The teacher stands inside the classroom. The darkness gathers outside. The clocks go back. Shadows put on weight. The classroom gets lighter and brighter with learning and laughter. The teacher, who is young and talented, smiles at her tough and sprightly pupils. A hand goes up. “Please, miss! They’re out there!”
Another hand goes up. “They are though, miss! Voices!” The teacher knows. She’s been trying to block them out. The darker it gets, the louder they get. Shapes and shadows like Halloween spooks, their ghost train faces banging like bats against the windows. What is this malign chorus? These clamorous voices from some dark, public world?
It’s the Ugly Mob – panicking parents, quisling inspectors, craven managers, performance-relating buffoons, profoundly ignorant ministers or foaming rabid tabloids. Among others. What do they want? A scapegoat. They are here to judge, measure, and damn the teacher. They seem to need a shock absorber for their ills. Here they come again... listen.
“Illiteracy, obesity, innumeracy, pregnancy, delinquency and grocers’ plurals! All your fault.”
Gargoyles press against the glass. “Show us your data! Show us your plans! Show us your records! Show us your evidence! Show us your marking! Show us your aims and intentions!”
Skeletons wave clipboards. “You’re failing!” The Teacher feels giddy. “Why are you not like the teachers in our public schools?” Erm... “Or China? Or Singapore? Or Indonesia?”
“Why can’t you always control your pupils?” “Because, because sometimes...”
“No excuses! No alibis!” says an illuminated pumpkin with a more than passing resemblance to Sir Michael. “Social background is irrelevant. Class is not fate. Poverty is not fate. Winchester School or Sink Comp, Leafy Boroughs or King Hell Mansions! Children are the same. It’s all a level playing field. Quality of Teaching is all!”
So goes the modish and convenient lie. So go these modern Furies outside any classroom, ravenous for scapegoats.
They break in from the outside world, where poverty withers the will, where inequality reigns, where bricks are worth more than people and bailiffs knock on doors and ministers try to cut child tax credits and families get broken and children get damaged and fear breeds misery, where class divides, where the asylum-seekers in this very classroom are hunted down. All this falls on our young teacher.
She will take the hits. The voices get louder. “Avaunt! Shut up!” she yells. “Just shut up!”
“I weren’t talking tho’, miss.”
“I know.” She will go. She will leave. Thousands do. “I’m so sorry. It’s not you. It was never you.”
- Ian Whitwham is a former inner city London teacher.