A paper dart floats across the classroom somewhere in London.
The teacher is with an 11th year English GCSE class. The dart lands by the teacher’s desk. She pays it little attention. She is keen to carry on with Shelley’s Ozymandias, from the AQA Power and Conflict cluster – and so are the class. She is using an extract from Breaking Bad as a stimulus and it has worked a treat.
Another dart flies across the classroom.
The teacher demands that the culprit pick them up. The boy, shaved, neat and Muslim, gets up and puts them on her desk. He is truculent and sullen. He is a chump and a clot. He slowly sits down.
The teacher gives him a detention.
She can’t help looking at the darts.
AL QAEDA 9 /11 – says one. ISIS 7/7 – says the other.
She reads them again. And again. She is shocked and bewildered. There’s enough static in classrooms these days without this profoundly unfunny, impermissible “joke”.
“Can we get on with the poem, Miss?”
“Er... yes, of course.”
“I met a traveller from an antique land.”
Most of the class, multicultural and harmonious, are mesmerised by it.
But should she stop the lesson? Surely this a grave offence? Or is it just a silly prank? Is he a feckless buffoon or an incipient radical? Should she lament this obscene insult or just let it go? Or give him an incendiary lecture reinforcing “community cohesion” and “British Values”, whatever they are. She’s meant to – all teachers are.
She resents this intrusion. But isn’t it just a dart, not a weapon of mass destruction? He’s not radical, he’s a very naughty boy. A troubled teenager, who happens to be Muslim?
After all, we’ve all thrown the odd dart. She did. It had a drawing of Beryl the Peril on it. Innocent larks.
But this isn’t the same, this isn’t remotely funny.
The villain sits at the back and clicks his teeth, not smiling, not apologising – like an ultimatum. Could this be a “warning sign of radicalisation”. Don’t be daft.
Whatever, the teacher must refer this outrage to the head, to the school’s safeguarding officer and to the LEA’s Prevent leader in west London, a supposed “hotspot of recruitment”. She didn’t join up for this nonsense. It’s just depressing, when her Muslim pupils are so nice. She goes back to Ozymandias and reads it out very loudly. Shelley’s poetry will annihilate this rubbish.
“My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings; Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
“Woah! Go Miss! Great lines.”
Power and Conflict indeed. They would look very good on a dart...
- Ian Whitwham is a former inner city London teacher.