an element of gratification–of a perverse nature–for those inflicting the punishment. 

On the basis that even then, in the “good old days!”, in all other areas of our society, if you walked up to someone, anyone - in the street, the pub, in the home even, and physically assaulted them - regardless of your reasons, there was a good chance you’d be answering to the law … with one caveat, if those assaulted were young and defenceless you’d probably be answering to no one. 

In this light I see no reason why there would not be valid grounds on which to prosecute these people–something I longed to do for many years after leaving school. But, with the passage of time, and without anything “overtly” sexual involved (as far as I witnessed), it’s doubtful that one would get very far - and, of course, it was something sanctioned by the State.   

 With a tinge of irony, I occasionally smile to myself when recalling the immortal words an aunty spoke to me one day, “Kenneth”, she said, “in years to come, you’ll say these were the best days of your life”.  

    

Corporal punishment in British state schools, and also in private schools receiving any element of public funding, was banned by parliament in 1987.

Part 4. Spare The Rod, Spoil The Child.

As a precursor to the post below, I should explain that the teacher who is the subject of the following passage has been an active part of the education system here in the north west of England up until very recently. I have friends and associates in education that have encountered him in various schools, in fact he appears to have been an advisor / consultant in the county of Lancashire for quite a number of years. I won't reveal more about him, or exactly which area of education he specialised in until you've read the following passage. 

Here's Pt 4.

In his efforts of appeasement, and to lessen the obvious gravity of emotion, astonishingly, he explained to me how many times he carried out this kind of thing and consequently how routine and unimportant it therefore was to him. My job, obviously must have been to apply the same insignificance to my experience of being on the receiving end. It didn’t work. But the one thing I did notice after all this was the softly, softly approach the teaching staff seemed to take towards me for the remaining year, maybe longer.

From then on, although I carried the threat of such assaults within me from one term to the next, other than the odd inference implied in a teacher’s scowl I have no recollection of being a recipient of corporal punishment. 

However, I witnessed many others who were not so fortunate. The towering figure of Mr Birnie had to represent someone, who at the time I would’ve seen simply as a figure of authority who put the fear of God in me, these days I would describe him as a damaged soul with clear and unresolved issues. One can only speculate on the motivation that lay behind the obvious desire to inflict pain and grief with such regularity on the small and defenceless. It was all somewhat ritualistic, carried out with a chillingly calm, calculated, and finely honed methodology that bad dreams are made of. 

A fine example of the integrated teaching style he practiced, that is - the fusion of personal issues and education - was the day on which one of his lessons was about to end; the bell sounded, but seconds before he gave the authority for the class to finish, one unsuspecting student, probably without a second thought, proceeded to close his exercise book and reach for his satchel. Then, something along the lines of, “BOY - WHO TOLD YOU TO PUT THOSE BOOKS AWAY?” resonated and bounced from every hard, shiny surface in that room. The order, “Come here, boy” followed, along with the instruction to collect the slipper along the way. Everyone knew which drawer the slipper was in. As I stated earlier, this was a well though-out strategy, one designed to impose a healthy amount of mental torture, not just physical. After the young man had handed over the very device to be used against him, and had been struck repeatedly until reduced to the desired level of distress, I guess Mr Birnie then could be satisfied with a good morning’s work.   

And that was nothing! … really. He most definitely came into his own when the snow fell - along with the snow, lay his tour de force. The number one rule when the ravages of winter arrived was - “Never throw snowballs in the covered playground”. This covered area was fairly small - approximately 20 x 10 yards; at one end the girls entrance, at the other end the boys - by both entrances sat a row of wide, deep windows with a hand rail, or bar that ran at waist hight along the inside of each.

The synonymity of power with safety was never better illustrated than by the minions (Prefects) that Birnie employed to keep an eagle-eye out for any stray fragment of snow that might find its way into, or even barely onto the margins of this exclusion zone. Perpetrator identified, word relayed back to said teacher, and the fun begins. Well, it’s fun if you enjoy seeing pain in others, and many obviously did. As the criminal was taken inside and made to bend whilst holding the handrail, a crowd would gather outside, and cheer as the blows, and the tears fell. 

Mr Birnie was the Religious Instruction teacher, and if nothing else, he did provide a sound example to me upon which I could begin to develop a view of organised religion. 

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Yes, Mr Birnie was indeed a teacher in religious eduction. He was also one of the most systematically cruelest people I have encountered in my life. It wasn't a case of whether he beat 'me' or not, it was more about what I saw him do to others, and as a result the sickening fear you would consequently carry within from one day to the next.  

In very recent years we've seen a reoccurring scenario, that of the child abuse committed within many religious establishments - taking place at the hands of those who have both achieved positions of authority and whose positions naturally infer a synonymity with godliness and goodness. Personally, I'm quite fascinated by the apparent connection. I would naturally think that placing oneself in such a public position of affinity with the 'Creator' or the 'Messiah' would precipitate nothing other than acts that are supportive, kind and helpful, acts that are anything other than painful for God's children. 

One could easily conclude from the basis of that which has become evident, that the main structures representing the principles, as (supposedly) laid down by God, present more an opportunity, at best, for some to get on in life, and at worse, to find a safe way to carry out various acts of self-gratification.

Don't get me wrong though, I know there are many members of various religious fraternities with nothing other than good intentions, a great many of them using the vehicle of religion to carry out significant acts of charity. But it's just impossible for me, in the context of religion, to ignore the absolute paradox between what one professes to be, and what one actually does.   

Given that contradiction, I have a strong desire to know what Mr Ian Birnie now thinks about the way he dealt with the children placed in his care back then. The pain and the tears that I witnessed from his assaults on young defenceless kids have made such a mark with me that I have written him a letter addressing this subject. The letter is, in my view, considered and polite. But sent to him with a complete copy of the Old School Days article (including the above passage) it should leave him in no doubt as to how much passion I feel. Sent just one week ago, I invited him to write, email or phone me, but as yet I have had no response.   

Part 3.

I've been touched, very much so, by the comments left here and on Facebook, and with the messages received from everyone with their own stories to tell. Some of those accounts can leave you wondering how on earth it is possible to survive such things, certainly from an emotional point of view. Yet on the whole we usually do find ways of surviving, albeit, sometimes with a greater or lesser degree of dysfunctionality in our life.

It appears that abuse can push an individual inwards or outwards. I wouldn't profess to being any kind of psychologist, but there are certainly those who recycle the aggression they fall victim to - upon others - which is most likely how it happened in the first place. Then there are those who do the recycling inwardly, the result often being a tendency towards depression and despondency. I would place myself in the second category. But whichever way one aims it, and whether the reaction is passive, or overtly expressed, considerations such as predisposition and family environments would logically be a relevant part of the total picture.

A commonly held view is that that's what life was like in those days, as though the whole of life was like that. The truth is, however, that there have always been other 'schools of belief', and significantly so. Possibly the most well known example is the Steiner approach to education, a fellowship founded by Rudolph Steiner way back in 1919, the year which marked the opening of his first school.   

Steiner was a philosopher, scientist and innovator, who saw the child as real person. Examples of his beliefs were that education should: work for all children irrespective of academic ability, class, ethnicity or religion; should take into account the needs of the whole child - academic, physical, emotional and spiritual; develop a love of learning and enthusiasm for school. 

I have friends, and have met a number of people, that attended Steiner schools - the antithesis of the state school system the great majority of us experienced - and from what I've observed, an apparent testament to the principle that good values, respect, and basic decency are most certainly not qualities that get 'beaten' into you.   

Another example of an alternative approach to preparing young people for adult life is Summerhill, a school founded way back in 1921 by A. S. Neill.

These are the words, as found on the school's website: http://www.summerhillschool.co.uk

"Founded in 1921, it continues to be an influential model for progressive, democratic education around the world. Summerhill is the oldest children's democracy in the world. It is probably the most famous alternative or 'free' school. The system that Summerhill employs is not only about education - it is also a different way of parenting which eliminates most of the friction and many of the problems experienced by modern families."     

You see, it's not only about times and eras, it about culture and belief systems, and as I see it, about a willingness to open one's mind to other possibilities - maybe more effective ones.

So while I ponder about the way things could've been, I'll continue below with the next excerpt of the way things actually were.

    

   

                

“Learning” was fast becoming my last priority, “anonymity” the first. It was more about survival than anything else, and there was only one place to go, and that was inward. Becoming increasingly withdrawn, my objective, was to get older as fast as I could.

Despite the ernest attempts to achieve invisibility, the next direct brush with restorative justice came in the second year, form 2b, at the hands of Mr Sanderson the form’s prep teacher. It wasn’t unlike a road accident - it all happened in slow motion. From one second to the next, fifty years later even, each moment is still as clear as crystal. It went like this: Repeatedly as I tried to get the attention of the classmate sitting next to me, his lack of response and unwillingness to even turn his head did nothing but strengthen my efforts. Then came the slow-motion; the chilling moment of awareness that there was only one single animated being in that entire classroom. Whichever way I looked, the room seemed frozen, the gaze of all, fixed, firmly on me. Technicalities were irrelevant, whatever I’d done, it was wrong, and that’s all that mattered. Then came the “finger of death”, Mr Sanderson’s to be precise, a finger that silently, and with one, perhaps two simple movements had me walking to the front of the class as he, the executioner, reached into a drawer for the customary gym shoe (it turned out that we’d been told to stop talking, an order that for one reason or another I hadn’t heard).

“Bend over, Nicol” was the choice he offered, and before a room full of students, that’s exactly the option I chose. I received two hefty blows. It really, truly and deeply hurt me, physically and more. I walked back to my desk with a sense of powerlessness and injustice of existential proportions, and for the rest of that afternoon every ounce of inner resource had to be found to hold the tears down.    

This was, to an extent a watershed moment. The event wasn’t something I would get over very easily; through the following weeks, perhaps even months, every school morning I would wake in a distraught and tearful state, as though not just awaking from a nightmare, but also feeling I was about to enter a recurring one. Surprisingly, the mother who had previously showed such unflinching conviction in the schooling system was now apparently so concerned about her son’s state of mind that she phoned the school. Apart from what she wrote in her diary I have no idea who she spoke to, or what she said. What I do know is that months after the event, towards the end of the very same prep class in which the original correction occurred, Mr Sanderson asked that I remain behind after class. This was traumatic in itself - easily as anxiety-inducing as “the finger”; again, I expected the worse. 

The bell sounded; all the pupils left the room; now it was just me and him. Once again he beckoned me out to his desk, but this time asked me to sit down. “Nicol, I hear you’ve been a bit upset” - well, I can’t pretend to remember his exact words, but I’m sure they couldn’t have been much different. What I do recall exactly is that I broke down completely at that moment, so much so that he escorted me to the staff room where his 1960s attempt at counselling continued. In his efforts of appeasement, and to lessen the obvious gravity of emotion, astonishingly, he explained to me how many times he carried out this kind of thing and consequently how routine and unimportant it therefore was to him. My job, obviously must have been to apply the same insignificance to my experience of being on the receiving end. It didn’t work. But the one thing I did notice after all this was the softly, softly approach the teaching staff seemed to take towards me for the remaining year, maybe longer. 

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Old School Days. Part 2.

When asked by the magazine to write about the years I'd spent in Penwortham, my first response was to agree, but with the condition that I give an absolutely honest account. One assumes that when a 'local' publication looks for such contributions they do so with the hope that it will reflect a positive image of the place it represents. Not that I had a bad word to say about the area itself, but still, I doubted if it would be seen as appropriate to have the inclusion of, what would be for me, an act of catharsis, albeit an extremely considered one.

I got the 'thumbs-up', which pleasantly surprised me, but I hadn't quite finished with the caveats just yet. I felt that I would have to be very specific when it came to certain events that I'd witnessed at Penwortham County Secondary school. I knew fully, for example, that I couldn't start calling specific members of the teaching staff 'sadists', even though in my view there would be few other discriptions more accurate, and there are obvious issues of 'defamation of character' to be considered.

However, in my view it would be perfectly justified to name these people who felt as though they had, not just the authority, but also the justification to beat - and abuse - younger, smaller individuals that were defenceless when it came to any kind of recourse.

Again, I know that for a good few, perhaps a great many, much of this was like water off a duck's back, but for others, like myself, it was far from it. To have the threat of canes, rulers, gym shoes, and even rounders and - can you believe it - sawn-off cricket bats, as a means of physical (not forgetting the emotional) punishment hanging over you from one day to the next, made, what was for me a thoroughly dire - so called - secondary education.  

And it wasn't as though these implements were only used in exceptional instances; corporal punishment was administered arbitrarily, for reasons I still find shocking; acts that would, these days, leave those who administered the beatings without jobs, and justifiably answering to the law.  

Old School Days Pt 2:

Such was my initial introduction to secondary education, the beginning of an experience sometimes unpleasant, occasionally enjoyable, but more than anything else one riddled with anxiety. I guess it had everything to do with the generation, the geometry of the time, the tail end of an institutionalised Victorian era that seemed to carry a belief that children needed to have goodness beaten into them. 

It wasn’t long before I had goodness beaten into me during that first year, courtesy of the PE (physical education) teacher, Mr Bray - and he used a rounders bat to do it. My crime? - to belong to a team during one of his lessons (the game I can’t recall) that left their team-ribbons in a disorganised state. One-by-one we were instructed to bend over, after which, systematically we were each struck with this wooden object - an object I’m sure that was originally designed for sporting enjoyment, not the infliction of pain on 11 year olds. 

Mr Bray was, quite frankly, terrifying. If you forgot to take your gym kit to school, you were in trouble; if you didn’t have your name sewn on your gym kit, you were in trouble; if another pupil stole an article of your gym kit, you were … well, yes - you guessed it. And what was “trouble”? - trouble was being screamed at, put down, belittled, and more-often-than-not being beaten by–what Bray himself described as – a “sawn-off cricket bat” - an implement of punishment that had ended up looking more like a paddle than anything else, having had its lower two-thirds removed. And don’t let the word “paddle” imply anything of a benign nature, believe me, he applied it with force, and although I was lucky enough never to be on the receiving end, the depth of injustice I felt witnessing the pain and humiliation of those less fortunate was profound.

In general, all teachers addressed the boys by their last names. The girls were all, “Ann”, “Sandra”, “Margaret” and the like; the boys: “Nicol”, “Blackledge”, “Webster”, or just, “Boy!”; in my young mind all this somehow expressed the implications of “positive and negative”, “right and wrong”, superior and inferior”. 

During those first three years at Penwortham County Secondary School my focus soon became consolidated; it was plainly obvious that you were more-or-less safe once you’d reached the fourth year. Up until that time it was–as a male–next to impossible to avoid being found guilty of something at any given unsuspecting moment that would result in both psychological and physical punishment. The psychological impact of just observing others being beaten, for me, was significant, and although I would often raise the subject with my own parents, and teachers alike, the attempts to justify - what was nothing less than child abuse - was the order of the day. From one side came the argument of teaching right from wrong, from the other it was, “you must have deserved it”, “the teacher is always right”. 

“Learning” was fast becoming my last priority, “anonymity” the first. It was more about survival than anything else, and there was only one place to go, and that was inward. Becoming increasingly withdrawn, my objective, was to get older as fast as I could.                    

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Part One.

A piece I wrote for a local magazine after being asked if I'd like to contribute something based on my time spent in Penwortham, a suburb of Preston. Penwortham was a good four miles from my family's house in Deepdale, but back in the 1960s my mother had deemed that for my secondary school education, that is where I needed to go. 

I could use many negative adjectives to describe those years spent at Penwortham County Secondary school, particularly the first three years, and the draconian approach that was employed towards the pupils - especially the boys - not only made an impact on me at that time but it resonates with me to this day. 

Here, I've decided to post the written article in sections, and to invite comments from others who have had not only similar experiences, but who have something, anything to say on the subject of school discipline, whether it be the older or newer versions. 

I'm very aware that not everyone was effected as deeply as I, and where I may have felt a truly deep sense of violation and injustice at the hands of certain teachers, there where others much tougher than myself who even regarded physical punishment as a badge of honour. 

Whereas these days any thoughts and expressed feelings on this subject are generally respected, the geometry of that time was quite the opposite for the young; a good example being that any cry for help I made then was usually written off on the basis that either I was uniquely different to other kids - therefore rendering my emotions unimportant - or that whatever punishment was dished out, and for whatever reason, it must have been deserved in some way.  

However, I know there must be a significant minority out there that struggled to a greater or lesser degree from that neo-post Victorian mindset of the era; people who possibly, because of their quieter or more introspective nature, not only might they have been more deeply affected at the time, but subsequently would have difficulty voicing their misgivings with any assertiveness. 

I'll reflect more on these issues later, but for the time being here is Pt 1. Included are one or two excerpts from my mother's diaries.

Old School Days

Monday, September 3rd 1962; with a slight chill in the air of an overcast morning, a nervous 11-year-old boards a Corporation Bus; the maiden journey, and the first of many more that would carry him through Preston’s busy morning traffic from the County Arms in Deepdale four miles to the suburb of Penwortham. 

He disembarks, and following those wearing the same combination of blue, gold and grey – and with a greater look of certainty about them, his walk from Liverpool Road, through Crookings Lane and finally into Crow Hills Road, led eventually to the wide, flat, concrete example of 1950s architecture that would be his school for the next six years. 

– – –

This was Penwortham County Secondary School, the place my mother had gone to enormous lengths to have me become a pupil of. Maybe it was based on reputation, or perhaps because of nothing other than it sat in a rather middle class suburb, which might well have appealed to my mum’s desire to protect me from the “commoners” of Deepdale Modern, the school that by default would have naturally followed on from the Junior School I'd attended.

On my arrival that morning came the instruction for all first year pupils to stand in-line in the school yard, after which a member of staff appeared. With a look expressing every bit of authority his position held, as though a military inspection was taking place, I stood there and I waited as he walked back and forth, his eyes taking measure of these new recruits.   

Names were called out and pupils sent to their designated classrooms, first all those assigned to class 1a, then 1b, and so on, until a small group of thirty-or-so of us were left. Strangely, the downward consecutive alphabetical order in class names seemed to stop, and jump - suddenly, we who remained were to be the pupils of class 1r.

During that time it was never completely clear as to what the “r” stood for, some seemed to think it meant “removed” others suggested “remedial”, but what I did know was that it was at the rock-bottom of the academic scale. This wasn’t of any great concern to me at that time, I’d heard the adjectives “slow” and “late developer” so many times that I trusted they must indeed be correct, and along with being regarded as academically inept brought with it a lack of expectation and pressure, which suited me - I was comfortable with that.   

Such was my initial introduction to secondary education, the beginning of an experience sometimes unpleasant, occasionally enjoyable, but more than anything else one riddled with anxiety. I guess it had everything to do with the generation, the geometry of the time, the tail end of an institutionalised Victorian era that seemed to carry a belief that children needed to have goodness beaten into them.