We will all have those tiny childhood memories when the humiliation of a moment still burns, despite the passage of sixty years.
And in their way, they are as much a comment on the bigger picture as pretty much all the great international events of 1961.
In my case it was class 4A, Edmund Waller School and the group project.
Just what that group project was is lost in time, but I was part of the team of four tasked to do something interesting.
The other three had known each other for years, having effortlessly made their way up together in the top stream since infants.
I, on the other hand was the lad yanked out of three years in the B group to be part of 4A for 1960-61.
Some in the class had high hopes of passing the 11 plus and going on to the glittering prizes of grammar school, while I knew even before the first exam paper was sat, that I was destined for Samuel Pepys Secondary Modern.
But that was in all in the future, and in the January or February, we were tasked with that project, only I was pretty much viewed as surplus to requirements and told so by the other lad, who insisted that I shouldn’t actually even be allowed to write in the book.
It was a humiliation which I took on the chin, said nothing, and marked it down as evidence of my unsuitability for an academic career. As it turned out I was not to know for a full thirty years that I was dyslexic, only vouched safe when two of my sons were statemented, one when he was seven and the other at University.
In the long run it mattered little, I got a degree, did thirty-five years teaching in inner city schools, and blossomed into a writer.
Still I never forgot that tiny little humiliation set against the backdrop of a system of selective education.
And then on Sunday, listening to Johnny Walker’s Sound of the 70s, there was a request from the very chap, who administered the humiliation.
I doubt he will remember it, but then it is usually only the victim who does.
I would like to think it set me off on making sure that my students were not exposed to a similar humiliation, but that I suspect is more down to the bigger picture of how I thought education should be delivered.
That said for the few seconds the dedication was read out, I was back in that classroom.
Odd the power of a memory.
Location; Edmund Waller School, 1961
Pictures; Edmund Waller School, 2007, from the collection of Liz and Colin Fitzpatrick
 |
| Edmund Waller School, 2007 |
In my case it was class 4A, Edmund Waller School and the group project.
Just what that group project was is lost in time, but I was part of the team of four tasked to do something interesting.
The other three had known each other for years, having effortlessly made their way up together in the top stream since infants.
I, on the other hand was the lad yanked out of three years in the B group to be part of 4A for 1960-61.
Some in the class had high hopes of passing the 11 plus and going on to the glittering prizes of grammar school, while I knew even before the first exam paper was sat, that I was destined for Samuel Pepys Secondary Modern.
But that was in all in the future, and in the January or February, we were tasked with that project, only I was pretty much viewed as surplus to requirements and told so by the other lad, who insisted that I shouldn’t actually even be allowed to write in the book.
 |
| The school |
In the long run it mattered little, I got a degree, did thirty-five years teaching in inner city schools, and blossomed into a writer.
Still I never forgot that tiny little humiliation set against the backdrop of a system of selective education.
And then on Sunday, listening to Johnny Walker’s Sound of the 70s, there was a request from the very chap, who administered the humiliation.
I doubt he will remember it, but then it is usually only the victim who does.
I would like to think it set me off on making sure that my students were not exposed to a similar humiliation, but that I suspect is more down to the bigger picture of how I thought education should be delivered.
That said for the few seconds the dedication was read out, I was back in that classroom.
Odd the power of a memory.
Location; Edmund Waller School, 1961
Pictures; Edmund Waller School, 2007, from the collection of Liz and Colin Fitzpatrick
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