haven’t a clue who’s winning. But they’re beginning to think it isn’t them.
There’s the usual battle to keep cigarettes, alcohol and drugs out of the school. It’s fought by nearly everyone, mostly by saying loudly that there definitely isn’t a problem whenever they’re asked if there is.
There’s also the battle to suppress the muffin racket, which is run by certain enterprising Year Sevens whose bus happens to stop outside the bakery. This one is fought mainly by the staff, by means of confiscations, detentions, letters to parents, lectures in assemblies, etcetera . The pupils of Darlington High listen dutifully and take care to conceal their crumbs. The staff are on their own with this one.
There’s the long-running guerrilla war over dress code, which took a sharp turn for the worse about a year ago when the governors decided that it would look so much
smarter
and instil a much stronger
ethos
if they replaced the old sweater with a V neck, collared shirt and tie. Introducing ties to a thousand twelve- to eighteen-year-olds of course results in nine hundred and ninety-nine examples of tie abuse to make a governor shudder. Sally J, Form 9c, the exception.
There’s the battle fought by all lonely teachers everywhere to convince their class of thirty-odd students that
this
subject and
this
lesson – a double Chemistry period on atomic structure, say – is worthy not only of study but of
love
, and will be the
key
to their future lives if only they could open their eyes to see. It is fought and lost in parallel with the losing of thirty-odd battles to stay awake during the same time. (Last term, an inventive Biology teacher actually won all thirty-one battles simultaneously during a lesson on sexual reproduction, with some creative teaching techniques that afterwards involved much correspondence between the Headmistress and parents. In the end it went down as a Pyrrhic victory, and the teacher is now in another profession.)
And there’s the fight that everyone fights, within themselves, every moment of every day. The opening skirmishes begin with the bleep of the alarm and continue through the dazed, one-word conversations that take place over breakfast. The rumble of the traffic and the hoot of horns are the first bombardments, and by the time everyone slouches into their school or office, shaking off the rainwater and stretching their eyes, battle is truly joined.
Battle was joined in the mind of Mrs Goodwin that morning, as 9c arrived for their serving of double Maths.
‘
The dear young things
,’ bellowed her guardian angel into her left ear.
‘I’ve so much to offer them . . . What I say now may stay with them for the rest of their lives . . .’
The angel was hanging by a thread finer than gossamer, shouting through a megaphone to get his thoughts across. Little beads of sweat were forming on his forehead. He was acutely aware that his opposite number was suspended by Mrs Goodwin’s other ear, shouting things such as
‘The ungrateful toads . . . Look at them. The best years of my life I’ve given to them, and what . . .’
(Neither angel nor fiend actually dared to enter Mrs Goodwin’s mind at that moment, just in case they got made to sit down and do double Maths.)
What the angel didn’t know was that the fiends were working in pairs that morning. And while one was doing the bellowing-into-the-ear, a second was undercover, busily sawing at the angel’s thread.
The thread parted. The angel fell.
So did Mrs Goodwin.
‘That’s
enough
!’ she screeched. ‘If you can’t come in quietly, you’ll all be staying in at break!’
In the inner chamber of Sally’s mind, the Inner Sally put her head in her hands. ‘Great,’ she said. ‘We haven’t even started and already she’s getting stressy.’
She was in her uniform, neat, tie straight, shirt tucked in, sitting at a table exactly like the ones in the classroom. Behind her stood Muddlespot and Windleberry,
There’s the usual battle to keep cigarettes, alcohol and drugs out of the school. It’s fought by nearly everyone, mostly by saying loudly that there definitely isn’t a problem whenever they’re asked if there is.
There’s also the battle to suppress the muffin racket, which is run by certain enterprising Year Sevens whose bus happens to stop outside the bakery. This one is fought mainly by the staff, by means of confiscations, detentions, letters to parents, lectures in assemblies, etcetera . The pupils of Darlington High listen dutifully and take care to conceal their crumbs. The staff are on their own with this one.
There’s the long-running guerrilla war over dress code, which took a sharp turn for the worse about a year ago when the governors decided that it would look so much
smarter
and instil a much stronger
ethos
if they replaced the old sweater with a V neck, collared shirt and tie. Introducing ties to a thousand twelve- to eighteen-year-olds of course results in nine hundred and ninety-nine examples of tie abuse to make a governor shudder. Sally J, Form 9c, the exception.
There’s the battle fought by all lonely teachers everywhere to convince their class of thirty-odd students that
this
subject and
this
lesson – a double Chemistry period on atomic structure, say – is worthy not only of study but of
love
, and will be the
key
to their future lives if only they could open their eyes to see. It is fought and lost in parallel with the losing of thirty-odd battles to stay awake during the same time. (Last term, an inventive Biology teacher actually won all thirty-one battles simultaneously during a lesson on sexual reproduction, with some creative teaching techniques that afterwards involved much correspondence between the Headmistress and parents. In the end it went down as a Pyrrhic victory, and the teacher is now in another profession.)
And there’s the fight that everyone fights, within themselves, every moment of every day. The opening skirmishes begin with the bleep of the alarm and continue through the dazed, one-word conversations that take place over breakfast. The rumble of the traffic and the hoot of horns are the first bombardments, and by the time everyone slouches into their school or office, shaking off the rainwater and stretching their eyes, battle is truly joined.
Battle was joined in the mind of Mrs Goodwin that morning, as 9c arrived for their serving of double Maths.
‘
The dear young things
,’ bellowed her guardian angel into her left ear.
‘I’ve so much to offer them . . . What I say now may stay with them for the rest of their lives . . .’
The angel was hanging by a thread finer than gossamer, shouting through a megaphone to get his thoughts across. Little beads of sweat were forming on his forehead. He was acutely aware that his opposite number was suspended by Mrs Goodwin’s other ear, shouting things such as
‘The ungrateful toads . . . Look at them. The best years of my life I’ve given to them, and what . . .’
(Neither angel nor fiend actually dared to enter Mrs Goodwin’s mind at that moment, just in case they got made to sit down and do double Maths.)
What the angel didn’t know was that the fiends were working in pairs that morning. And while one was doing the bellowing-into-the-ear, a second was undercover, busily sawing at the angel’s thread.
The thread parted. The angel fell.
So did Mrs Goodwin.
‘That’s
enough
!’ she screeched. ‘If you can’t come in quietly, you’ll all be staying in at break!’
In the inner chamber of Sally’s mind, the Inner Sally put her head in her hands. ‘Great,’ she said. ‘We haven’t even started and already she’s getting stressy.’
She was in her uniform, neat, tie straight, shirt tucked in, sitting at a table exactly like the ones in the classroom. Behind her stood Muddlespot and Windleberry,
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