the Whipping Boy
(c) Martin Richards
Have you ever found yourself surrounded by a different culture?
Perhaps you'd chosen to go to a country for its different food and music. Perhaps you'd chosen to live in a foreign place for its wonderful climate. Perhaps you'd chosen to work in a place for the opportunity to make a difference to many lives.
That was my situation. I had taken employment at a Secondary School because I was enthusiastic about Mathematics, and wanted to pass on my enthusiasm to the schoolchildren there.
It took a while before I discovered the deeper nature of the school's culture.
To make a long story short... I will take you to just two days in my young teacher's life.
Some of the teenage students were rather tall for their age. Several boys were taller than I was. Along with their age and size came an awakening interest in the opposite sex. In this co-educational school the classes were a mix of boys and girls, which gave plenty of opportunities for the boys to show off to the girls; and for the girls to show off to the boys.
Obviously, even though the intention of my lessons was to teach Mathematics, I would still need to develop the students' social skills.
On this day, the first that I will tell you about, one of the taller boys was having a bundle of fun attracting the attention of the class, distracting them from my teaching of the Noble Art of Maths.
Realising that I had lost the attention of the class I felt that I needed to refocus on teaching some social skills. So I paid more attention to what this boy was doing. Somehow - and I still don't know how - he had managed to take off his underpants without removing his trousers AND had put his underpants back on again, over his trousers, like Superman.
I could have flipped out, shouted and perhaps demanded that the boy leave the room, apologise etc etc. However I was so fascinated by his feat of dexterity that I had to ask, not "Why?" but "How?".
Standing beside this boy asking how, we shared the attention of the class. Here was an opportunity to discuss useful social skills. In this case the skill of knowing the difference between private and public behaviour, appropriate behaviour for a classroom, and how to get the attention you need without taking your pants off. A skill that could be useful for all the boys and girls in the room.
I asked the boy to stand up and adjust his clothing in front of the class, which probably felt slightly embarassing for him since the kind of attention he was getting was not quite as sexy as before.
I still felt the need to play the role of teacher, to assert my authority in the classroom and to "tell him off", so that everyone would know that I am in charge of the classroom. Yet it felt daft looking up at this giant of a boy to say "Don't do it again"... so I grabbed the nearest chair and stood on it in order to be taller, then in an over-dramatised way, said the words "Don't .. do that ... again!". "No Sir", he said, smiling and accepting the admonishment in good spirits, along with the lesson in social skills.
So now we come to the second day that I shall tell you about.
I know for certain that similar distractions happened in other classrooms, with other teachers. However, not all the teachers were as interested in "How", and were more focused on holding the students down, so they could learn more about the teacher's subject. Discipline was an issue at this school, as it was in other schools. At this time, the 1970's in the UK, there were routines in place for disciplining distracting students.
I was between lessons, walking along the corridor when I met and was asked by the Head of Year to assist in the administration of a punishment on a 16-year old. Shocked, subdued by his authority and curious about what might happen, I complied. We went to the Headmaster's office where there was a second teacher, a teenager and the Head.
In a surreal parody of a Court of Law the charge was read out - that this boy had repeatedly behaved in a distracting way during the teacher's lessons and had refused to change his behaviour despite having been told, and officially warned verbally and in writing. Somehow we had come to this, the ultimate exercise of Authority in the Secondary School System. The punishment was a prescribed three strokes of the cane, to be carried out in the presence of the Head, the boy's Head of Year, and of course, the Teacher. I was included as Observer, perhaps as part of my indoctrination into the deeper culture of this school.
The boy was asked to bend over the desk and his arms were held down. The three strokes were applied in silence. The whole room screamed at the injustice of this ritual.
What followed this ritual whipping will have to be told in another story. I can't write any more at the moment.
More
Have you ever found yourself surrounded by a different culture?
Perhaps you'd chosen to go to a country for its different food and music. Perhaps you'd chosen to live in a foreign place for its wonderful climate. Perhaps you'd chosen to work in a place for the opportunity to make a difference to many lives.
That was my situation. I had taken employment at a Secondary School because I was enthusiastic about Mathematics, and wanted to pass on my enthusiasm to the schoolchildren there.
It took a while before I discovered the deeper nature of the school's culture.
To make a long story short... I will take you to just two days in my young teacher's life.
Some of the teenage students were rather tall for their age. Several boys were taller than I was. Along with their age and size came an awakening interest in the opposite sex. In this co-educational school the classes were a mix of boys and girls, which gave plenty of opportunities for the boys to show off to the girls; and for the girls to show off to the boys.
Obviously, even though the intention of my lessons was to teach Mathematics, I would still need to develop the students' social skills.
On this day, the first that I will tell you about, one of the taller boys was having a bundle of fun attracting the attention of the class, distracting them from my teaching of the Noble Art of Maths.
Realising that I had lost the attention of the class I felt that I needed to refocus on teaching some social skills. So I paid more attention to what this boy was doing. Somehow - and I still don't know how - he had managed to take off his underpants without removing his trousers AND had put his underpants back on again, over his trousers, like Superman.
I could have flipped out, shouted and perhaps demanded that the boy leave the room, apologise etc etc. However I was so fascinated by his feat of dexterity that I had to ask, not "Why?" but "How?".
Standing beside this boy asking how, we shared the attention of the class. Here was an opportunity to discuss useful social skills. In this case the skill of knowing the difference between private and public behaviour, appropriate behaviour for a classroom, and how to get the attention you need without taking your pants off. A skill that could be useful for all the boys and girls in the room.
I asked the boy to stand up and adjust his clothing in front of the class, which probably felt slightly embarassing for him since the kind of attention he was getting was not quite as sexy as before.
I still felt the need to play the role of teacher, to assert my authority in the classroom and to "tell him off", so that everyone would know that I am in charge of the classroom. Yet it felt daft looking up at this giant of a boy to say "Don't do it again"... so I grabbed the nearest chair and stood on it in order to be taller, then in an over-dramatised way, said the words "Don't .. do that ... again!". "No Sir", he said, smiling and accepting the admonishment in good spirits, along with the lesson in social skills.
So now we come to the second day that I shall tell you about.
I know for certain that similar distractions happened in other classrooms, with other teachers. However, not all the teachers were as interested in "How", and were more focused on holding the students down, so they could learn more about the teacher's subject. Discipline was an issue at this school, as it was in other schools. At this time, the 1970's in the UK, there were routines in place for disciplining distracting students.
I was between lessons, walking along the corridor when I met and was asked by the Head of Year to assist in the administration of a punishment on a 16-year old. Shocked, subdued by his authority and curious about what might happen, I complied. We went to the Headmaster's office where there was a second teacher, a teenager and the Head.
In a surreal parody of a Court of Law the charge was read out - that this boy had repeatedly behaved in a distracting way during the teacher's lessons and had refused to change his behaviour despite having been told, and officially warned verbally and in writing. Somehow we had come to this, the ultimate exercise of Authority in the Secondary School System. The punishment was a prescribed three strokes of the cane, to be carried out in the presence of the Head, the boy's Head of Year, and of course, the Teacher. I was included as Observer, perhaps as part of my indoctrination into the deeper culture of this school.
The boy was asked to bend over the desk and his arms were held down. The three strokes were applied in silence. The whole room screamed at the injustice of this ritual.
What followed this ritual whipping will have to be told in another story. I can't write any more at the moment.
More
