My collection of neckwear is
sparse. I suppose I wear a tie, at most, once or twice a month but, perhaps due
to having a paucity of things to worry about, I have strong views about them.
Many years ago, I was an
assistant master at a public school where I spent an inordinate amount of time
telling boys to do up their top shirt button and adjust their ties accordingly.
I applied myself to this rather unenviable task with remarkable vehemence,
which was odd in that I was a rather subversive member of staff. The sight of
an undone top shirt button and loose tie simply hurt my eye, and it still does.
If you’re going to wear a tie, for heaven’s sake wear the bloody thing
properly.
I was reminded of this, and
inspired to write the above paragraphs in my most Sir Bufton Tufton-ish style,
when watching the Channel 4 documentary, Educating Yorkshire.
It features daily life, as
seen through the highly selective and distorting prism of reality television,
at Thornhill Academy, a secondary school in a pretty deprived part of northern
England.
The headmaster, Mr Mitchell,
who looks like a retired rugby international, has a thing about uniform as part
of discipline. It was pretty galling, then, to see this head teacher lecture
his charges about wearing ties while himself breaking my top button rule.
But, what was worse was the
head’s stubble. Look, when you are at work, you need to shave every day or grow
a beard. It’s a bit like the tie thing. Wear the stupid thing, or don’t.
So far, so trivial perhaps. I
suspect that some of the officers who served in the Libyan desert during World
War II, to take a random example of work-time mores, may have occasionally undone their top button and failed to
shave regularly. Without losing control of their men.
But, what worried me about Mr
Mitchell was his approach to bullying.
The school has a zero
tolerance approach to physical violence – which sounds, at first, to be highly
commendable. However, as anyone who has ever dealt with adolescents in a school
environment will tell you, life with teenagers is not simple enough to admit of
such a crude policy.
Ill-behaved pupils appeared
to receive oceans of indulgence from Mr Mitchell whose motto was clearly “girls
will be girls” (no doubt some of the boys are equally delinquent but, one
imagines, the girls are more telegenic).
Twinkly-eyed and kindly with
the troublemakers, Mr Mitchell seemed to reserve his sternest demeanour for a
boy, Jac-Henry, who was clearly the victim of taunting, name-calling and non-physical
bullying; (he and his friends are, it appears, quiet and studious; “I wouldn’t
want to be one them”, said the naughtiest of the girls.)
Jac-Henry, like any healthy
teenager, reacted to this treatment by lashing out on a number of occasions but
without causing injury, let alone GBH. One of the recipients of his spontaneous
wrath, a girl, was asked if she had “stamped on his head?” “I dunno,” she said.
“I mira done…”
Jac-Henry was, variously, put
in the school’s isolation unit (should schools have “isolation units”?),
suspended, and given counselling which convinced him that he has serious anger
management problems which could mar his future life.
Jac-Henry comes across as a
thoughtful, intelligent and polite boy. His tormentors would appear to be
anything but.
He was failed by his school
because of its one-size-fits-all approach to bullying, and I have no doubt he ended
up angrier than ever. It’s nothing as to the anger I felt on his behalf as I
watched his headmaster, now something of a minor education celeb and shaving
more frequently, indulging the little beasts (sorry, misguided and
disadvantaged pupils) who, one is pretty sure, were making Jac-Henry’s life
miserable.
Mr Mitchell’s application of
the zero tolerance policy had the robotic quality of a call centre in the face
of a complex, human situation.
Of course, we must remember
that television is not omniscient and that being headmaster at Thornhill
Academy is anything but an easy job. But this episode of Educating Yorkshire
suggested that having a policy on bullying doesn’t equate to tackling the actual problem.
Because of the nature of much
of the English state school system the children, now aged sixteen, have gone on
to “college” to complete their secondary education. Jac-Henry wants to be a
counsellor and he is still best mates with Brandon, the boy who pointed out, in
a moment of blinding clarity, that school was victimising him because he was
being bullied.
And Jac-Henry would appear to be as
polite, decent and as considerate as ever. I just hope that his former school
might learn from him.
You can watch the relevant
episode of Educating Yorkshire here: http://www.channel4.com/programmes/educating-yorkshire/4od
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