Chapter 6: Being Privileged

We start at school when we are children of five years old and we leave at 18, when we are adults. We move between home and school for 13 years, probably spending more consecutive hours at school than at home, where we end up sleeping most of the time anyway. School has a huge impact on how we develop as individuals and future contributors to society. I’ve therefore been wondering what exactly I learned while at school.

My education started well enough. I used to follow my older brother, John, to school, apparently. He had started the year before me. I would sit outside the school gates, waiting for him to finish at lunchtime. How I came to be wandering around the streets when I was four years old is beyond me to understand, but it certainly demonstrated my eagerness to go to school.

I don’t remember much about my junior school, which I attended until I was 11 years old.

But the most important thing I learned, albeit unconsciously, was about privilege.

It sealed into my DNA all my privileged statuses. There was firstly my white privilege, consolidated by the fact that I never saw one black pupil or teacher, so I never had to consider anything to do with black people’s lives or existence. I remember my father joking once when I came in and asked where Mum was, “She’s run off with a black man,” was his reply and everyone laughed, because that was clearly the most ridiculous thing imaginable. And even when I became aware of the increasing numbers of Pakistanis and Indians in the UK population, that awareness would be filled with what I was told was not ‘okay’ about them: they’re taking our jobs; they never mix; they smell of garlic; they never wash their hair; they have tons of them living in one house. ‘Paki bashing’ was a favourite way for youths to spend their Friday nights. If we did think about black – African and Caribbean children – it would be because they were so poor and deprived they needed white Christians to save them, so children in school were encouraged to give money for these poor wretches. Early lessons in seeing people who were different from us as ‘less thans’. How can white people NOT be racist when this has been our foundation. Re-educating ourselves about how we perceive black people – and indeed anyone who is different from us –  is a life long journey.

Then there was my Catholic privilege. I ‘knew’ I was in the one true religion. In fact, it was years before I realised just how many other religions there were. We were told that we would just have to pray that God would allow them into Heaven – Catholics would be there as a right, of course, provided you did everything the priest told you to do.

We were God’s elite and that certitude settled into my soul.

And of course there was my intellectual privilege. I was clever. It was as simple as that. Other children just weren’t as clever as me, so when they didn’t pass their 11+ (for grammar school) they had to go to the secondary modern school. Grammar school was where you would study academic subjects and pass exams to get to university. The secondary modern school was where you did the practical subjects, like woodwork and needlecraft. Everyone knew that that was the school for those who weren’t going to make anything of their lives – academic excellence was the only thing valued. The comprehensive school system, combining grammar and secondary modern school children was introduced in England and Wales in 1965 when I was 17, so it didn’t affect my education. Being clever gave you access to opportunities the less clever didn’t have. To this day, I am drawn to clever people, even though my experience has shown me that often there is an inverse correlation between intellectual intelligence and emotional intelligence.

The only practical subjects I studied were domestic science, where I learned how to cut the crusts off cucumber sandwiches, and art, where I learned that I couldn’t draw or paint. There were no subjects like the humanities (combining history and geography), or sociology, or psychology or anything resembling life skills. The nearest life skills class I got was in the girl guides, where I learned how to make lemon curd, how to darn socks and how to make beds with hospital corners for my homemaker badge. But, as I was ‘clever’, I didn’t need to worry about such things. I was at the top of the academic pile and would be going on to more worthwhile pursuits.

None of these privileges were in my conscious mind as thoughts, but they were part of my being, which led me to have a superior view of myself and probably contributed to how confident I felt.

They also led me to develop a generally superior attitude to others. No mistake then that I have been teaching about diversity and inclusion the last 30 years (‘we teach what we most need to learn’).

The Girls’ Convent Grammar School was two blocks from my house, up a steep incline, followed by a less steep one. I could hear the school bell from my bedroom and was often late. I would get into trouble for this because, “Girls have to get here on two buses and they can get here on time,” and would respond with a line I got from my father, “Well, Sister, if they are late, they can hurry up, can’t they? Which I can’t do as I’m only across the road.”

Once, not long after I had started school and when I was late and hurrying up the hill at ten to nine, a man stopped me on the corner of the first hill and asked me where some place was. I didn’t know and said so. I remember he was a tall man with a raincoat on and he had a thin face and extremely thin, curly lips. He asked me again and, being the polite little girl that I was, I suggested that he just walk down the hill to the main road and ask someone there. He carried on looking me and then said, “I could just fuck you.”

I froze to the spot and managed a “Pardon?” in a very small voice.

He repeated what he had said, “I could just fuck you,” the whole time looking at me with a sneer curling round his thin lips. There was not a soul around. No groups of girls coming up the hill, chattering and laughing from the bus. No women out with prams. Not a car in sight. I turned and ran as fast as I could up the second hill and into school, where I sat in the cloakroom panting, trying to find my ‘indoor shoes’ to put on (God forbid you would wear your outdoor shoes on the polished wooden floors in school, even in an emergency). I didn’t tell anyone at school (interestingly enough, even though this happened around the time of my sexual encounters at home, I never linked the two in my mind). I didn’t know this man; he was horrible; I knew what he said was wrong; I knew it wasn’t my fault; and I most certainly did not enjoy it.

I think I told my mother about the incident and I have a vague recollection of talking to a policewoman about it too, but, of course, they never found him to my knowledge. Did it ‘damage’ me? Well, I couldn’t stand hearing the word ‘fuck’ without feeling slightly sick, until I was well into my 20’s. By then, I had heard the word so much I no longer associated it with ‘thin lips man’, so I started using the word myself with relish and realised what a marvellously expressive word it is! I still hate men with thin lips.

The grammar school uniform was a brown gymslip (like a sleeveless pinafore dress) with a mustard yellow blouse underneath and a brown tie. It was one of the ugliest uniforms in town. But with my new brown leather satchel containing not much more than a pencil case, a notebook and two sanitary towels (just in case), I felt very grown up indeed. We also had to wear a hat and gloves, the most important pieces of the uniform according to some teachers. The hat was a brown felt bowler with a brim and a yellow ribbon tied round the dome. By the time I was 15 and back-combed hair was in fashion, it was nigh impossible to get the hat on, so you would have to perch it on the back of your head and clip the brim down to the side of your head so that from the front you couldn’t see you had a hat on at all.

Of course, the uniform just cemented my privileged status.

For a time, I wanted to join the Armed Forces – any of them: the Army, the Navy or the Air Force – just so that I could wear a uniform and boss people around. The teachers all wore black gowns (those who were graduates, that is – even teachers had their statuses). When I finally got to be games captain in my final year (primarily because I was the only one in the sixth form in any of the school sports teams) I could wear a green gown on important school occasions which I enjoyed very much. I seemed to need a lot of external symbols to make me feel important: being Catholic, clever and white seemingly wasn’t enough, probably because everyone around me was also Catholic, clever and white. But the difference between the teachers and the pupils was very marked.

The teachers had all the power. We had to stand when they came in the room. We had to do everything they said. They were always right. And they were aided and abetted by the system. The main message of the teachers and the system was, ‘conform’ – wear the uniform, walk on the same side of the corridor, defer to all those in authority. So, added to the lessons that all girls were getting from home and society – be good; be nice; be pretty; be quiet – there was another one: ‘Don’t stand out’. This message didn’t suit me at all. I had stood out since the episode in Sister Anselm’s class when I was five. I was learning to stand out to hold my own with my brothers at home. I was hearing about the antics they got up to at their school and was feeling as pathetic as the girl they said I was.

I learned about myself that I wanted to stand out. I wanted to be noticed. And one of the only ways I could do this at school was to subvert the system.

And that meant challenging headmistress Sister Olivia, which I did on more than one occasion. I learnt early on that it is easier to get forgiveness than permission and part of being clever was being articulate and quick thinking enough to get out of trouble when you had done wrong.

The power and authority I witnessed in the teachers gave me a very clear picture of how people were divided into ‘more thans’ and ‘less thans’. The ‘more thans’ had the power, so the most important thing was to be a ‘more than’ and not a ‘less than’. But, of course, to be a ‘more than’ you need ‘less thans’ around you to confer your status. When I was form prefect in the first year and we were told not to speak in between lessons (what kind of a rule is that!), I bossed my classmates around mercilessly and if anyone spoke, I would march them down to the headmistress’s office to report them. I had no power at home, so I modelled myself on the power I saw at school. It’s a wonder I had any friends at school at all! But, of course, the system never gave me any real power, so the seeds of subverting the system were sown.

I’m not sure that any of the things I was learning were intended at all. I was supposed to be concentrating on my subjects. A grammar school education in the 1960s consisted of separate subjects studied until O Levels, when you were in fifth form and about 16 years old. This led me to compartmentalise all I was learning – I didn’t like history but loved Shakespeare’s England, which I saw as English, not history.

Most girls took eight or nine subjects at O Level. I knew that you only needed five to get into the sixth form and study A Levels, which were required if you wanted to go to university. I needed maths, a language (French), a science subject (biology) and English language and literature. I didn’t care if I failed geography, history and Latin, because I didn’t need them. Having been first or second in the class for five years, my mother felt humiliated having to tell her friends about my ‘terrible results’, when other ‘less clever’ girls had passed eight or nine, or even 10 subjects. My furious mother made me take them again. I failed them again just to spite her. I passed the exams I needed to get me to the next stage – O levels, A levels, my teaching certificate and my degree. Always just doing enough.

Here is what I learned from my academic studies: I learned that to pass exams you didn’t need to work really hard all year, just do enough to get by and then cram for the last four weeks before the exams, stuffing your head full of facts and figures and quotations which you could vomit onto the exam paper.

Exams were a regurgitation of information. There wasn’t a lot of thinking, or evaluation or analysis that you needed to worry about.

That’s what I enjoyed most about maths, there weren’t even any quotations to learn! It was all about seeing the patterns in the numbers and the total satisfaction of solving quadratic equations.

Another critical thing I learned was about the connection between subject and teacher. The subjects I liked best and took forward were the subjects taught by the teachers I liked most. Remembering this gave me much to think about when I myself became a teacher. My English teacher, Miss Cooke, I adored. She was small and pretty with dark curls round her face and a gap in her front teeth. She was always smiling and very softly-spoken and she loved hearing all our varied interpretations of the texts we were reading. I learned a lot from her about how to teach English Literature.

I had two maths teachers. My pure maths teacher was Sister Cecily Mary – thank God for a nun with a female name! She had entered the convent in her late twenties, so she was at least worldly wise. She was round and smiley and had a permanent twinkle in her eye. She was also very down to earth and practical. She didn’t try to act holy, like some of the nuns, and treated us as the young adults we were. I loved her and because of her, I loved pure maths.

Miss Bond was my applied maths teacher. She was very tall, with a purposeful stride and a rasping voice. I liked her a lot and carried on visiting her years after I had left school. I remember the night before my maths exam, when I was going over the chapters on Moments of Inertia and Centres of Gravity, which I did not understand even one word of, I knew that I would have to answer a question on one of them. Each chapter in our textbook had about 50 examples to work through at the end of the chapter, so I chose Centres of Gravity and looked through the questions – no answers, just questions. I chose Number 48 as it was the hardest and the one that I wouldn’t be able to even start on. I phoned up Miss Bond and she talked me through it on the phone until I got it. The next day in the exam room Miss Bond gave out the papers and at the relevant stroke of the clock said the ominous, “Turn over your sheets.” I looked at it, as did Miss Bond, and went straight to the question on Centres of Gravity. There, in black and white, was the question I had phoned her about the night before with one slight change in one of the fractions. I read the question and looked up at Miss Bond. She looked up at the same time with an incredulous look on her face and a slight shake of her head. I grinned and aced the exam.

There were really no other teachers of note, except for our Form Mistress, Sister Alexis who was memorable for telling us things like, “If a boy put his tongue in my mouth I would… I would… bite it off” (this in answer to an anonymous question in the question box – the question box disappeared after that) and, “Don’t wear black patent shoes as boys can see the reflection of your knickers in them,” and, “If you sit on a boy’s knees make sure you have a telephone directory between you.” Poor woman. We assumed that she spent her time fantasising about priests.

It was at school I first realised I loved using both sides of my brain.

I could go from discussing Cleopatra’s character to solving complex calculus equations without feeling tired at all. I didn’t know anything about left brains and right brains at the time but when I did come across it some years later, I had my own experience to draw on.

I learned to be comfortable being around females; not having any sisters and having been around boys in the junior school who were just plain silly, it was a great relief to be around girls. And it was easier for me to shine among girls than it would probably have been if boys had been there too, showing off and dominating. As it was, I could adopt those roles. It was my first taste of being a big fish in a small pool, which I continued to develop as a strategy when I had left school. In my girls’ school you were expected to do well and there was no competing with boys in sports or subjects like maths. Nearly all the strong women I have met as an adult went to an all girls school – that surely can’t be a coincidence.

The last thing I remember about my grammar school days was when I was in my final year, at 18 years of age. I, together with two friends, had been in school late doing something and suddenly there was a power cut, so the caretaker showed us the way out through the dining room, using the light from his torch. As I went past him, he reached around and fondled my breast in the dark. I brushed off his hand and hurried out. I don’t remember it bothering me. I didn’t trust men anyway. Although I craved the attention of boys, I saw them only in physical terms. It was sexual expression I was craving. Intimacy happened in my female friendships. At school was where this started, and it has continued all my life.

I told my mother about the incident at school but she didn’t believe me.

“But he’s such a good man,” she said. “He does a lot for the church and his daughter Margaret is going to be a nun. I’m sure he wouldn’t have done that, you must be mistaken.”

I told the headmistress Sister Olivia the next day because I was concerned that if he was doing that with me then he might do it with other, younger girls. She didn’t believe me either because I didn’t seem to be unduly upset. I was obviously too calm about the whole thing. There were subsequent times in my life when I haven’t been believed about something because I haven’t been upset and hysterical.

We judge people according to how we think they should act.

So, my school days concluded as they had begun, with an inappropriate sexual advance.

The good things that school showed me were that I could be strong and independent and clever without having to hide it; that being quick-thinking and articulate can get you a long way; that your confidence will carry you much further than your intellect; that if you want to stand out you will need to take responsibility and be prepared to be a leader and that privilege will bring you power and open doors. The power which privilege brings also carries huge responsibilities but it would be some years before I would be willing to understand and accept those. 

Photo

The school badge as it was in the 1960s. The motto of the school was Vitae Via Virtus – Virtue is the Way of Life – very fitting for a Catholic Girls’ School!

Questions For Reflection

Were you happy at school? Do you consider you received a good education? Are your memories of school largely happy ones – or sad ones? What did you learn most from your school days?

A Blessing While You Reflect

May teachers have the wisdom, knowledge, and skills to make their classrooms places where students learn not only knowledge, but also integrity.

May we remember that we are teaching people all around us by our example

May we always inspire the young people around us to be the best that they can be in all circumstances

May we never stop learning about ourselves, about others and about the world