“Have a great life!” “Miss you forever!”
Good grief! Too much emotion! I had to sometimes escape to a stockroom. But I couldn’t repress dark, nagging doubts. Had the school been good enough for them? Had I?
Had I been the “enemy of promise”, as Mr Gove has opined? Had I caused too many children to fail, as the Lord Tofsted has just suggested you have? Should I have taught them more grammar? Apostrophes? Conditional tenses? Would they get those C grades, without which they’d be doomed. Was class still fate? Had we done enough to shift it just a bit?
Such musings were also prompted by Zadie Smith’s latest, NW, the best novel since Bleak House and, I’m afraid, your compulsory holiday reading. Its lyrical and dazzling insights quite annihilate the lumpen strictures of the Lords Gove and Very-Shaw, exploring the complexities of our pupils’ inner city lives with an unflinching empathy. The novel also prompts a tough optimism. As your pupils probably do. Mine certainly did.
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