The power of the arts and why teaching assistants save lives.
A reflection by the weird kid everyone said had AIDS
Don’t feel too sorry for me. Aged eight, I was unaware of what AIDS was, aside from something I didn’t want. When a child coasted by, shouting out ‘AIDS’, it was embarrassing but bearable.
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At that time, my routine was built around all the things I dreaded. Songs of Praise, The Antiques Roadshow – all these things were an ominous ticking clock. Dread, sickness, the night extends past the news at ten with Trevor McDonald. Poirot’s sedate march into Art Deco darkness tells me my time is up, school is tomorrow. Then morning and a classroom of kids who are waiting for me to fail, a teacher also waits for me to fail. At least, that’s the overwhelming impression I was under.
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I had no sense of achievement whatsoever, it’s quite possible that for two years, between P4 and P5 (age seven to nine) I didn’t excel at anything. Perhaps I exaggerate. These feelings and impressions from childhood warp in the mind of the adult, downplayed or overplayed but rarely recorded accurately. But if I exaggerate, I don’t mean to and I don’t exaggerate much.
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Escape from school was a preoccupation. I heard that you could make yourself vomit by sticking your fingers down your throat. Of course I tried.
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I see myself, not in distress, but feeling a little guilty at the deception I was about to embark on. Then, I pictured my contended self, propped up, two pillows for my head, the giant great and still in the land of counterpane. Picturing that, I inserted my fingers down the back of my throat, triggering the gag reflex. I was not sick. It clearly wasn’t going to so easy. Of course not.
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It occurred to me that if it was painless, everyone would be doing it, no one would ever need to do anything stressful and the world would be full of vomit.
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Do it, I urged myself, do it! For the pleasant land of counterpane. I tried again, and again, my throat seized up, it hurt and I gave up.
I don’t want you to think this is a simple vent. To illustrate, as well as I am able, the difference that arts can make, I require you to understand the version of me that the arts found. I expected the worst to such a degree that it didn’t matter if the worst didn’t happen. This was something of a self-fulfilling prophecy.
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Every class has the popular achievers. The responsible, popular children who will show parents around, who will take on the most significant parts in a school play. Then there is Hufflepuff, the rest and then there are the difficult ones – who are lucky to be considered the rest. In that framework the arts can do nothing. It’s the power of arts to smash that framework, that I want the reader to understand.
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When I was nine, around the time I failed to make myself vomit, my class put on a Christmas play. What enthusiasm I managed, vanished when I realized we were to sing Puff the Magic Dragon. But I couldn’t sing that. It was babyish and shit. Though I would never have said that, I cannot vouch for my face.
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I was short, the kid tacked on the end in every class photo. I found myself at the centre back. AlI I could see, was the back of a boy’s grey jumper. He was head and shoulders above me. Just as I could not see, I could not be seen. As the rehearsals went on, I turned round on the bench and hopped down. I tested how far I could go unseen, eventually sitting in a chair against the wall as the tight bench formation formed a perfect barricade. The problem was there was a back door and the gym cupboard also behind me. A passing teacher instructed me back.
I returned to my position on the bench and turned 180 degrees to show her. She shrugged, at least accepting my point. She saw that I couldn’t see a damn thing behind the tall kids but my place was there and so there I stayed.
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Stepping down from my bench, knowing all eyes were firmly to the front, I’d relaxed. I know I would not be missed by anyone and above all, I would not have to sing that stupid song. I should have alerted my teacher but preferred to think this was deliberate placing. I doubt that now, but that conviction made me determined to move as far away as possible. I thought, I could go through the back door. I could leave. No one would know. And if that teacher had not ordered me back into position, I might have done what I spent a lot of time thinking about doing, and walk out the gates and the 1.4 miles home. I didn’t want to be seen but I was to find that being unseen wasn’t pleasant either.
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As with every event, my parents were instructed never to attend anything. My mum, not being at all sporty, was sympathetic and stayed away from sports day. I seem to remember her attending once, when I ended up effectively sac-less in the sac race (my jumps served to wrench the sac from my hands). After that, never again. I think she might have liked some experience of the school community but my sister and I told her no. This meant that she was determined to come to this. Worse still, my dad was to take time off work.
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Naturally I protested and told the truth as I saw it. Firstly, the play was a bad one. I don’t understand why Father Christmas would waste his limited time with Puff the Dragon and even if he did, P3 should tell the tale, not P5. My mum wouldn’t have it. I told her, ‘you won’t be able to see me. I’m one of the very smallest, you won’t be able to see me. I can’t see anything’.
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Not being inclined to shout, I was the picture of disgruntled reason. It seemed to me that American kids in films didn’t know they were born. They gave a massive, world weighted shit, about parents coming to their events. What I would have given for a busy father and mother who, regrettably couldn’t attend anything but had regular access to their own pool.
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They attended and it was as I predicted.
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‘We couldn’t see you anywhere.’
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-‘Well I told you not to come.’
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I can still remember my reply. Being right, one of life’s joys, sweeter for its rarity and when it shines through constant doubt. This had no sweetness. My voice was a bitter mumbling. Yes, I was right, they should have heeded my words. But it was painful and I skulked off, not sure whether to be upset or angry and occupied the dizzy space in between.
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They had perhaps, hoped to offer some reassurance to a child who, at school at least, did not expect something good to ever happen. I was ranked low and my expectations went with it. In that room, with those kids and that teacher, there could be nothing to be proud of.
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It wasn’t all bad. In the afternoon we learned history and religious stories. My teacher wove history into a story of captivating instalments. With a large dose of nationalistic romanticism, she had command of the room. The history of Stirling, with the castle ahead and Cambuskenneth Abbey behind, came alive. In that environment we were all isolated listeners, no test, no assessment and so I retained the information and retain it still. I failed to master long division.
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The change
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In P6, when I turned ten, two classes were split into three. It seemed that the nicer kids were removed to the new class. I don’t remember feeling grateful to see the back of anyone.
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We had a new teacher. She was pretty, with cropped brown hair, glasses and nails bitten down further even than mine, each finger a bulb-like stump with a hint of a nail. A rumour went round that she had been seen holding hands with a man ‘with long hair’. I was pleased at hearing this rumour, her boyfriend’s long hair was, like my smell, frowned on. We had something in common, sort of. I did smell, due to the forests of incense burned by my dad and my eczema cream or, as the other kids put it.
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‘You smell like Joss sticks and fish!’
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Academically, I didn’t shine that year but I didn’t plumb the depths of uselessness either. I received one single merit for politeness. I would have preferred my only merit to have been for doing something clever, but it was better than a kick in the teeth.
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The role of the outsider in education was also very important for me that year.
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We rightly talk about schools and teachers really knowing children, supporting them as an authority on that child. Fine, if they like what they see, but collectively I was under the distinct impression that, as far as the school body was concerned, I was fucked.
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My P5 teacher once told the class that she’d discussed us with our P1 teacher, a lady I thought might vouch for me. This teacher responded to my inquiring face, with an element of eye rolling and tutting, conveying that nothing had changed. My first teacher had commiserated with my current teacher over me. That wasn’t nice to hear and I didn’t forget it.
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Still, as well as a new young teacher in P6, the arts came from beyond and no stranger to the school is going to bother about the general impressions of the school about each individual child.
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A stranger, looking at 62 pupils as one, talking to them as one, instructing them as one. She enthused us as one. Dance could not have done this, sport could not have done this. Music did this.
Singing teachers whose confident, authority marshalled us naturally. They listened to us, taught us how to sing, to open our mouths wide. How to listen.
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The project was Ocean World, commissioned by the WWF. Given the success of Blue Planet I’m surprised it has not been resurrected in some form. We spent that year learning about whales and dolphins, singing about whales and dolphins. We were all infected by a newfound enthusiasm for marine biology.
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We were taken with other children our age, around 400 kids from the surrounding area who were also singing the same songs about whales and dolphins. But the songs were good. Lyrics worth getting stuck in the head of a ten-year-old, words worth repeating, full of atmosphere. Our opening line.
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‘Who has fathomed the enigma of the deep?’
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We were arranged in order of height, this naturally placed me at the front.
We had final rehearsals at the MacRobert centre, the biggest stage in town. We were in unison, no child excluded, no child lauded, all together in the dark before the lights came up. Not one bit afraid.
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From the front, I monitored the sweat levels of the conductor closely. The gradual, hypnotic drenching of his shirt. When would the sweat from his armpits join at the front? All he was doing was waving a stick.
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I then discovered that the studio lights accounted for this, as the dehydrated bodies of children began to hit the stage. It was contagious, as time went on, more children fell straight down, one after the other. Offstage, we started to talk about fainting, three claiming to have nearly fainted for every one that did. I don’t recall water being made readily available to combat it. I particularly liked how they staff didn’t care. The show must go on. I think they found it amusing. Even though I didn’t like fuss, I hoped I too would drop and be carried off stage, ready to give a thumbs up, like the brave soldier I was, when they all trouped off stage.
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But I took it seriously. I certainly took it very seriously when one girl kept coming in a second too early.
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From across the stage, one voice, out of time. The acoustics meant it was hard to isolate where in the black mass she was coming from.
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‘Who the fuck is that?’
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The rumour went round that she was from Bridge of Allan. Of course she was from Bridge of Allan! Only a posh girl from Bridge of Allan, would have that much arrogance!
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Just as well we didn’t know her identity and we weren’t on a residential, we might have subjected her to Pyle treatment as seen in Full Metal Jacket. Unity comes at a price.
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However, she fell in time, in time for the show itself.
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My family attended, that went without saying. Don’t get any ideas that I was desperate to show off, proud as punch and all that. I didn’t suddenly emote. If there was any justice, I would be prancing around crying freedom but I took recovery for granted – as we all do. Similarly I recall no penny drop moments, I recall moments of understanding being more akin to nasal passages opening during a cold, yes there is relief but that’s muted with the knowledge that you know it will be brief and anyway, that’s how it should be. Why be proud of working normally?
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The following year, the three classes were split back into two and normal work resumed. I reverted back, I hated school as much as I’d ever hated it. That final year went slowly as I willed it to end. In secondary school, though I had my ups and downs, I was a much easier child to get along with, I could even stand to have the piss taken out of me.
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The kids that upset me that year had been there the year before, beside me the year before and I hadn’t felt cast out, I hadn’t felt anxious. I’m sure bad things were said but I wasn’t awaiting them and if they happened I daresay I dealt with them. A year later, almost back to square one.
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My dad asked me in that final year, why are you excluded? There has to be a reason.
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I considered it a deeply insensitive question.
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It wasn’t an insensitive question, just one that I wasn’t prepared to answer. The simple answer is often the right one. Large class sizes isolate those who struggle, if there is not an observant teaching assistant, anxiety snowballs. The anxious child is not the learning child, certainly not the happy child. Such a child exists internally and cannot easily make friends. Children are quick to make friends due to their tendency to live in the moment, anxiety robs you of this.
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Before the class size reduced by a third, I believed my contributions served to frustrate and hold back. As such, I believed they would be met with hostility – this was very often the case. I would be mortified and embarrassed. I fantasied about walking out, and stared fixedly at the door as I did so – not listening, not engaging, consumed with the dream of walking alone. Then the class size shrunk and I relaxed, even when I misunderstood or had a problem. I don’t recall that I ever had a difficulty, I must have, but I didn’t sit stewing about it. Believe me, in the year before, one misunderstanding could see me stew for a day or more. Then, I wanted more than anything, to be alone.
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Once the school bus couldn’t come to take us home. The girl who lived down the road was met by her mum and we were to walk the same route. I kept my head down and walked, aged 9 or so, until I heard a voice behind me, the girl's mum.
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'Do you want to walk with us?’
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‘No thank you.’
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I kept glancing over my shoulder and saw they were amused by me. But what would I say to them? It had seemed rude to say no but I would have to think of things to say and her daughter hadn’t been my friend for years. To agree would be to impose myself, again. I would rather no one was responsible for me, it was safer. Head down, walk as fast as you can or run. At least, alone, I can take a great big lungful of air. At least I don’t need to worry about saying the wrong thing. Alone, I don’t need to worry. I’ve found the exit, I get to choose and Hell is other people.
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My mum, a Peter Cook fan, called me Greta Garbo.
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I didn’t like her taking the piss, but I appreciate it was necessary. That level of introspection leads to narcissism, and no parent wants a narcissist on their hands.
For the majority, class size is not hugely important. Most of my classmates did well, the firm commanding style worked for them, but four of those children felt ostracized and behaved accordingly; misbehaving, withdrawing, daydreaming.
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Teaching assistants mitigate the problems of large classes – I would go further, I believe teaching assistants save lives and wish they had been available to help me.
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From hiding at the back, embarrassed and excluded to proudly taking my place on stage within a year – the Ocean World commission brought me, and I’m sure many others, out of hiding. It wasn’t difficult. Congregations the world over show music has the power to unify. Many years later Stirling started The Big Noise, which put string instruments into the hands of children from Raploch. I deeply regret that I was ever sceptical, I, of all people, should never have doubted its success.
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We made beautiful music of which we were all, equally a part, we all shared in its success. 500 in unison, alone in the dark before the lights came up.