Greetings Noble Sir

by Nigel Flaxton

  I am pleased to note that my comments on ability as I perceived it didn’t always reflect the test scores. By far the highest IQ was that of Sheila C whom I mentioned earlier and had 132 as her measure. 116 was the next highest. There were 20 above 100 and 27 below - no one was spot-on-average. 4A, of course, was supposed to be higher in ability than 4B. Since the range was 132 to 65 no doubt 4B overlapped considerably. .

  In my introduction I pontificated:

  ‘Although an A stream class there are forty-seven children of varying abilities in 4A, thus it is not actually of true A stream calibre. However, there are a few outstanding children who have been very beneficial to the class. Thirteen children entered for the entrance examination to grammar schools but unfortunately only two passed. These, however, passed at a sufficiently high standard to gain free places at the top Foundation School in the city.’

  I wonder how they fared when they moved on. To move daily from Spenser Street environs and class to a very different suburb, buildings and millieux would call forth whatever resilience of character they could summon. Something of that great divide can be gauged from my equally patronising introductory notes to the School:

  ‘Spenser Street is situated in one of the poorer working class areas of the city; thus the children represent all the attendant anomalies of such an area under present day conditions. The home backgrounds of most are poor, the parents have little or no interest in their children’s work and activities. On leaving the School buildings at 4.30 pm many children go home to work or to play in the streets or foul backyards until a very late hour. There is, however, a brighter side to the picture for even in a school of this nature one finds better cared for children whose home backgrounds are good.’

  Perhaps the breadth of the divide had been lessened by the war. We had become used to people from very different backgrounds being forced together for many reasons - in the Armed Forces, as directed labour in factories, facing widespread bombing at work and at home, as air raid wardens, fire guards, ambulance people, in the Home Guard. Nevertheless the ‘free place’ or ‘scholarship’ schemes enabling bright children from poor areas to go to schools for the intellectually very able inevitably loaded the strains of class distinction upon the recipients. The resilient characters not only survived, they gained immeasurably from the experience. As is well known there are some very famous examples.

  I hope Sheila survived, at least.

  Producers of a television quiz series seemed to have been looking over my shoulder by inviting the nation to test IQs. Questions were devised by a single, no doubt very able, psychologist. What were measured, of course, were the IQs of all people interested enough to take part. Whether these constituted a valid sample of the intelligence range of all Brits cannot be determined; possibly not because it is odds on that people took part who had a fair idea they would score reasonably well. The audience panels, drawn from different occupations, usually seemed to be a reasonable sample from the minimal information actually revealed. If the average of all scores in the studio was about 100 then it was indeed a true sample.

  Did I take part? Yes, and usually found I scored worse with the kind of questions I used to do well, manipulating shapes, for example. Then I knew why I could no longer cut carpets and tiles well to fit awkward corners. I was usually greatly relieved to be buoyed at the end by the weighting of scores for age.

  Many books have been written about intelligence and many attempts made to define it. Sometimes I think politicians assume that good teaching is bound to improve it. But could it be a physical matter, depending on the numbers and qualities of synapses in our brains? Over the years I’ve enjoyed watching the quiz show ‘Countdown’ and marvelled at the ability of the lady presenters of the numbers rounds, first Carol Vorderman and now Rachel Riley, Quite often I am successful in getting an answer, but when I can’t I am amazed at the ease with which they manipulate figures. Is the disparity between us due to the way we learned number manipulation, in my case by the traditional chanting of tables in junior school, or have they better synapse pathways in their brains? How do you feel when, perhaps, you get with a group who you feel outstrips you in intelligence? Do you try to keep with them or, if you’re at home, ask who would like a cup of tea and go to put the kettle on?

  There are other quiz programmes in which knowledge and intelligence are regarded as interchangeable. General knowledge and intelligence are linked, but what sets some people apart is the ability to recall facts. Do we actually retain all items of information we ever see or hear but people whose recall is better are regarded as more intelligent? The 18th century Swedish scientist, theologian, nobleman and seer, Emanuel Swedenborg, asserted that not only do we carry such knowledge with us into the next life but also every significant thought as well. The number of such might seem to be astronomical but it isn’t. If you produced a completely new thought every five seconds throughout your waking hours for an average lifetime (and no one does that, not even super intelligent people) you get a figure of just over half a billion. In reality far less because some thoughts are active for much longer than five seconds and some are repeated many times. Not a very large number compared with national expenditure and debt!

  Chapter 13

  As the summer days warmed our thoughts turned to the forthcoming long vacation. As it approached work slackened slightly, now our post-practice work had been completed. In addition to the daily self-criticism I had written on some of the left hand pages of my lesson notebook, along with those of tutors and teachers, I also wrote pages of course reconstruction as we were encouraged to do. Looking back with wiser eyes at my suggested drastic alterations I can see these would have been improvements. In that sense, therefore, my practice was successful for me. But I’m sure Miss Beaumont had to clear up many points with the children once I was out of the way. I wonder how they fared with punctuation.

  That starts a train of thought that has irritated me for years now - the widespread misuse of the apostrophe. It is a fact that in all schools in my early teaching days children widely ignored the apostrophe denoting missing letters and especially possession, i.e. to show the missing ‘e’ in the archaic genitive, which remains in German. Gottes Sohn, O wie lacht ....if you’re into singing ‘Stille Nacht’. God’s Son, of course. It was a regular gripe of English teachers that kids, their parents and the public at large hadn’t a clue about inserting the apostrophe.

  It’s my contention that teachers, everywhere, drummed the use of the apostrophe into their charges very successfully for a couple of decades. True, the underlying reason for its use still wasn’t grasped, so gradually the apostrophe became widespread for plurals as well. Put one in to be on the safe side became the practice, as it still is. So now we get them all over the place, even on fixed public signs. There’s one near where I live - a road name thus:

  Wendover Crescent, leading to the following road’s:

  Blaydon Avenue

  Walsall Close.....

  I once saw a calendar with descriptions of scenes on each monthly page. On one I counted twenty-four incorrect apostrophes in ten lines! But then, as I’m sure you very well know, English delights in anomalies. In this case it’s its punctuation. Come to think of it, I don’t remember a cartoon for that in the Practical Senior Teacher. How would the chap who dreamed up the sketches explain that its as a possessive does not have an apostrophe to avoid confusion with it’s denoting it is? If he came up with anything, I’ll bet children would be just as confused as I’m sure Miss Beaumont’s class were with my use of his others.

  Still, perhaps Sheila understood.

  The VP decided there was another area in which we, also, were less than perfect. This was the matter of voice production and control.

  ‘Gentlemen,’ he boomed purposefully during one of his concluding lectures, ‘on the recent practice I felt many of you showed poor breath control. In question sequences some of you see
med quite out of breath if you received a series of rapid answers from the pupils. In oral table questioning, for example, you must be able to keep going for ten minutes or more firing item after item at the class - seven eights, five sixes, four twelves, how many sevens in sixty-three and so on and so on and so on and breathe perfectly naturally without any suggestion of strain appearing on your faces or in your voices as I am doing at the moment and I could go on and on and on....’

  He managed it superbly, of course. Like many good teachers he was a born actor.

  ‘Some of you I visited were speaking as though you were being strangled. It will not do, gentlemen, you must have some tuition and practice.’

  No one was going to venture that our reaction was entirely due to nerves because he was in the room. Even after a year he had that effect upon us in the classroom, especially those who were not in his tutorial group.

  ‘All tutors have been asked to deal with this matter with their respective teaching practice groups, so you should check times and locations on the main notice board. Mine will meet me in study room six at 8.00 pm this evening.’

  Our group flashed dismayed glances because, as the end of term approached, the evening study period had been relaxed to an extent. This meant that it was possible to escape, certainly on to the field at the rear of the building to pretend one was improving one’s physical training work by throwing a javelin or discus around the grassy bomb craters and mounds, but occasionally also to get beyond the walls. The VP’s choice of time was quite deliberate.

  Study room six was really a long attic high up in one of the wings of the building. It was narrow and had a sloping ceiling into which small vertical windows were set. The evening sun slipped golden fingers through these, painting a row of slanted images of their bars on a dusty grey wall. Whilst we waited for the VP our restriction seemed even more irksome and we longed for the release of the summer vacation.

  So we were not in an entirely co-operative frame of mind when he arrived. Not that we would have dreamt of rebellion even for a moment. The days of student revolt were only in the crystal ball and had we glimpsed them we would have estimated a time span of a hundred years at least before their arrival. Not in our lifetime, certainly. Within twenty years? You can not be serious! Our only day of madness was a permitted one, when we joined the local university’s Rag Day - and that was allowable only because it was in aid of charity.

  No. Dissatisfaction with our enforced incarceration was modified, according to classical psychological theory, to appear in another form. Mirth.

  ‘We will concentrate upon the diaphragm,’ said the VP when he had the ten of us standing in a row with our backs to the attic windows, facing him at rather close quarters. ‘It is here.’ With a dramatic gesture he parted the front of his gown and his dark suit jacket and slapped the palms of his hands on his lower chest. ‘See if you can feel yours, gentlemen.’

  We fumbled, feeling distinctly idiotic and rather glad we were not looking directly at one another. I could detect ripples of giggling insufficiently suppressed.

  ‘Now breathe in fully, completely inflating your lungs, whilst I count eight. Ready, go! One, two, three, four, five, six,’ he intoned in a rising crescendo.

  Trevor exploded. He had inhaled too rapidly and consequently reached bursting point well ahead of the rest.

  ‘Don’t be silly, Mr Walfrey. Breathe naturally and feel what happens to your hands. Try again, gentlemen. Go. One, two, three....’

  Two more pairs of lungs failed before we finally achieved what he wanted. It was very difficult because breathing deeply exacerbates the explosive quality of laughter. Inhaling slowly whilst biting one’s quivering lip is agonising. I felt I was doing myself untold internal damage.

  But worse was on the way. The VP managed to prove to most of us that muscles around the diaphragm could increase the capacity of the lungs, used correctly. Unfortunately, Bill Heppleton elected to be obstinate because he was podgy around his middle and his diaphragm seemed buried.

  ‘It’s there, somewhere,’ barked the VP taking up the challenge. Then to Bill’s great embarrassment he stood in front of him and prodded with the backs of his fingers.

  ‘Push against that, Mr Heppleton.’

  Bill heaved his body forward and the VP staggered slightly.

  ‘No, no, no. Use some sense! I mean push with your muscles there but keep your body still.’

  The VP adopted his most belligerent stance, head tilted backwards, glaring at Bill. We contrived sidelong glances which produced further sniggering.

  ‘You must persevere, Mr Heppleton,’ snapped the VP as he stepped back to face us again. ‘Now, we must proceed to the real work. When you have fully inflated your lungs you should be able to intone a large number of words without a trace of strain, just as choristers do in church services. This is what we shall practice. However, we shall not use typical responses. Perhaps what I have in mind is more in keeping with your present feeling of levity. But it is intended to give you practice in developing clear pronunciation as well as voice control.’

  His stare raked along the line. Then he drew himself bolt upright, perched his hands on his midriff, fingers across his diaphragm and pushed his arms and elbows well forward.

  ‘You will soon pick this up, gentlemen. I will go through it a couple of times using one inhalation for each. Then, when you know it, you will each try it in turn.’

  He fixed his eyes above the middle of the row, paused, then inhaled with superb grandeur. It was masterly. Then, very slowly and in rich baritone intonation,

  ‘Marmaduke’s natural ability and magnificent memory enabled him to master not only the labyrinthine mazes....’

  At first lips quivered, then bodies, then came awful strangled gurgles, then inevitable and blessed relief. We simply collapsed, laughing uncontrollably. The performance was so unexpected, so unlike the VP, and so ridiculous. The atmosphere was quite wrong for serious practice and none of us was in the right mood. Anyway, laughter is so contagious.

  It is exquisite agony to be in a group howling with laughter, suddenly to spot someone whose expression is so fixed it seems to be a mask. Suddenly a second wave sweeps over you because the serious face appears so unaccountably funny. The fact that its owner is the only one not to be sharing your near paralysis makes it far, far worse and you laugh until it hurts, and beyond....

  Major Darnley stood absolutely immobile, staring into space. We rolled about, absolutely hysterical, our feeling of frenzy heightened by the knowledge that for the first time we were challenging his authority. Fear of his reaction was swept aside by splendid fun.

  Very slowly, we subsided. We wiped our eyes, returned to our places and simmered down. When we were completely silent, without a word or even a direct glance at any one of us, Major Darnley inhaled precisely as before and began again.

  ‘Marmaduke’s natural ability and magnificent memory enabled him to master not only the labyrinthine mazes of philosophical tautology but also to unravel the circumlocutory rhetoric proposed for his erudition by his professional TU-TOR.’

  We bit lips, we hugged ourselves, we swallowed hard. Somehow we confined our laughter this time until he reached the last word. In contrast to the monotone of all the rest, tutor was sung on two different notes as in divine worship responses. One word was lacking.

  ‘AMEN’, I sang, insufficiently sotto voce. Nine convulsions erupted immediately.

  This time the VP did not stand silent and immobile. He moved in front of me with splendid ability considering his years and regaled me with information about my lack of maturity of which I was totally ignorant. Mentally I was still in nappies, it seemed.

  ‘I shall not ask Mr Flaxton to contribute further to this tutorial,’ he said as he regained his place. ‘He seems quite incapable of accepting the spirit behind this period of instruction. Perhaps, Mr Mer
sely, you will help us. Come and stand beside me and see what you can do.’

  Gordon certainly entered into the spirit of the tutorial, but not in the way the VP intended. Like the rest of us he was determined to enjoy it to the end. He strode out purposefully, stood beside Major Darnley, struck his position and winked at us.

  ‘Marmaduke’s natural ability and magnificent memory enabled him to master the something something something, lah di dah di dah, and something about circumlocutory rhetoric which I have for-GOT-TEN.’

  He got in the two notes at the end and this time Malcolm and Archie chipped in with an AMEN, but the rest were in fits of giggles again.

  ‘I shall try one more of you,’ shouted the VP angrily. ‘Mr Heppleton, you normally show considerable keenness for work. Let me see whether you can salvage something from this ridiculous farce and show an atom of an adult approach.’

  But for once Bill was with us wholeheartedly. He said afterwards the word farce gave him the notion.

  ‘Certainly, Sir.’ He swept out and gulped in a quick breath.

  ‘Marmaduke’s natural ability and magnif....’

  We didn‘t hear any more because we were howling with laughter again. The VP stormed out, leaving us masters of the situation in deed, if not in fact. Bill delivered his performance in a desperately strangled falsetto!

  Reversion to childishness is a phenomenon experienced at all times by all groups of students and we were no exception. It happens in the best adult groups as well and continues to ripe old age, though we euphemise it as letting our hair down. Beforehand we would never have believed we would do it in front of the VP. Nevertheless there was a bonus. He did not repeat the exercise after the vacation when the new student intake was markedly different, nor did he ever refer to our behavioural response. We found also that the other group tutorials were cancelled for some reason.