Thank You, Johnny, Wherever You Are 18/02/2005 I am ancient. I know this because, when I tell people how old I am, they say, "Oh, that's not old at all!" People only say that to old farts like me. For this reason, if I write of my schooldays, you may be certain that I am talking of a time in the dim and distant past*.In those days schools were schools. By this I mean that their prime intention was to educate the children entrusted to them, rather than to entertain, to indoctrinate or to allow them to discover their inner selves through freedom to do precisely as they wished. The methods chosen for them to attain this purpose of education were primitive by today's standards. They believed, for instance, in discipline. The theory was that, if they could persuade the students to sit quietly and listen, there was a strong possibility that they might absorb the odd fact or two. And I hardly need tell you that their chosen method of instilling such discipline involved the application of severe pain upon any dissenting rear ends.Strangely, these outdated and inhuman methods were very effective in providing the vast majority of us with an education that was to prove of some use in later life. Without exception, we left school being able to read fluently, write a passable letter, solve basic mathematical tasks without recourse to a calculator (which did not exist then anyway) and dress appropriately enough for a job interview. Some of us were even taken beyond this already considerable achievement to what we might think of as higher things. These would include such matters as a grounding in the classics of literature and art, some vague acquaintance with calculus or trigonometry and a working knowledge of history and geography but, in some cases, there was a possibility that steps might be taken towards an understanding of self and society.It should not be taken that it was the system alone that succeeded so well in its purpose. The fact that almost all of the teachers were dedicated to their task and gifted in carrying it out is another strong element in the effectiveness of the schools of those days. And the recruitment of such teachers was achieved by a scheme so devious that only an Einstein of bureaucrats could have designed it. The reasoning went like this:Let us offer a mere pittance as a wage to those who wish to become teachers. In this way, any person in their right mind will scorn to accept our offer. Only those who are of sufficient insanity to desire from their hearts to become teachers will ignore such a detail as a salary and will apply. The saving to the Treasury in wages outgoing will be enormous and the quality of teaching should improve as a side effect.That this worked in practice is evidenced by the fact that, throughout my school career, I was subjected to the ministrations of only one bad teacher; and he can be explained away by the fact that he was stupid enough not to have noticed the salary being offered. He did not last long. All of the others were effective teachers. I did not appreciate them at the time but I know now that I owe them a great debt of gratitude.Although my teachers had in common an ability to teach, they varied greatly in approach and method. There were those who ruled by fear, others who used "psychology" and some who ruled purely by force of their personalities. There was one, however, who stood out both in his method of teaching and by his success in educating his charges. He was my English Literature teacher for the two years of ‘A' Level and my debt to him is greater than the amount I owe to all the others combined.I should explain for the benefit of any American readers that the educational system in Britain and her Empire was directed towards two important qualifications, the ‘O' Level and the ‘A'. ‘O' Level was taken at the age of sixteen and was designed to test the student's knowledge of fact. Since it coincided with the school leaving age, for many it was the last they saw of that hallowed institution. For others, those who desired to progress to university for instance, there remained a further two years of school, at the end of which they would sit the ‘A' Level examination. This was a very different exam from the ‘O' Level, since it assumed knowledge of the facts and enquired rather into the student's ability to use those facts.As I have mentioned, Johnny Bridle was my English Literature teacher for my ‘A' Level years. He was a small man, shorter than many of his students, but his body was tough and fit and he had one of those angular, hard faces that one imagines as belonging to a gymnast. Certainly, he had the energy of an athlete and he attacked everything that he did with gusto. In fact, "attack" would be a good word to describe how he dealt with us in our first year with him.Johnny ignored the curriculum, that list of solid and worthy books that we were supposed to read and appreciate, classical authors like Jane Austen (I never did finish Emma - how ridiculous is it to give the longest novel in the English language to 16 year olds and expect them to like it?), Thomas Hardy and Dickens. Instead, he engaged us in discussion, always beginning with some scandalous statement on politics, religion or life in general. His statements were so opposed to anything we had ever thought true that our training in respect for authority would be forgotten in our outrage at his preposterous remarks. All of us, even the most withdrawn and shy, found ourselves driven to argue his point.He never backed down. To him it was nothing to enter a contest of wits with the entire class, shooting down all of our points with a devastating accuracy and ruthless logic. We seethed with anger that he should resist us so and returned to the fray with point after point, only to see them destroyed by his nimble mind.It could not last, of course. In time we began to get the upper hand and he would have to concede the occasional small victory for us. Throughout that year, however, he continued to introduce new topics with unlikely viewpoints and we came to expect and enjoy these heated debates and trials of strength.After our first few and insignificant successes, he began a new tactic. Just on occasion, he would enter the classroom carrying an armful of books and throw them, one at a time, at whoever was first to raise his hand. His instructions were brief and simple: merely to read the book and then tell him what we thought of it.And what books they were. Never culled from the lists of the ponderous curriculum, these were books that had been written within the previous ten, twenty or even forty years, written by authors we had never heard of. Their names are famous now but then they were still controversial and "modern". In that fusty old classroom I first met Mr Steinbeck and Mr Kerouack. There, too, began my acquaintance with the delectable works of Mr Salinger; yes, of course The Catcher in the Rye but, more importantly, the wonderful Franny and Zooey, Raise High the Roofbeam, Carpenters and the incomparable Seymour. Graham Greene entered the room and TS Eliot, Frost and Yeats too.Reading the books was the easy part. We devoured them because they were such a revelation to us. The difficulty began when we had to return the book and announce to the class our opinion of it. Then we found that just an opinion was not sufficient. Johnny would pick at us, drawing us on to defend our viewpoint, never allowing us to rest in easy assumption or sloppy generalization. As the books were passed between us, more of us were able to participate in these discussions and we learned how to defend a viewpoint against all comers.By the end of that year we were seasoned campaigners, alert to any flaw in logic or sly avoidance of a weakness. We were united into a band of bookish warriors, haughty and confident in our prowess. And, in the second year, Johnny released us upon the books of the curriculum.They didn't stand a chance, of course. We devoured them with an easy bravado, picking them to pieces with accomplished skill, pointing out their virtues and skewering their weaknesses. And Johnny sat with us, enjoying our exercise of newly-awoken muscles, only interjecting a point or two when we strayed from the most rigorous path. How easy must that year have been for him, merely shepherding his charges from totem to totem; but earned only at the toil of the first year, when he had turned ignorant schoolboys into hardened warriors of literature.I think we had some idea even then of what he had done for us. The full extent of how much he gave us has only become apparent to me with the passing years, however. I learned much more from Johnny than just a love of literature and writing. I learned more than an ability to defend a viewpoint or debate an issue. Over and above everything else that I had from him is the fact that he taught me to think. For that I am eternally grateful for without it my life would have been very different.He did not shape my thinking or direct it into the paths that he might have preferred. He showed me how to do it and then stood aside while I found my own way and chose for myself the direction that was right for me. And that, surely, is the highest accolade any teacher can receive.Thank you, Johnny, wherever you are now. You were and are the finest teacher that a student could hope for. You were a great friend, too.* This is a cliché. However, it happens to be a good one if you think about it. When you are as old as I am, the past is indeed distant and must, for that very reason, be dim, obscured as it is by the mists of the intervening years. There are times when only a cliché will do.
Clive
Ned I envy you Johnny Bridle, having suffered through some of the dullest and most uninspired teachers to roam the hallowed halls of public education, wondering why they chose this career when their only interest was in the Teacher's Handbook at the back of every text on the curriculum. Johnny Bridle's influence was great, his ability to spur interest and a thirst for learning a rarely found quality in teachers, even today. I suppose we all should thank Johnny Bridle then, for what he has inspired you to, excellence, as evidenced by this post and your blog as a whole. Date Added: 18/02/2005
Ned And BTW, you aren't ancient until people say "but don't he look good for his age"? Date Added: 18/02/2005
Gone Away Johnny deserves all credit than I can give him and more. Teachers of his ilk are so rare that I have not, to my knowledge, met his equal. Date Added: 18/02/2005
Gone Away So that's what they're whispering behind my back... :D Date Added: 18/02/2005
Mad I really enjoyed that Dad, I wish he'd taught me. The majority of my teachers were of a lesser school I think... Date Added: 18/02/2005
Gone Away And a later one, Mad... ;) Date Added: 18/02/2005
Way Confound the peaches, man. You plucked the ripe thoughts right out my old basket, you did, and before I had a chance to feel them properly. Drat and spit, you are good at this. :D The italicized portion I particularly like; grim but effective, that technique they used, and up until a few decades ago, the same was true here, in part. But those differences are fodder for another time, and as a drop-out, I won't touch it lest I feel the familiar wrath of an English teacher's paddle. (Did I ever tell you about the notched pocket comb I carried throughout my 2.1 years of high school, the one that fell apart one fine day?) Now, to the meat... This is bitter-sweet, your subject of Johnny Bridle. Sweet for the sheer joy of knowing there are such teachers out there. How many can really claim, "I taught them to think" as he did? And bitter because it almost makes one weep for not knowing the man or having had the opportunity to suffer under him. Another salute to the fine and creative Mr. Bridle. If he could only see what he has helped shape and create, for he should indeed. Date Added: 18/02/2005
Gone Away You never did tell us of that notched pocket comb, Way, but it sounds good for a blog to me. I know that I was very fortunate to have the teachers I did and Johnny was the kind of teacher everyone should have had. At times I feel humbled when I realize that so few are able to think of even one good teacher they had. Just occasionally I have met others who had it in them to be great teachers but were turned away, not by the payscale, but by the form-filling that is the major occupation of teachers today. That is why the teachers we meet are not in schools at all but out there in the real world. In your way, Way, you are a teacher of note too. Date Added: 18/02/2005
Harvey Young The system of education in the UK is by your recollection better than was offered to us in the Public School system in Philadelphia. I can only wonder what might have become of us had we experienced such intellectual challenge. You do owe a debt of gratitude to your teacher to allow you to stand on his shoulders. He taught you well. I know that you have tried to repay that debt by teaching others. But now I think that you have given Johnny Bridle his due, and perhaps that in and of itself is a satisfactory tribute. An excellent job and an enjoyable read. Date Added: 18/02/2005
Gone Away Thanks, Harvey. Actually I grew up in Africa and was educated in Zimbabwe. This gave me an even greater advantage because modern education methods had not even begun to creep into the schools there, whereas they were already doing so in Britain. But bear in mind that this was a public school; the private schools in Zimbabwe were reputed to be even better... Had we all had teachers like Johnny, the world would be a very different place today, I think. Date Added: 18/02/2005
Way You point out another truth. The fact is, the good ones are so rare, that when a person speaks of them, others listen up. Danny DeVito, the short comic of Taxi fame, starred in a movie where he played a version of your Johnny. Someone with better recall might think of the title; he took a class filled with surly and arrogantly ignorant kids, and taught them, by film’s end, to passionately admire the Bard. If you missed it, rent it. Date Added: 19/02/2005
Gone Away I saw the film, Way, and, like you, can't remember its title. But it was a good movie. There are many films that use this sort of a story as their central theme, Dead Poet's Society being one, perhaps because it is a rarity to come across such a good teacher. Date Added: 19/02/2005
Way I just remembered it. And now I realize why no one has dared give the name; it's difficult to spell. Date Added: 19/02/2005
Rusty I might have had one teacher throughout my entire public education that I will remember in 5 years. Wow. I hate school. Nice to know there are good teachers out there. Date Added: 19/02/2005
Gone Away Well there were once, Rusty. Remember, this is ancient history we are talking here. But still, I guess they didn't all give up and find a job with the IRS... Date Added: 19/02/2005
Gone Away So mis-spell it for me, Way. Just to remind me... Date Added: 19/02/2005
Way I was afraid you'd ask. Lucky me; Works has "Renaissance" in its database, man. Date Added: 19/02/2005
Hannah Beautiful tribute, touching at all levels. I had 3 great teachers, and that at a time when the schools were starting to lose control of the classroom to the great god "society". Two were English teachers, one music. Unfortunately, I also had many teachers who were less than suited for their positions. I currently have several excellent teachers, and you are, of course, one of them, although I will deny saying that :P Date Added: 19/02/2005
Gone Away Thanks, Way, I remember it too now :D Date Added: 19/02/2005
Gone Away Thank you, Hannah, both for the kind comment and for saving the day with news of other good teachers out there. They can't all have gone away, surely? And don't make me blush! Date Added: 19/02/2005
Way Do me a favor, Gone, and let the Screet know I cannot post a comment over there until I resolve the Pop-up issue here. 'Tis a horrible thing to have no voice. Date Added: 19/02/2005
Gone Away Okey dokey, Way. Date Added: 19/02/2005
Harvey Young Hannah, thank you for acknowledging how much Gone educates us all. I was too shy to say it myself. Date Added: 19/02/2005
Gone Away That takes no account of the education I receive from you all, Harvey and Hannah. Date Added: 19/02/2005
Wayne What a wonderful thing this was to read. What makes your Johnny Bridle so much better than the teacher Robin Williams played in Dead Poet's Society is that he focused on the work itself, and on the intellectual process of evaluating the work, and not on his own free-spirited ego. I suppose I liked Dead Poet's Society as much as the next guy, but I don't see how the kids in that film could have learned a single thing about poetry. In America -- or the part of it that I've been able to observe here in my corner of New England -- the pittance that teachers are paid does not, in fact, encourage excellence in teaching. The rational is often, "I get paid so little, and therefore will do very little myself." Furthermore, as mentioned, education in this country has been co-opted by school boards and party politics and faddish trends, so that it surprises no one at all when the superintendent demands that all teachers of a particular subject submit unified lesson plans, so that they are all doing more or less the same thing in the same time frame. What a mess. But I'm getting off the topic a bit. What I mean to say is that this was an excellent read, and your old Johnny Bridle gives this young(er) American teacher -- who tries now and then to flout the system in his own way -- a lot to think about. (And at the risk of becoming a sycophant -- this site is my new favorite, now for content as well as design.) Date Added: 19/02/2005
Gone Away I am truly honored by what you say, Wayne, not least because I have read some way into your blog and have been impressed by your erudition, learning and care for your students. And I don't care if that sounds sycophantic because it happens to be the truth. The present position in British education is much as you describe the situation in American schools; the numbers of illiterate kids pouring out of the system is the depressing evidence of this. But I'm not sure if the pay scales are similar. Certainly, in the time that I lived in Britain (from 1976 to 2004), I never earned even half as much as any teacher just beginning his career. There is irony in the fact that I spent the last five years in England working with teenagers who had been excluded from school. Our aim was to give them the basic skills they were going to need in adult life and invariably this included literacy and numeracy amongst the host of other things they needed (essentially, we were trying to civilize them sufficiently to make them employable). We had considerable success in this and the irony stems from the fact that we were healing the wounds administered by the sytem yet being paid around half the salary of any of the perpetrators. This, more than anything else, has made me think that the only way to pay teachers is frugally... ;) I will always recognize that a good teacher deserves to be paid a great deal. The problem is that high pay attracts the wrong people. Perhaps everyone should be paid on merit, although that just creates problems of judgement, measurement and opinion. Date Added: 19/02/2005
Phil Dillon Clive This was a wonderful piece of writing. I remember teachers like Johnny as well. I was educated in the Boston, Massachusetts education system of the late 1940's and 50's. It was much the same as yours, with the intent being to educate not on what to think, but to learn how to think, period! We were required to read Shakespeare, Hardy, Dickens, Augustine, Eliot, Byron, Coleridge, Alcott, and others. We were required to take three years of Latin, and had to take at least one other foregin language. We had an exchange student living with us for a year, and while she was here I decided that, since I was retired, a colleg course would be fun. I enrolled in international relations and it was one of the sorest disappointments I've ever had in the classromm. It was all about indocrination. The professor made no pretense of trying to educate. The only blessing for me was that I'd come from a generation that was taught to think. I challenged him endlesslly and in the end won over five or six of the 15 enrolled in the class. At one point he and I had a one on one discussion and I asked him why he was son inclined to indoctrinate and why he never challenged his students to think for themselves. His only response was that older people like wouldn't understand. He's tenured, does lots of junkets and trips, makes lots of money. I think you're right, far too many of these guys get paid way to much. As an aside, after reading your blog I'm inclined to think that your thoughts need to be published. Are you considering that? I am myself in the process of looking for someone to publish mine. My wife is gathering mine in categories, with the thought being that they could be published as a series of essays. I've found with my blog that the things I write are too long for the atention span of the average blogger. I get some good quality traffic, but not a lot. I also get commentary that says that if I would write much shorter pieces I'd get an audience. Do you get the same type of comments? Date Added: 21/06/2005
Gone Away I'll answer this in your comments system, Phil. Date Added: 21/06/2005
Gone Away On second thoughts, I'll make it an email. Don't want to clutter up your system with a long comment that's completely off topic... Date Added: 21/06/2005
Alianora La Canta Warning! Long post alert! I got educated in the mainstream British system between 1991 and 2004 (there was uni after that, and then college, but that's veering off-topic slightly). All the primary school teachers bar one were really good - and the not-so-good teacher was hampered by teaching a subject (RE) whose syllabus was so woolly that most of us struggled to make head or tail of it even when a good teacher tried teaching it later on. Discipline was good, even without the methods Gone Away says worked in his time, largely because teachers took the time to get to know the quirks of the students. This meant they could sense when indiscipline was about to start and do something to prevent it from occurring. The best teacher there was Mr Griffiths (who was my main teacher in Year 6, and taught me for certain lessons in the previous few years), who didn't teach me to think in the way Johnny Bridle did for Gone Away (I wasn't ready for that at the time), but did teach me how to observe patterns and link them together. This was really important, because if you perceive the world as largely random (as I did before primary school). Especially when the education system has always assumed that every student comes into it with an intuitive ability to do all this before they start school. The school used a mixture of traditional and modern teaching methods (including some that I've never seen since, such as drawing objects to learn things in virtually every subject). The two key things about the methods, though, was that the traditional methods like phonics were always used first and that the teachers were never afraid to experiment with different ones on those occasions when some of the students didn't get the concept. Interestingly, even the three students in my class with learning difficulties came out of that school as fluent readers, able to do solid mathematics (with and without calculators - except me, because I didn't figure out how to use a calculator reliably until part-way through secondary school) and skilled at all sorts of styles of writing. This suggests that the academic methodology used in primary school worked. Secondary school had loads of teachers who seemed to have tunnel vision - only their subject matter was important, not the students. This misses the point that without the students being at least somewhat co-operative and interested, nothing gets taught. It also didn't help that the students from most of the other feeder schools hadn't been taught basic manners (like blobbing one's tongue out isn't funny), or even that it was OK for other people to not be identical to yourself. As a result, classes were chaos. Bullying, disrespect Matters were not helped when the school turned out to be more interested in its outward image than anything that went on within. This is known as putting the cart before the horse. I suspect there were some good teachers lurking in my secondary school, but by the time the rowdy, bullying students turned up in their classes, the police wouldn't have been able to instil discipline, never mind a teacher which the school wouldn't even allow to remove students out of the class temporarily in most circumstances because it would look bad... Oh, and the secondary school always emphasised its modern teaching approaches and "community" aspect ("community" just meant a bullying hierarchy developed, excluding me and about half of my primary school classmates who didn't hold with that sort of thing). In practise, I spent Year 7 and part of Year 8 twiddling my thumbs while they repeated Years 5 and 6 at primary school in a slower and less useful method, was constantly in conflict with the lack of organisation and common sense in the school and basically relied on my books and magazines at home to learn anything of value. No wonder they were the worst days of my life. It was sixth form, and AS Ethics class, where I was taught how to think. It was an optional class, even though it was post-16 and pretty much everyone would have benefited from it (despite it clashing with half of Thursday lunch...) I have come to the conclusion that most of the great teachers nowadays that still teach in the profession are teaching either some sort of philosophy (where the mandate is for the teachers to teach students how to think) or some sort of personal studies class (where the syllabus isn't so prescriptive). This is because I had three teachers in that class, and they all made it their mission to encourage debate. They also used the extra time resulting from the less prescriptive syllabus to challenge us with scenarios we hadn't considered as part of classwork or homework. We only got one book for the course, but since most of the education was in the verbal debates, that hardly mattered. It also created the genuine community that my secondary school pretended to have but didn't, because the people who didn't understand part of the debating would consult the other students for help, and giving help was encouraged, so long as it didn't amount to doing homework for other people. Sure, there were comments in some students' yearbooks along the lines of "You taught me more in Ethics than the teacher!", but that was OK because the teacher had taught us to act and think like that. The whole "doesn't matter who takes the credit as long as the job gets done" mentality was another important lesson. Teachers are paid a lot more than in the old days, but that's because they have to get a lot more qualifications before they can get work. As a general rule, you're dealing with teachers who've done a three-year bachelor's degree in their subject followed by a one-year postgraduate course in teaching. This means that it takes them about 10-15 years on their current salary to pay for their education. Suddenly it doesn't look so great, and compared to many other graduate professions, the wages look pretty poor. Especially when you consider that after the first couple of years, the wage progression is small unless you head into admin. The people who like admin are more likely to either fast-track into school management through another route or head off into the vastly-better paid commercial world. There are worse-paid graduate professions, like librarianship, but not many. The big problem is that the main motivation for many people heading into teaching is neither children nor money, but their own subject. This works fine for university-level teachers, where other staff concentrate on the students' more specific requirements, but for younger people, it's more important that the teacher can actually teach (which requires a certain understanding about how students behave - even in the apparently-simpler times Gone Away describes, the teachers clearly knew how to relate to the students in a scholastic environment) than their being experts in a given subject. When the teachers realise this (and when the paperwork takes twice as long as the lessons to which the paperwork relates) they either become bitter and ineffective or move away to something more lucrative and/or less stressful. That leads to short-termish measures like Teach First (loadsamoney to teach students already messed up by the system of disillusioned teachers and image-first schools, with an exit clause after two years) which brings in teachers with perhaps the wrong motivations. Date Added: 19/12/2007
Alianora La Canta I'm sure there were paragraphs in there before I pressed "Add comment..." Date Added: 19/12/2007
Gone Away Ah, that would be because Mad has not included the auto-formatting feature from F1 Insight on this blog yet, Alianora. Sorry. The necessary HTML is set out in Mad's comment just below "Have your say" but it's easily missed, I know.
That's a pretty detailed and full consideration of the British education system, Ali. Your capacity for complete comments never ceases to amaze me. Naturally, I agree with everything you say, of course. :D Date Added: 19/12/2007
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