Out of the Woods But Not Over the Hill Read online

  ‘Who hath dared to wound thee?’ cried the Giant; ‘tell me, that I may take my big sword and slay him.’

  ‘Nay!’ answered the child: ‘but these are the wounds of Love.’

  ‘Who art thou?’ said the Giant, and a strange awe fell on him, and he knelt before the little child.

  And the child smiled on the Giant, and said to him, ‘You let me play once in your garden, today you shall come with me to my garden, which is Paradise.’

  And when the children ran in that afternoon, they found the Giant lying dead under the tree, all covered with white blossoms.

  At the end, my little listeners were clearly moved, as I was when I first heard the story, and they sat in silence. The teacher dabbed her eyes. Then a small girl sitting at the front declared, ‘I’m a Methodist, Mr Phinn, and I’m going to Paradise one day.’

  ‘I am sure you are,’ I told her, smiling.

  ‘I’m Church of England,’ volunteered another child, ‘and I’m going to Paradise as well.’

  I nodded. ‘Of course.’

  A wiry-looking little boy at the back stood up and announced loudly, ‘Well, I’m nowt – but I’m gerrin in!’

  You will probably be first in the queue, I thought to myself.

  Playing Safe

  Last autumn, I visited a primary school to read some of my poems to the children, and to open a new block. As I walked across the playground at break, I caught sight of some junior boys playing football with a large foam ball.

  ‘That’s not a proper football,’ I observed.

  ‘Aye, well,’ one replied, wiping his nose on the back of his hand, ‘we’re not allowed to use a proper one in case someone gets hurt. Last year a lad got hit in the face and bust his nose.’ I recalled when I was their age and played football on Herringthorpe Playing Fields, in Rotherham, with a substantial football. I well recall when the heavy, sodden, leather orb arched its way through the air towards me and smacked me on my bare legs. It stung for ages but it was worth it.

  ‘Lasses can’t skip, either,’ said the other boy, ‘in case they fall over.’

  ‘Then t’school could get done,’ the first boy told me, ‘if somebody gets ’urt and ’as to go to t’ospital.’

  ‘No win, no fee,’ said the second boy, nodding sagely.

  Earlier that year, I had visited a school in British Columbia, Canada, to speak to teachers and school trustees and work in some of the schools. This school, on the spectacular Victoria Island, was one of the highest achieving in the country; it was bright, cheerful and welcoming, with an outstanding reputation in music, art and poetry. On a glorious day, I sat in the sunshine with a group of elementary school children, outside their classroom, during recess.

  Above us circled two magnificent birds with snow white heads, golden beaks and incredibly large wing spans.

  ‘Bald eagles,’ said the little girl sitting next to me, shaking her head.

  I stared up in amazement. ‘I have never seen such huge and beautiful birds,’ I said.

  ‘Yeah,’ said the girl, in a matter-of-fact voice. ‘We get a lot of these around here. They’re real nuisances. We have to keep our cat indoors when they are breeding.’

  ‘They take your cats?’ I exclaimed.

  ‘Sure do, and anything else they can get. They like the salmon the best but they will eat anything. They’re on the lookout now because they’ve two chicks to feed.’

  ‘I would love to see the chicks,’ I said.

  ‘Well, take a walk up the path at the back of the school,’ the child told me, ‘and turn right at the top and you’ll see the eagles’ nest high up in the cottonwood tree.’

  ‘I shall do that at lunchtime,’ I said.

  ‘Remember to get your bell and pepper spray from the school secretary.’

  ‘Bell and pepper spray?’ I repeated.

  ‘In case you come across a black bear up there,’ the child told me.

  ‘Black bear,’ I mouthed.

  ‘They’re breeding at the moment too,’ the child informed me, casually. ‘It’s the brown bears, the grizzlies, that you have to be careful of, but they are up on the mountains and don’t usually come down.’

  ‘Grizzly bears,’ I whispered.

  ‘The black are mostly harmless unless you get in between the mother and her cub. Then they can be nasty. But if you come across one on the path, look her straight in the eyes, ring your bell really loudly and use the pepper spray, and they soon skedaddle.’

  ‘I see,’ I said.

  ‘Keep an eye out for a cougar,’ another little girl told me. ‘He sometimes likes to rest in the branches of a tree.’

  ‘Don’t look a cougar in the eye though,’ added the other. ‘They feel threatened if you do.’

  I sat there in the sunshine and thought for a moment. In some schools in England, the children are not allowed to play football and skip. In Canada there are black bears and cougars in the woods at the back of the schools. Such is life!

  A Prickly Customer

  It won’t be long now before the prickly residents which live in my garden make their appearance. Last October, I set up three boxes by the compost heap for the hedgehogs, so they could settle down for the winter. We have quite a colony in our garden (I believe the correct collective noun for hedgehogs is ‘prickle’) and, when the children were small, they would wait until dusk and go out onto the lawn to watch these strange, shy and endearing little creatures snuffling about, looking for the dog food we put out for them. Lizzie, my daughter, still loves hedgehogs and, when she was little, her very favourite Beatrix Potter story featured Mrs Tiggywinkle.

  I recall visiting a primary school one cold November day, when I was a school inspector. The teacher asked the eight-year-olds to describe anything interesting that they had seen over the weekend. One child informed her that she had seen a hedgehog on the lawn.

  ‘It’s very strange,’ said the teacher, looking in my direction, ‘that a hedgehog has come out at this time of year, isn’t it, Mr Phinn?’

  ‘It is,’ I agreed.

  ‘They usually have a long sleep in the winter, don’t they, Mr Phinn?’

  ‘They do,’ I concurred again.

  ‘Did you disturb it, Chardonnay?’ asked the teacher.

  ‘No, Miss,’ replied the child.

  ‘Well it is strange, isn’t it, Mr Phinn?’ asked the teacher.

  ‘It is,’ I replied, wishing that she would desist from constantly consulting me.

  ‘And did anything happen to you over the weekend, Darren?’ asked the teacher of a small frizzy-haired boy with large eyes.

  ‘Some white worms come out of my bottom,’ announced the child bluntly.

  ‘Oh dear,’ said the teacher, pulling the face of one wearing shoes which were too tight. ‘I really do not think we need to hear about that, do we Mr Phinn?’

  ‘No,’ I said, smiling.

  ‘They came out of my bottom,’ continued the child undeterred, ‘and they wriggled about.’

  ‘Darren!’ snapped the teacher. ‘I really do not think that we want to hear about your white worms, thank you very much. Now, I shall write “hibernate” on the board and we will get back to the hedgehog.’

  ‘We gave it some bread and milk,’ said Chardonnay.

  ‘I don’t think that is very wise, is it Mr Phinn?’ said the teacher. ‘I have an idea that bread and milk might be bad for them. Do you know what hedgehogs like to eat, Mr Phinn?’

  ‘Worms,’ I replied.

  One Sunday, looking through my mother’s old cookbooks for a recipe, I came upon The Practical Cook, published in 1949. The author was the indomitable Fanny Cradock. I loved to watch Fanny and Johnny on the television in the 1950s. Fanny was self-centred, condescending, insulting, patronising, rude, tactless, offensive and wonderfully prickly but, like many people at the time, I loved her cookery programmes. With that deep, intimidating growl and dressed like a pantomime dame, she carped and cavilled, criticised and cajoled, and it made fascinating vie
wing.

  I have to own that I went off Fanny as I leafed through The Practical Cook. One of the recipes is for ‘baked hedgehog’. For those who are planning a dinner party and want to serve something a little more unusual, here is her recipe:

  Clean the hedgehog and roll in thick moist clay. Stand on a baking sheet and leave in a medium oven until the clay is hard and cracking. Break away the crust and the skin and the prickles will come away cleanly. Place the flesh in a baking tin and continue baking in a medium oven, at Regulo 5, in hot fat, basting frequently until the flesh is tender. Serve with thick brown gravy and small boiled onions.

  ‘I Shall Not Tell You Again!’

  Family Life

  Being a Parent

  Recent research has revealed that one in four parents don’t like to tell their children off, and are scared to discipline them. According to a behavioural psychologist, the current culture in an increasing number of homes is for the parent to be the child’s friend, and to explain, discuss and negotiate rather than tell him or her what to do. She cited the incident in a supermarket queue, when a toddler, having been told repeatedly by his mother not to put some sweets in the basket, informed her: ‘You can’t tell me what to do!’ There followed a dialogue in which the parent, holding up the queue, tried to explain to the child why he should do as he was told.

  Well, when I was small, there was no discussion or negotiation; I was given firm guidelines and clear parameters about how to behave, and the word ‘No’ was a frequently used word in my parents’ vocabulary. I have to say that I have carried on the tradition, and tried to employ the same sort of parenting skills with my own children. When Lizzie, my youngest, was five, I heard her in her bedroom, telling off her dolls. It could have been me speaking, for the words, voice and intonation were mine. ‘Now, I’ve told you once, and I shall not tell you again. Do you follow my drift?’

  At the same time as this research appeared, the Times Educational Supplement ran an article about what teachers discuss behind the staff room door. In my experience, the conversation predictably turns to children’s behaviour and the role of the parent. ‘Of course, I blame the parents,’ is the usual refrain. ‘If they exerted a bit more discipline at home, and supported the school more, then we wouldn’t have to deal with these truculent and unruly children.’ There is, of course, a great deal of truth in this. It is an old chestnut but certainly rings true in my case.

  Parents often come in for criticism from teachers – the pushy one who thinks Tamsin is naturally gifted, the disinterested one who sends the reading book back with the comment that ‘it’s the teachers job to learn them how to read and not mine’, the neurotic one who has seen a television programme and believes his child has every condition under the sun, from dyslexia to irritable bowel syndrome, the bolshy one who takes his child’s side on every occasion, the know-it-all who tries to teach the teachers their job, the interfering, the rude and the aggressive. One could add to the list.

  ‘Most of the parents are the salt of the earth,’ one head teacher told me. ‘They cause me no trouble and, on the whole, they want the best for their children.’ Then he rolled his eyes. ‘But some . . . I despair!’ He then related a catalogue of incidents. ‘I have been shouted at by parents, called Hitler and accused of victimisation and child cruelty. But there have been some lighter moments. One young mother with four children – she can’t have been much older than eighteen – had real problems filling in the forms when she registered the children to start school. She knew the children’s dates of birth, and who the fathers were, but when I asked if all the children were natural born British citizens, she told me that the youngest child was born by Caesarean. When it got to “length of residence”, she said it was about fifty feet although she couldn’t be sure. I once asked a young lone-parent mother, whose son had a wonderful head of curly ginger hair, if the boy’s father was red-headed too. “I don’t know,” she told me in all seriousness, “he kept his cap on.” ’

  In this day and age, of course, teachers have to be very careful in dealing with parents, and in what they say about the children they teach. How they must look back enviously to the time when teachers were respected, supported, often held in awe and even feared. How head teachers must yearn for the past, when the position they held allowed them to be bluntly honest in dealing with parents, and they could send letters home like this one, from the headmistress of Brampton New National Schools, written to parents in 1871:

  You must remember that you have not done all that is required by merely gaining admission for your child into our school. Do not suppose that its education is to be left entirely to the care of the master or mistress, and that you are to do nothing. Unless you labour together with them for your child’s welfare, disappointment to all parties will be the result.

  Much of the impertinence, bad language, and ill behaviour which so disgrace and degrade the youth of our town, and of which continual complaint is made, is, in too many cases, to be traced to the want of due care in setting a good example and enforcing it at home; and not, as is falsely and wickedly attributed, to the fault of the school.

  The Challenge of Childrearing

  There’s been a lot in the news recently about pushy parents. In a Channel 4 documentary, Admission Impossible, viewers were offered a fascinating insight into the efforts of some parents seeking the best education for their offspring. One parent, with what he undoubtedly believed to be in the child’s best interests, was determined that his son should gain entry into a desirable and over-subscribed grammar school, so he subjected his son to extensive evening tutoring, combined with a fair amount of parental pressure for the lad to succeed. The father appeared a well-meaning and loving parent, but I question the efficacy of ‘hot-housing’ children in this manner.

  In no way comparable, and far more disturbing, is the tragic story of little JonBenét Ramsey, whose parents’ ambitions transformed her into a six-year-old beauty queen. Andrea Peyser, in the New York Post, felt little sympathy and no vindication for the parents when she wrote: ‘At the age when ordinary girls are learning to walk, this champion baby was taught to sashay like a miniature dime-store tart.’

  Dr Madeline Levine, the American psychoanalyst, describes in her new book, The Price of Privilege, the depression, anxiety, eating disorders and self-harm endemic in an ever-increasing number of young people from affluent homes, resulting from overly ambitious and fiercely competitive parents who exert unreasonable pressure for their children to succeed.

  No doubt such parents believe that they are doing the very best for their children, giving them a head start in life, doing what they think is needed for their children to become successful but, as Dr Levine contends, unreasonable pressure on children can have sad and sometimes tragic consequences. I know this to be a fact. After forty years in the education business, as a teacher, education adviser, school inspector and professor of education, I have witnessed the damage done to children who have parents with overweening ambitions for their offspring.

  Let me give a few examples. I was the compère at a young people’s music competition. Over a thousand people packed the great hall and, backstage, I was trying to put the young performers at their ease. Damien (not his real name), aged twelve, was understandably nervous. He was to play a difficult piece by Paganini on his violin. I reassured him that he would be fine, that he wouldn’t see the audience anyway and that I was as nervous as anyone. During his performance, he lost his way and had to start again. Naturally, the boy was very distressed and received no prize, although the judges were very sympathetic and encouraging. He told me backstage afterwards, clearly in no hurry to see his parents, that his father would be very disappointed. He had set his heart on him winning. I went out front to speak to his parents. Before I could open my mouth, his father, a severe-looking man, clearly very angry with the outcome of the competition, ignored me and approached his son. ‘So, what happened?’ he demanded. The boy tearfully mumbled some excuse. I introduced myself.
‘I know who you are,’ he said rudely, and then informed me that his son had practised his piece time and again without so much as a wrong note. ‘And now when it comes to the performance, he makes a mess of it.’ I shall not forget the devastated look on the boy’s face. He looked, and must have felt, a complete failure.

  ‘And do you sometimes not make a mistake when you are playing Paganini?’ I asked him.

  ‘Actually, I don’t play the violin,’ he told me, pompously.

  ‘Neither do I,’ I said, ‘but your son does, and he plays supremely well.’ Did the man not realise what effect his reaction was having on the boy? Shouldn’t he have put his arm around him and told him that it didn’t really matter, and that he had tried his best, that there was always another competition?

  I met Oliver at a prestigious public school. He told me his brother, father and grandfather had all attended the school and had all been captain of house, and that his father hoped he would follow in their footsteps. He was a sad, shy and serious boy who informed me that he was not much good at sports, not particularly bright and that he preferred reading. There was little chance of him maintaining the family tradition. ‘Dad keeps on telling me that I ought to make more of an effort,’ he told me. I saw in his eyes the distress of a child who felt himself to be a disappointment to his father. I was reminded on that occasion of the film, Dead Poets’ Society, where Robin Williams played the charismatic English teacher who inspired the student who had aspirations to be an actor. The boy, desperate for his ambitious father’s approval that was not forthcoming, and to follow a dream that was never to be, in the end took his own life.

  The headmistress of a successful girls’ independent school related to me the story of a prospective pupil who came, accompanied by her Svengali of a parent, for the interview prior to being accepted.