Teacher Man
Frank McCourt Fourth Estate, 272pp, £18.99
ISBN 0007173989
Does anyone ever write a cheerful book about teaching? Is there a schoolday memoir out there on the shelves in which the pupils are a revelation, in which tyrannical mountains of marking do not pile up and in which the bureaucrats never crack the whip?
It is not in Frank McCourt's nature to write such a book. After all, misery is his stock-in-trade, as he reminds the pupils in his New York English classes while recounting tales of his impoverished Irish childhood. He tries valiantly to present his teaching career as a descent into drudgery and grinding fear in the usual style, complete with tyrannical piles of marking, condescending headmasters and class after unruly class of unmanageable pupils.
McCourt works hard to convince us he was a terrible teacher. He tells us how he once actually punched a pupil, how he was repeatedly sacked or found surplus to requirements. Yet, in this respect, and in his attempts to describe the teaching profession in the usual downbeat tone, he fails - miserably. Joy keeps bursting in, uninvited. This book brings laughter bubbling to the surface even as it tries to create an air of depression. McCourt cannot disguise the fact that his pupils love him, miserable Irish childhood and all, and (whisper it) that he loves them, too.
When too many of his charges fall idle, he takes to reading their excuse notes and finds a deep mine of creative talent: "A man died in the bathtub upstairs and it overflowed and messed up Roberta's homework"; "His sister's dog ate his essay and I hope it chokes him". Realising this is a talent his pupils can use in later life, he sets his class to eager work, writing excuse notes from Adam and Eve to God. They blame Lucifer. They blame God. It was boring lying around in Paradise all day doing nothing. And why did God keep sticking his nose into their business anyway? They have heated arguments about guilt and sin. And when the district superintendent walks in and congratulates him on his innovative approach, McCourt celebrates by singing aloud to his class - "O-ro the rattlin' bog, the bog down in the valley-o" - until they all join in.
I spent last year sitting at the back of various classrooms in a London comprehensive school, watching teachers studiously writing their pupils' learning objectives on the board, setting homework on the allotted days and constantly checking each child's personal statistics to make sure he or she was inching steadily towards the required five good GCSEs. As a consequence, reading this book felt like stepping out into a glorious, wild landscape.
Sure, McCourt hints at the bureaucracy prowling the corridors outside his classroom. He imagines the letters he might get if visitors from Japan were ushered in in the midst of one of his pupils' uproarious debates on fairy tales, religion or why mothers are the only ones required to put meatballs on the table. He recounts how, in all his career, just one mother - just one - arrived at parents' evening, asked if her son was enjoying school and, on receiving an affirmative answer, said "thank you" and left. Parents, at least those at his last, high-achieving school, care about nothing but success and money, he says.
Yet in McCourt's classrooms, things happen. When a boy offers round marzipan sweets in class, this teacher begins a discussion about the foodstuffs of different cultures which leads to a glorious class picnic featuring Korean chilli cabbage, Italian meatballs, Jewish gefilte fish. Which leads to a class in which pupils read their favourite recipes as if they were poems. Which leads to a musical rendition of Peking duck so beautiful, so wistful, that it evokes tears. Which leads to a discussion linking English trifle with the sound of the violin and the conclusion that the only appropriate accompaniment for pork chops is the harmonica. By the time the subject is exhausted, the class has its own small orchestra including oboe, four guitars and bongo drums.
And when his serious students, mindful of their parents' ambitions, ask how Mr McCourt will evaluate their creative writing, given that he fails to set tests, to fill in report cards, to employ multiple choice and matching columns, he tells them: "Evaluate yourselves. Examine your consciences. What did you learn?"
Then he, too, gets serious. What is education anyway? Yes, it's about getting the grades, going to college, preparing for a career. But it's also about much more than that. He draws an equation on the board with a long arrow linking two capital Fs, from "fear" to "freedom". McCourt taught his classes to drive out their fears. Inspiring stuff, and a book that every education bureaucrat should read.
Fran Abrams's book on the Seven Kings high school in Ilford will be published by Atlantic Books next year
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