Up and Down in the Dales

by Gervase Phinn

  ‘I must admit,’ agreed David, who rarely endorsed anything Sidney had to say, ‘I think it is highly unusual for an appointment to be made and not tell us who it is.’

  ‘The appointment has not been made,’ said Harold. ‘The position has been offered but the person involved has asked for time to think about it and consult the present employer.’

  ‘Well, he shouldn’t have applied for the post in the first place, if he wasn’t sure that he wanted it,’ said Sidney, leaning back on his chair.

  ‘It’s far more complicated that that,’ said Harold. ‘There are one or two things the successful candidate wants clarifying and certain conditions to be agreed by the Education Committee before the person in question is prepared to take up the post.’

  ‘Conditions!’ spluttered Sidney. ‘I hardly think a candidate for a job is in a position to lay down conditions.’

  ‘It’s not that unusual,’ said Gerry. ‘I was once offered a job at a university and asked for more generous re-location expenses and to be higher up the salary scale. If that hadn’t been agreed, I would have withdrawn. On another occasion I was offered a job and asked for time to think about it. No, it’s not that unusual.’

  ‘You aren’t the mystery candidate are you, Geraldine?’ asked David, peering over the top of his spectacles.

  Gerry threw her head back and laughed. ‘No! I think I have quite enough to do at the moment without taking on Harold’s job.’

  ‘And don’t start looking at me,’ I said. ‘As I’ve told you, I didn’t apply.’

  ‘Well, I sincerely hope they make a better job of it than the last time,’ said David. ‘That Simon Carter was a complete and utter disaster.’

  ‘Hear, hear,’ said Sidney.

  ‘And why weren’t we involved?’ asked David. ‘We are always asked for our opinions when a new colleague is appointed. The interviews were at County Hall – all secretive and closeted away – instead of here at the SDC. We never had a chance to meet the candidates and you have told us precious little, Harold, about who was in for the job.’

  ‘You should have put in for it, Gervase,’ said Sidney. ‘I think you would have had a strong chance this time. Just because you weren’t successful before –’

  ‘Oh, please, don’t start all that again,’ I told him wearily.

  ‘Look!’ said Harold, consulting his watch. ‘We really must press on. You will know who it is after Christmas. Now, can we address the task in hand?’

  ‘Christmas!’ spluttered Sidney.

  ‘The person appointed does not take over until Easter, Sidney, as you well know,’ said Harold, ‘so there is no massive urgency. We want to get it right this time. Now please, can we make a start? The new initiative from the Ministry of Education is called “Spirituality in the Curriculum”.’

  ‘Oh glory be,’ sighed Sidney, tilting the chair back even further. ‘Where do they dream these things up from? I’m sure there are better things to occupy our time than this, Harold.’

  ‘Like it or not, Sidney,’ Harold replied, shuffling a large mound of papers before him, ‘we are obliged to consider this new directive when we inspect schools as from the first of January. It is not optional, it is statutory.’

  ‘But what, pray, has it got to do with art and design?’ asked Sidney, stifling a yawn.

  ‘It has a relevance to all aspects of the curriculum,’ said Harold, ‘including art and design, and the whole point of this meeting today is to discuss it, decide what we have to do and go through the procedures. So, if you would bear with me?’

  ‘And when is she coming?’ asked Sidney, who had now taken to twisting an elastic band around his fingers.

  ‘I have asked Miss de la Mare,’ replied Harold, glancing at his watch again, ‘to join our discussions when she has finished a meeting with Councillor Peterson at County Hall.’

  ‘That will be about Hawksrill,’ said Sidney.

  ‘It’s a splendid opportunity,’ continued Harold, ignoring the interruption, ‘while she is in the county, to pick her brains.’

  ‘Is there any further news on Hawksrill?’ I asked.

  ‘No, no,’ said Harold. ‘The Sub-Committee are determined to press ahead and close the school but there’s been quite a lot of pressure from so many different groups. I believe the headteacher and her deputy are now joining the fray, threatening not to resign if the school closes. The MP, the rural dean, parish councillors, parents, governors – they’re all queuing up to object. It’s all most unfortunate and very time-consuming.’

  ‘Didn’t I hear that your dear wife is stirring things up?’ Sidney asked me, as blunt as ever.

  ‘Let’s not go into all that, Sidney,’ I pleaded.

  ‘Well, you did raise the matter.’

  ‘No, I did not,’ I said. ‘You were the first to mention Hawksrill.’

  ‘Let me know if Christine starts chaining herself to the school railings and burning her bra,’ said Sidney, tipping back on his chair to a dangerous angle, ‘and I shall come out and give her some support – moral, of course. I have always thought –’

  ‘That’s rather a sexist comment, Sidney –’ began Gerry.

  ‘Look, can we get on,’ interrupted Harold testily. ‘As I was saying, Miss de la Mare will be joining us just as soon as the meeting with Councillor Peterson has ended.’

  ‘Well, if she’s closeted with George “Gasbag” Peterson we could be here all night,’ moaned David.

  There was an impatient intake of breath from the Senior Inspector. ‘All the more reason to make a start,’ said Harold. ‘So, before her arrival, colleagues, I really would like to get to grips with the document which I hope everyone has read.’ He looked at Sidney sceptically. ‘Miss de la Mare will then, hopefully, clarify anything we are unsure about.’

  I knew the formidable Winifred de la Mare, Her Majesty’s Principal Divisional Inspector of Schools, pretty well. My first encounter with her had been a few months after I had been appointed as a school inspector. Dr Gore had asked me to co-ordinate the visit of the Minister of Education to the county and liaise with the HMI responsible – Miss de la Mare. Prior to meeting her, I had imagined a strapping great woman in heavy tweeds and large brogues, with savagely cropped, steely-grey hair, small severe mouth and glittery eyes. She would be entirely humourless, exceptionally critical and very short-tempered – the sort of person to put the fear of God into anyone. In the event, Miss de la Mare turned out to be the very opposite and her bark was far worse than her bite. When she had visited the county as part of the National Arts in School Survey, she had been so impressed with what she had observed, she had invited Sidney and me to contribute to a course she was directing in Oxford. So, I had seen quite a lot of Miss de la Mare over the last three years.

  ‘I’m sorry, Harold,’ said Sidney now, ‘but I really do feel I have quite enough on my plate without taking on yet another cock-eyed project from London, involving another mountain of paperwork. Do we really have to do this wretched thing?’

  ‘Look,’ said Harold impatiently, ‘I am not an apologist for this Ministry of Education initiative. I did not devise it and I, like all of you, have quite enough on my own plate at the moment without yet more work. But we shall be implementing it, and that is an end to the matter. We need today to get clear in our own minds what it is all about before taking it to schools, so can we please get on? You will refer to the papers I have produced and handed round.’

  The initiative was called ‘Spirituality in the Curriculum’. The Ministry of Education had asked inspectors to consider on each of their visits, the school’s strengths and weaknesses in its provision of spiritual development in the different subjects. Inspectors were asked to evaluate how each subject area provided children with an understanding of and an insight into moral values and beliefs and how teachers equipped young people to think deeply about their experiences and feelings in such a way that it developed spiritual awareness. Each visit would be followed by a series of training courses for those
teachers who it was felt needed to ‘increase their awareness’ and ‘improve their classroom practice’.

  Sidney flicked through the papers dismissively, shook his head, leaned back on his chair and yawned.

  Harold ignored him. ‘It says here,’ he said, reading from the document before him, ‘that “effective spiritual development enables young people to appreciate, through their own thoughts and emotions, something of their own life and that of others. It develops their feelings, enables them to cope with their anxieties and fears, encourages them to appreciate the diversity of cultures, religions and beliefs in society and helps them to know the difference between right and wrong.” ’

  ‘But surely this is the province of religious education,’ said Sidney who, having investigated the legs of his chair, had returned to an upright position. ‘I can’t see it has any relevance to art and design or, for that matter, to mathematics or science or music or English.’

  ‘Would you not say, Sidney,’ said Geraldine who, up to this point, had been her characteristically silent self, ‘that there is more to art and design than just getting children to draw, paint and construct?’

  ‘I am very wary of questions like that, Geraldine,’ replied Sidney. ‘I sense that there is some sort of trap being set.’

  ‘Surely art is not just about producing craftsmen or competent practitioners,’ she continued. ‘Doesn’t art also involve reflection, imagination, feeling, creativity, sensitivity? Don’t you want young people to appreciate painting and sculpture and architecture? Isn’t there something spiritual in the Mona Lisa, in a beautiful, carved figure by Michelangelo, in a Van Gogh canvas full of vibrant colour, in a photograph of a newborn baby or a vast panorama? What about the spirituality of the interior of York Minster or Ripon Cathedral?’

  ‘Well,’ conceded Sidney, ‘I suppose, yes, there is some art which touches the soul, moves one to a sort of awe and wonder, and I would hope that youngsters come to understand and appreciate this.’

  ‘Well, it’s the same in science,’ continued Gerry. ‘A scientist uses his or her brain to see cause and effect, gather the available evidence, select the appropriate materials, follow a series of logical steps, reason and infer and then reach a conclusion. That process has provided the means for scientists to produce serums to stop diseases, inventions to make our lives easier and happier, and medical treatments to allow childless couples to have children. It is the intellectual side of our being, to do with logic, intelligence and thought. There is no moral question here, no right or wrong in this. It is a merely a scientific process. But science doesn’t end at this point. There is an ethical responsibility. To what use do we put all these advances in science? Do we use that serum to save lives or to produce a killer virus? Do we use an invention like the aeroplane to make people’s lives easier and more enjoyable or to maim and kill them? Do we use our knowledge of fertility to help a desperate couple have a baby or to produce clones? That is where spirituality comes in. It helps us decide. It has more to do with the heart than the brain. It’s about right and wrong, about feelings, fears, joys, loves and hates and that is why it is important to foster it in the education of young people.’

  ‘My, my,’ said Sidney, clapping his hands together silently. ‘I’m most impressed, Geraldine. That was a bravura performance.’

  ‘May I join you?’ We all swivelled around on our chairs to find a plump, cheerful-looking woman with neatly bobbed silver hair. She was dressed in a coat as red as a pillar-box with black Persian lamb collar and cuffs, and sported a bright yellow scarf. Miss de la Mare was not noted for her dress sense.

  The remainder of the afternoon was spent in lively discussion. The HMI had obviously been in the room to hear Gerry’s impassioned defence of spirituality in the curriculum and constantly referred to her, bringing her into the discussions on a number of occasions.

  ‘Dr Mullarkey,’ she said, ‘has really got to the nub of things. I am sure you would all agree that education is not about filling empty vessels with a few arid facts. Whilst it’s certainly about encouraging young people to have lively, enquiring minds and the ability to question and argue, it is also about fostering their sensitivities and emotions. Could I just ask you for a moment, colleagues, to consider the best teacher you had and the worst? What was it about those two teachers that was so different? What made one so much better than the other? Mr Pritchard, what about you? Who was your worst teacher?’

  ‘Oh, that would have to be Mr Sewell, head of history at the Welsh grammar school I attended,’ replied David. ‘He had a skull-shaped head, big hooked nose, a mournful expression and a smile like a shark. Tailor-made to be an undertaker. He couldn’t help the way he looked, of course, but he could help the way he treated us boys. Terrible man he was – pompous, sarcastic, cruel as well, disparaging, humourless.’

  ‘Don’t beat about the bush, David,’ said Sidney, pulling a face. ‘Tell us what you really think about him.’

  ‘I hated that man, that’s what,’ David told us, plucking his spectacles from his nose. ‘He’d make fun of our valley accents, ridicule our efforts and criticise our parents – never directly but in a sneaky, unpleasant sort of way. Very nasty piece of work was “Smiler”.’

  ‘So did you dislike history?’ queried the HMI, with a smile of gentle benevolence.

  ‘Hated it. I recall him creeping into the room in his gown like a great black beetle and telling us before the history examination: “When it says on the paper, ‘Use your own words’, use mine! I don’t want any boy trying to be clever!” Surely the whole point of education is to try and get youngsters to be clever. He gave us model answers to learn off pat. I know them to this day: “Feudalism and the manorial system cannot be said to be the main cause of The Peasants’ Revolt because, by the end of the fourteenth century, feudalism was in decline. The manorial system required people to be static, but disturbing elements such as the Crusades, the incessant wars, the growth of commerce, did not make possible a static condition in society, et cetera, et cetera.” I could go on, but I won’t bore you.’

  ‘Thank goodness for small mercies,’ mumbled Sidney.

  ‘You talk about filling empty vessels with arid facts, Miss de la Mare,’ continued David. ‘Well, that is exactly what went on in Mr Sewell’s room. We learnt facts off by heart like parrots. Of course, I hadn’t the first idea what I was committing to memory. We learnt the Wars of the Roses, the Spanish Armada, Mary Queen of Scots, the Accession of James I and the causes of the English Civil War. Of course, nothing about Welsh history. Then surprise! surprise! All the topics we had learned came up on the paper.’ David smiled wryly. ‘Mind you, the fact that Mr Sewell was a Chief Examiner might have had something to do with it.’

  ‘That, I think, is what is called the irritating success of the wrong method,’ I observed.

  ‘What about your history teacher, Mr Clamp?’ asked Miss de la Mare, inclining her head slightly in Sidney’s direction.

  ‘Very different,’ said Sidney. ‘He was an eccentric little man with a bald pate and a twitch. He was called Babcock, and he was a world away from David’s monster. He was just an out-and-out enthusiast. Bags of energy, fired questions like a machine gun and had a great sense of humour. He loved his subject, enjoyed the company of young people and made history come alive. He used to tell the most fascinating stories, anecdotes and facts about the characters in history. I often talk about Trevor Babcock on my courses. We studied Mary Queen of Scots as well, but we looked at copies of the letters she sent, the secret codes used in the various plots, and we traced her long journey from Scotland to Fotheringay Castle where she met her end. A very complex woman. She was renowned for this wonderful head of hair, you know, but when her head was chopped off it turned out to be a wig. I always remember that.’

  ‘My best teacher was Miss Wainwright,’ I told everyone when Miss de la Mare turned to me, ‘who taught me English. Actually, I studied for my “A” level English in a girls’ school.’

  �
��However did you manage to wangle that?’ asked Sidney.

  ‘Well, our English teacher at the boys’ grammar was off with some sort of long-term illness and there was no one else to teach the subject. So the seven of us boys studying English went down to the girls’ high.’

  ‘Did you have to wear the uniform?’ asked Sidney mischievously. ‘I bet you cut quite a dash in black stockings and a pinafore dress.’

  ‘Of course, but it was the knicker elastic which was the worst. Cut right into the tender parts.’

  Sidney and David hooted with laughter, and Miss de la Mare raised an elegant eyebrow.

  ‘We were taught by a remarkable woman, Miss Wainwright. When we great lumbering youths arrived for the first lesson, we stood before her to be inspected. Miss Wainwright peered up at us. “I’ve never taught boys,” she said, and then after a long pause and with a twinkle in her dark eyes added, “but I’ve heard of them.”’

  Even Miss de la Mare laughed. ‘I assume she was able to teach you lads something or you wouldn’t have ended up as an Inspector of English here?’

  ‘Indeed, she did. She was warm, supportive, good-humoured, respectful and passionate about her subject. She lifted Shakespeare off the page. “He is not a novelist,” she once told us. “He is a poet and a dramatist and the greatest writer that has ever lived.”’

  ‘Amen to that,’ remarked Miss de la Mare. ‘Well, what these good teachers had in common,’ she said, ‘was an enthusiasm for learning and also a desire to help their students appreciate and explore the subjects they taught, more profoundly. What this Ministry initiative is trying to do is to get teachers to consider the deeper, spiritual side of education a little more in all subjects. Just as Dr Mullarkey said earlier, it is important to teach the various skills but also to develop the spiritual and the moral elements as well. In the teaching of reading, for example, the appropriate materials are selected. The teacher follows a series of logical steps, teaching the mechanical process of how to decode those black marks on the paper. Children can then reason, infer and apply their knowledge to reading. But the teacher’s job does not end there. She develops enjoyment in reading and introduces children to stories and poems which amuse, provoke, entertain, touch their feelings. In music, children learn the mechanics on the piano but use this knowledge to play or to sing to lift our spirits, make us feel happy or sad. In history lessons they can perhaps empathise with a lonely Scottish queen hated by most of her subjects and imprisoned for most of her life. That is the underlying philosophy behind this initiative. I hope I have put it in some sort of context for you.’