Idiot Teacher

THE AUTHOR * Commander R. Gerard A. Holmes, C.M.G-., O.B.E., R.N.V.R. (Retd.), D.Sc. (Glasgow). Formerly Lecturer in Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering, University of Glasgow; Captain Superintendent National Nautical School, Portishead; Headmaster, the Ship School for Boys, Redhill. Trained and Certificated Teacher Board of Education THE SCHOOL * Prestolee is a Lancashire County School for children from three to fifteen years, combining with it Play Centre, Youth Centre and Community Centre Headmaster: Edward F. O'Neill, M.B.E. THE IDIOT TEACHER A Book about Prestolee School and its Headmaster E. F. O'Neill by GERARD HOLMES FABER AND FABER LIMITED 24 Russell Square London First published in mcmlii by Faber and Faber Limited 24 Russell Square, London, W.C.1 Printed in Great Britain by Western Printing Services Limited, Bristol All rights reserved Contents INTRODUCTORY I. A PREVIEW OF A SCHOOL II. INTRODUCING TEDDY III. CREWE IV. A FLOP AND A FOOTNOTE V. OSWALDTWISTLE KNUZDEN SAINT OSWALD'S VI. A CHARACTER STUDY VII. PRESTOLEE VIII. A SUDDEN STORM IX. SEED-TIME X. WHAT TOOLS ARE AVAILABLE? XI. THE THIRD 'R' XII. THE LAST OF THE CLIQUES XIII. SUNSHINE AND STORM XIV. HE PLANTED A GARDEN XV. WAR VICTORIES XVI. 'BUT WHAT DO THEY LEARN?' XVII. THE PROVERBS OF TEDDY O'NEILL APPENDIX 2 ‘We had the best of educations – in fact we went to school every day. .’ Alice in Wonderland Introductory This is quite an exciting story in many ways. It is the story of a school. That there is something wanting in Education is generally agreed. Just what that missing ingredient is, is not easily stated. That it can be stated will become clear as this story unfolds. This is the story of a school. But it is also the story of the man about whose wits this school formed itself and grew. It tells of its growing-pains—and of his—as well as of its growth, and his. That there is something wanting in Education today is evidenced by the state of mind of the vast masses of people. Here, there, and elsewhere populations live on the verge of disaster. Everywhere conflict is evident. It shows its hand in wars, strikes, vetoes, go-slow movements, working to rule and the like, and indicates the inability of large masses, who have to live together, to act together amicably and helpfully and unselfishly. In a few words it indicates absence of discipline—the absence of that state of affairs in which a number of persons of different nationalities, ranks, ages, and inclinations are able to act together as a combined whole. It seems that never have so many young people been taught so much to so little purpose as is the case today. The teaching of 'subjects' has, of course, usurped the time which might have been devoted to 'Educating'. The Ministry of Education has proved to be a Ministry of Subject teaching. It has organized the training not of Educators but of subject-teachers. The driving force behind all this resulting activity is the passing of exams in the subjects taught. This passing of examinations in selected subjects is no training for disciplined communal life. Even the technique adopted is unfortunate from this point of view. In forcing the child to compete with his class-mates for prizes and other marks of distinction, teachers have tempted him to regard his comrades as rivals and possible enemies: to pride himself on his petty achievements and to look down on those he may happen to surpass. They have exploited his selfishness, his ambition, and his vanity. By making him over-dependent on themselves for instruction and guidance they have tended to paralyse his faith in himself. Can a better use be made of these formative years? As this question is often in the air, it seems that the time is not inappropriate for telling the story of one man who, during the past thirty years, has patiently and courageously brought into being a school in which children are able to develop their innate characteristics—trustfulness, truthfulness, helpfulness, discovery, activity, initiative, concentration, gregariousness—and grow into well-informed, conscientious, resourceful companions—sensitive to Goodness and Beauty as well as to Truth—and healthily disciplined, in that it comes naturally to them to act together 3 for a purpose when—as is so constantly the case—well balanced, disciplined action is the very essence of civilized life. 4 CHAPTER I A Preview of a School All the roads to the village lead down long, steep hills and the School is at the bottom, in the valley. There is much else besides the School at the bottom of the hill. There is the river—brutally sullied by the great industries on its banks—a meandering flow of stinking scum, nosing its way past the ruined bridges and beneath those few which are still intact. Whatever Authority has had charge of their maintenance has neglected these sandstone bridges, for they stand today with broken arches and fallen parapets. Only the steel girder bridge which gives access to the School and the buildings around it can be used today, and it looks far from safe, for it is eaten into by rust. These huge buildings you can see from this bridge are the mills where raw cotton is cleaned and spun into yarn in a hot, damp atmosphere where the machines work with ceaseless energy and a handful of men and women stand and nurse them, sweating in the damp, sub-tropical atmosphere which keeps the staple pliant. Time was—and not so long ago—when small children from the School, working as ' half-timers ', sweated here with their elders, watching and feeding the busy machines which are the true workers in these great, seven-storied factories, until it was time to return, through the chill night air outside, to their homes—begrimed with the soot and ashes which the lofty chimney eternally showered upon them. The great concrete erection on the opposite bank of the river is the new cooling plant of the paper-works which spreads its tentacles of buildings, tanks, storehouses, and yards behind and amongst the houses in the village. Here too men must watch and machines must work. From its front gates there continually issue lorries laden with bales of the finest quality paper, of which the village is justly proud; while from its backsides it ceaselessly evacuates its own contribution of filthy waste to add to the river's scum. But it is the seven vast concrete condensers which tower into the air at the gigantic power station—overtopping the sides of the valley and eternally saturating the nearby houses with synthetic rain: and the growing mountain chain of ashes from the furnaces, where so lately all was green meadows: and the vast power house itself, which houses the mechanically stoked boilers and the spinning generators: and the new lattice bridges across the river which carry the pipes to and from the great cooling towers: and the complex skeletons of metal which hold the insulators around the transformers: and the long lines of pylons striding away, northwards, eastwards, and southwards, carrying the slender conductors along which the rushing electrons speed under high voltage into the 'grid':—it is this titanic installation, with its minimum of quiet human watchers and servers, which dwarfs the village, dwarfs the paper-works, vying in mass with the mills themselves, whose engines and magnets throb and hum and pulsate with energy as does no other unit of industry in the village unless, indeed, it be the School. As you approach the School you become conscious of its atmosphere of energy. Cross the bridge—there is always a smell of escaping gas at its further end—cross the road which leads right and left to the cotton mills: pass the begrimed church, architecturally ill- proportioned: and, immediately, you feel a change. This is no longer the hum of machines which 5 work while humans watch. Here humanity is 'live' and active. Here are lovely gardens, playing fountains, flower-clad buildings, and busy, purposeful children. There is the sound of music, and occasionally the strident screech of what might be a circular saw; and no doubt it is, as some boys issue from' the building carrying some rustic wood-work and join others who are building a bridge across a miniature valley down which a streamlet trickles through a series of pools which mirror the lupins growing on the banks. In the distance is a structure which seems to support four separate swings which are, at this moment, all in action: but not one is colliding with another. The red mass which covers this erection is evidently a mass of rambler roses. Apple trees, pears, plums, and cherries are in bloom in every direction, and on the school wall— here in Lancashire, midway between Bolton and Manchester—a peach tree is aglow with blossom. Upon the many seats and lounges sit children, some reading, some writing, others busy at some kind of needle-work. The lofty jets of the fountains meet overhead and shower raindrops on to the surface of some sort of bathing-pool where children splash about. Several unusual structures stand here and there. They are slightly reminiscent of air-raid shelters, but their walls are clad with roses and there are gardens and bowers upon their roofs, whence plants hang down. 'The Hanging Gardens of Babylon!' —the words come readily to one's mind. One of these little buildings is the back scene of a kind of stage for there is, before it, a dais upon which is proceeding a Shakespearian rehearsal.

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