Greetings Noble Sir

by Nigel Flaxton

  Ronnie spoke for the first time since he had been brought into School nearly an hour before.

  ‘Twenny four Alma Place. Miss.’ His voice was slightly husky, but no more.

  ‘Good, that’s not far away. I’ll be back in a few minutes, Dave, then I’ll come with you to the hospital unless his Mum wants to take him. I’d better telephone my landlady before we go, she’ll be wondering where I am. Do you think the Caretaker has locked Mr Overton’s room?’

  ‘I’ll go and find out for you,’ I volunteered. I was slightly surprised there wasn’t a second telephone in the stock room which was usually the place where staff had access to one. However I knew that getting extra lines so soon after the War was extremely difficult. We had been waiting years to have a phone installed at home.

  When I returned Ronnie was looking considerably better. Dave had wiped his face and hands and had combed his hair.

  ‘Thank you, Sir,’ he said quietly.

  Dave put his arm round him. ’Alright, old son - you had a rough time.’ Ronnie looked down at the floor.

  ‘Serve me right for chuckin’ a stone.’

  ‘Why did you?’

  ‘’E called me a, a, well, sorry, Sir, but ‘e called me a bloody liar!’

  In those days swearing was serious, especially amongst children.

  ‘And why - oh, never mind now. Come on, let’s get you to the Eye Hospital. They’ll give you some proper treatment up there to make sure there isn’t going to be any lasting damage.’

  We met Angela at the School gates.

  ‘Your Mum was in but your Dad isn’t home yet,’ she said to Ronnie, ‘so she can’t come. She says you won’t mind us taking you instead.’

  ‘That’s OK Miss.’

  Dave turned to me. ‘Thanks for helping, Nigel - all good experience for you, I suppose. See you in the morning.’

  I felt a twinge of disappointment. Having assisted throughout the crisis I felt I was being dismissed as we reached the final phase, but common sense prevailed. Three people taking one nine year old to the hospital would appear excessive.

  Next morning I met Dave at the gate again as we approached the School from opposite directions. As we turned into the playground together quite a number of the youngsters who had been yelling and dashing around with their usual happy abandon slowed and quietened. Some turned towards us, others turned to another boy who was looking miserable. Two self-appointed guards flanked him, taking his arms though not firmly for he offered no resistance. The three walked hesitatingly towards Dave as though impelled by an unseen force.

  ‘’Ere ‘e ‘is, Sir,’ said one.

  The lad between them was Arthur Braggis. His mouth was set but the corners were turned down.

  ‘Upstairs, my lad - my room,’ snapped Dave.

  Arthur looked down, turned immediately and walked into the School. His step was slow but didn’t falter. Most of the other boys turned to watch him and fell silent as he passed.

  Inside we met Mr Overton in the hall. ‘Good morning, Mr Penlyn, Mr Flaxton. I hear you had some trouble last evening. What’s the full story?’

  Dave told him succinctly. The Head’s face wore a very serious expression.

  ‘Shall I deal with him?’

  ‘No,’ answered Dave, ‘I’ll finish the matter if you don’t mind. Having dealt with the victim I’ll do the same with the culprit.’

  Realising what Dave intended made me somewhat embarrassed and we walked up the stairs in silence. He showed no anger but his expression was set. As I glanced at him I saw he was nerving himself to do something he obviously disliked but felt was necessary.

  On the top balcony we parted. I walked into 4a’s classroom and began organising some papers for my lesson. Dave walked into his room next door. Both doors stayed open and I heard a short but subdued conversation between him and Arthur Braggis. Then there was silence.

  Suddenly I heard a fairly sharp ‘thwack’, followed by another, followed by two more. The third and fourth were punctuated by single soft cries from the boy.

  ‘Go on, my lad,’ I heard Dave say more loudly at his door. ‘The matter is finished now, but remember you could have blinded Ronnie.’

  I looked up. Through the window I saw the disconsolate figure walking slowly down the stairs, both hands clamped firmly under his armpits.

  Mr Overton mentioned the matter to the School during assembly. But as I looked at the children I could see that whilst the girls were looking shocked and serious, there wasn’t the same tension amongst the boys. I mentioned this to Dave as the children trooped upstairs.

  ‘Well, it was over by then, see. Most would have heard about the fight last night - news travels quickly on the doorsteps around this area. The lads knew what had got to happen. You saw Arthur came this morning and took his punishment - he didn’t stay away. Once that happened it was all over. As like as not you’ll find Ronnie and Arthur playing together before the week’s out. But there’d have been hell to pay if I hadn’t caned Arthur.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘There’d have been gang warfare! Ronnie’s pals would have had a go at Arthur, then Arthur’s would have fought back. But Authority stepped in and dispensed justice. It just happened to be me on this occasion, though I hated doing it.’

  Obviously he meant it.

  ‘I didn’t learn any of this at College,’ he went on. ‘You only pick it up in school. But the kids and most of the parents round here accept us as Authority - though we have to play detective, judge, jury and executioner sometimes. Generally they accept it if they see we are being what they think as fair. That stops matters getting out of hand.’

  I sought him out again at morning break. ‘I forgot to ask, what did the hospital do to Ronnie last night? Are his eyes OK? I see he’s back in School to-day.’

  ‘They didn’t do much. They bathed his eyes then looked at them with a big magnifier. Said they could hardly see a grain of sand anywhere. If it hadn’t been for the soreness everywhere they said they would have thought we were exaggerating when we told them what he looked like at first.’

  He sipped his coffee and smiled. ‘Told me I could have a job there anytime I liked!’

  That scenario could not be repeated to-day. First, the altercation between the boys took place outside school, both in time and place. Legally, and to-day much importance is attached to legality, the Head, representing the school, is not responsible for nor has jurisdiction over the behaviour of pupils when they are not in school. This is both sensible and a problem.

  It is sensible because, as I have pointed out, school children spend the majority of their time outside school unless they are boarders - and these comprise a very small proportion of the total school population. How could school be responsible for misdemeanours, or worse, committed miles away, late at night, in school holidays, abroad - indeed extension of the idea soon becomes ridiculous.

  It is a problem because society is prone to think the school does have such a responsibility, albeit in rather vague circumstances. Case law is usually very sensible, despite the occasional judgment which the media seize upon to show the unworldliness of an elderly judge. In this matter there have been judgments accepting that school children going to and from school, especially when in recognisable school uniform, are in a sense representing the school at the time. They can, therefore, be deemed to be ‘in school’ for the purposes of discipline. After all, if en route children dash to help an elderly person who has fallen over, or call a vet to an injured dog via their mobile phones and are recognised as belonging to the local school, grateful adults may call it with congratulations and ask for their thanks to be conveyed to the people concerned. So for the opposite events - alas, probably in the majority for we are more likely to be critical - school can be invoked to investigate and dispense discipline. However the law cert
ainly does not require them to take action - whether they do so depends upon circumstances and judgment.

  At one extreme, when children going to the nearby school pass my home and drop litter, if I want to take up the matter generally I am quite correct in approaching the local Headteacher. However, realistically, his only recourse is to appeal to the children’s ‘better’ nature. Occasionally if I actually see something being dropped I pick it up, return it to the individual explaining he/she has dropped a possession. In the ensuing dialogue the youngster may get my message about litter, hopefully given with a touch of humour. Otherwise I know very well there may be a significant increase in litter in my front hedge in the next few days. Nevertheless it does help that I served some years as a Governor of the School.

  At the other extreme a Headteacher died by stabbing when he intervened in an altercation involving members of his School outside the gates. There is a long continuum of events between these extremes.

  Nowadays no corporal punishment can be used. Any serious matter, therefore, inside school or outside going to and coming from home, has to be a matter for the police. Many people feel this is correct; schools are part of society; therefore they cannot be places where the normal writ does not run. Yet I can remember a Chief Education Officer saying to me in the sixties that a Head who calls the police on to the premises has failed.

  There are still plenty of people who, remembering their own school days, will regret that schools cannot dispense physical punishment and close a matter in the way they experienced. Certainly it could be seen as middling discipline - serious enough but avoiding outside agencies which all too likely resulted in making records. All a school had to do was record the event in the punishment book. Incidentally these are now historical, and sometimes fascinating, documents.

  In the absence of the cane schools attempt many other kinds of sanction to discipline those who misbehave. But behind all arguments about what should or should not be used, it is useful to consider the four categories of purpose behind the whole notion of punishment. Any book about social principles will give them:

  As a deterrent - to prevent others offending.

  As retribution - society ‘pays back’ the individual for anti-social behaviour.

  To reform the individual - to improve future behaviour.

  As a penance - so the individual feels he/she has ‘paid the penalty’.

  It is salutary to consider which of these underlies laws, regulations and penalties in society at large and in institutions such as schools. Ideally, I suppose, we would go for number three. In Church, as a boy, I remember intoning the confession:

  ‘Thou....who desirest not the death of the sinner but rather that he should turn from his wickedness and live.....’

  I remember it carried on about us ‘miserable offenders’ though I never classed myself as miserable. For some, also, number four is accepted, especially after personal confession. But I’ll bet most of us think in terms of one or two, especially when some appalling crime is reported in the news.

  The question is, which should underpin discipline in schools? Should schools emulate society in general or should they treat children differently whilst they are children? You could argue there was a bit of all four in the matter of Arthur Bragiss. I wonder whether it reformed him and made him less likely to lose his temper the next time someone angered him. No doubt people in the locality felt it was dealt with under number two. He got what was coming to him was the likely verdict.

  There is the treatment that Dave, Angela, and I to an extent, gave Ronnie. I have no idea whether either of the other two was qualified in first aid; I certainly was not. How would what they did be classified? What would have happened had their treatment not been successful or made matters worse? There is little doubt that to-day everyone would opt for immediate transfer to hospital, which shifts the responsibility, and any criticism reserved for the ambulance service if its response is tardy.

  Another element of the scene might well be missing to-day. At various points both Dave and Angela put their sympathetic arms round Ronnie. To me it is a very sad fact that now even touching youngsters can be misconstrued. Yet throughout the second half of the century, indeed for most of it, the law has required teachers to act in loco parentis - in the place of a parent. Case law refined that to infer that teachers should act as very reasonable parents. Show me the very reasonable parent who doesn’t put an arm round his/her child! The description surely implies the action of love and sympathy. I am sure, also, that in so doing the very reasonable parent has no thought whatsoever of sexual overtones - which is what is implied by our now sex-besotted society expressing concern at teachers behaving thus as reasonable parents.

  There were other things I learned at Spenser Street that did not appear in the College course. A cold wind was blowing one morning driving heavy rain directly into my face as I turned towards the School. I put my head down and pulled up the collar of my mackintosh. I sported a trilby (the then equivalent of ‘cool’) and in such conditions had to hold the brim firmly to keep it on my head. My other hand clutched a case in which I carried varied impedimenta for lessons. The stinging downpour caused me to blink rapidly but dimly I could see other, smaller figures battling with the elements, leaning forward into the wind. Then I blinked again and looked harder. A few of the figures took on the form of elderly gnomes.

  I was nonplussed. Yet, sure enough, some bent figures wore dark cloaks of some sort with pointed headgear. They were quite different from other children dressed in normal, but sometimes inadequate, coats and macs. Then one overtook me. A face emerged from under the covering and little Barry M’s cheeky face smiled up at me.

  ‘’Ello, Sir. Blimey, ain’titawful?’

  His face disappeared again and I was looking down at his strange garb as he hurried on. It looked for all the world like a coal sack.

  It was! But it wasn’t just thrown over his back. It had been tied diagonally across one corner with a piece of twine. It was being held across his back so that this corner covered his head with the point jutting forward. The tied part was across his neck, two opposite corners more or less covered each shoulder whilst the fourth just about reached the seat of his trousers. He was bending well forward from his waist and both hands clutched the sack round his neck.

  I had lived most of my eighteen years within a few miles of Spenser Street and thought I knew the inhabitants of my home town but I had never seen anything like it. Obviously this was the poor child’s substitute for a coat or mac. I stared at them, strangely fascinated and rather shocked. They were effective, certainly, so long as the wearer bent forward - but sacks???

  Inside the School I watched the children hanging up their coats in the cloakroom where each, like their other garments, reflected variation in home backgrounds. But the sacks were draped over the hot water pipes at the bottom of the coat racks where they dried effectively during the day.

  Most were heavy; these obviously were best because little water could penetrate their tough fibres. Most actually had seen use on coal lorries for soon small pools of black water formed beneath them on the floor. But the intriguing feature was that all, without exception, had a corner tied like Barry’s - indeed some of the slightly thinner ones had twine stitches gathering the material. I mentioned them to Miss Beaumont when I met her in the staffroom.

  ‘I know, I was very surprised, too, when I saw them. I’d heard before about parents in poor areas giving their children sacks instead of coats - and of course if you throw a sack diagonally across your back it does just as well whether it’s tied or not. This idea of tying them seems to something local because they all do it.’

  Probably only one in ten of the boys appeared with sacks; no girls used them. Naturally they were only in evidence in wet weather. At other times these boys wore coats in various stages of disintegration. But even the poorest family in this area did
n’t want to give their son just a sack. Although it was crude and rather pathetic something of these people’s character was revealed in the touch of fashioning they gave these strange garments.

  I learnt something quite different from the girls. Margaret E and Jean B sat in the front row nearest the door of the classroom. They were dressed quite neatly and both usually wore Fair Isle cardigans. Margaret often wore a smart little navy blue skirt supported by cross straps over her shoulders. Her dark hair was swept back into two plaits, setting off her fresh complexion and brown eyes.

  I suppose I had heard about pupils having crushes on teachers but I certainly wasn’t thinking about that kind of thing at Spenser Street. If I had been challenged on the subject I would have expected it at secondary girls’ schools, especially boarding and certainly well-to-do. Although I certainly did not yet classify myself as a teacher - I was only a student and still a very green one - nevertheless I did imagine a wide gulf between me and the pupils. I was now eighteen and quite tall; at ten and eleven they were young and small, the latter condition influenced by their area and diet. Certainly I heard about some of the things girls at the top end of secondary schools tried with students but they were fourteen plus and very different. But juniors? No, I wasn’t thinking about it at all.

  But Margaret was. When I later mentioned matters to Miss B she said she had seen the sloppy looks Margaret flashed in my direction, and of course she took Jean along in everything she did. But she said Margaret was like that with any young teacher so didn’t imagine it was any different with me.

  It hit me first when I was marking some Arithmetic exercises the children had finished. I wasn’t expected to teach every lesson so occasionally, when Miss B was teaching, I had nothing to do in the classroom. In fact, at least once a day, she continued with preparing the class for a mime performance of ‘Bluebeard’ which she had entered for the city’s Annual Drama Festival. She was extremely keen and the children worked their socks off for her.