To Torture or Not.

Teaching is a funny profession.  At the end of the day it is not what you put into a student's head but what you discover hidden within, that matters.  Discovering those hidden gems is what teaching should be about.  I, on the other hand have struggled to learn this skill and have not mastered yet.  But here is an account of a good day with a good class.  I wonder what, ten years on, they are all doing now.

To Torture or Not.

Kostas came into my class crying.  A short plump boy with hair that stood as if at attention.  It looked as if it had been grafted from a husky and dyed a dark brown colour before being stuck too far forward on top of his head.  His mother was petite and quick with nervous half smiles/sneers and anxious hands.  Her eyes darted about from Kostas to the classroom, to the other children, to me and then around again.  Just once they seemed to gaze through the classroom window with a longing for something.  I pictured her as a bird trapped indoors and frantic to find freedom.  She was ignoring the fact that her son was sobbing at her side and I felt duty bound to follow suit.  I mean she was his mother.  She knew him, knew presumably what made him feel better, and soothed him.  It did not take a year of teaching for me to discover that was not the case. 

For instance, here she was talking to me, prolonging the awkwardness, when she would have been better ushering Kostas to his seat and speaking to me in private later.  Instead, above his head she whispered, “separated, doesn’t care, it’s been difficult, sensitive boy, only us now, his father…”, raised eyebrows and eloquent shrug that could have meant is a wonderful person but I was pretty sure did not.  Her words of distress beat like wings against the windows, slightly incoherent but persistent and relentless.  Please leave, I urged inwardly. 

I’ve found urging people to do or say things can be productive.  It’s not that they hear your instruction by some telepathic power; it’s more that your face betrays your hopeful expectations and that can panic most people into running away or guessing what it is you want.  Try it the next time you are having a conversation with someone and want to end it.  Just say loudly in your head, “Please go away..now!”, while smiling politely.  Your body language generally gives the game away and subconsciously or consciously they respond.  She did.  She shuffled out of the classroom reluctantly and I told Kostas to sit.  He had not stopped crying and the other children began to question him, “Why are you crying?” interspersed with,”Cry baby”, and laughs from others. 

Children are not extra cruel. They are just worse at pretending than adults, who probably think you are a crybaby but would never say it to your face only to everyone else behind your back.  To you they will mutter meaningless phrases like, “There, there..it will be alright”.  I have to say I am not a natural teacher.  In fact I’ve long announced to all who care to hear that I should not be left in the presence of small children!  Having brought up my own three I can recognize someone entirely unsuited to child rearing.  It’s not that I don’t love children.  Usually, when exposed to them long enough, I do grow to love almost all children.  I don’t lack educational skills nor determination.  I am not a nervous person. On the contrary, I’m fairly confident.  So what is it about me that makes being   with children not my forte? 

I discovered it when my eldest son was two and fascinated by a creeping insect on the dining room floor.  His face was a picture of concentration as he edged closer, tentatively and nervously, to get a better view.  I waited until he came as close as his own confidence would allow, let the silence and wonderment develop and then shouted “BOO!” and pounced on him.  He screamed satisfyingly and I hugged him, barely able to control my laughter until he stopped.  Now your own children grow accustomed to this sort of abuse.  I come from a long line of people who did this to their children.  My grandfather greeted his daughter, my Mum, one day by telling her that she had failed all her O’levels, with a deadly serious and disappointed face.  Only to announce later he had been joking.   My mother, in her turn, had a wicked habit of taking you by surprise and always, whether it was Granda or Mum, the hoots of their laughter would soothe the shock/fear or discomfort. 

When I had my own children I just could not help doing it too.  It was strangely satisfying and hugely rewarding.  When you spend all day seeing to the practical needs of a little person, it can balance things wonderfully to see them jump in surprise.  It also keeps them on their toes.  I noticed, when young, other people’s mothers were so predictable and put upon even by their own children.  My mum was a different kettle of fish entirely and it wasn’t fear that stopped me provoking her, more a dread of her sense of humour.  After all even when you were good, things could happen, so why put your head in the noose?  There was hardly any shouting with my Mum, just lots of laughter - as if bringing up children was such an effortless thing that only really unimaginative Mums did it without a backdrop of easy good humoured torturing and constant laughter.

So here I was teaching a small class of 9-11 year olds for a year and torturing them as I’d been and they seemed to enjoy it just as much!!  For example, one game I designed consisted of me going around the class and accusing each child of different crimes in turn.  I would play the role of prosecuting attorney and the accused would be put in an impromptu dock in front of the class, or in this game the jury.  I would begin, ”I put it to the jury that the plaintive did, on the 4th of this month, a terrible deed.”  Silence would usually follow as I would try and come up with some novel crime that I had not used before.  Tiny, sensitive girls would at first be shaken to be singled out for such treatment but rapidly grew more capable. 

Small bird-like Alex, who everyone took pencils from (she always kept an immaculate pencil case) was typical.  I never heard her say even an aggressive word to anyone in the class and in the face of downright rudeness just endured silently and sadly.  She had stammered a blushing feeble excuse on her first time in the dock but shocked us all the second time.  I accused her of killing a famous actor.  When she claimed she had not done it I asked her why his body parts had been found in her school bag!  There was a delicious moment of shocked silence as the class listened and stared at our gentle Alex.  How would she get out of this?  Talk about a tough situation.  Alex lifted her chin and proceeded to tell the class exactly how she had killed him and dismembered his body with a chainsaw and how the blood had flowed everywhere.  With every new revelation the class rocked in riotous approval and by the time she ended her account with putting his fingers and toes in her school bag the class was hysterical with laughter.  To crown her success the jury voted her innocent on the grounds of her total honesty about it all.  As Alex walked back to her desk, head held high, a free person, she seemed taller, smarter and more in control than any of us.  As a teacher I was totally unorthodox, of course, and a danger, but the kids loved the fact that for the whole hour they were with me, things were unpredictable, surprising, provoking but never boring.

Kostas, when put in the dock would squirm while being accused, like a puppy wanting to be patted but unable to stay still to enjoy it.  Once my accusation had been made he would answer with the same line in his defense to everything.  Only the order of the phrases ever changed.  “I wasn’t there.  I didn’t do it.  It wasn’t me.”  This would be repeated again and again despite everything I said and the rest of the class would groan and find him guilty every time.  But for some reason Kostas loved it.  Delighted in this game.  In fact sometimes when things were really fraught at home he would come up to me at the end of the class and beg for two more crimes.  Tired, I would be packing away my books and wanting to be off home, but Kostas would be there in front of my desk holding up two fingers with the other hand and pleading ,”Only two!  Please, please, please..?”  So as the room emptied I would accuse him of some dastardly crime and he would glow with contentment and wriggle in excitement until he was allowed to come out with his final, usual punch line. “I wasn’t there.  I didn’t do it.  It wasn’t me.”  One more. His eyes again would blaze in delight, quivering as every detail of his crime was absorbed and he could once again use his deadly defense.  Sometimes I gave in to his requests and mostly it was to see his happiness as he sailed out of the class beaming at his own cleverness - and no jury to ruin his great moment.  

Another game was the .”Do Something New Game.”  It started simply enough.  I would get everyone to sit in a circle and begin clapping my hands. Everyone would copy me.  Then I would point at someone else and shout change and they would have to do a new action that everyone else would copy.  You could not re-use any action that had already been done.  I found that children nowadays lacked creativity and this game would gradually make that apparent.  The longer it went on the more panicked players became as change was called and no more original gestures could be conjured up.  Soon cries of “we’ve already done that”, or “same, same..” would be directed at the victim who would look at their hands in despair desperate to find something new to do with them as everyone else looked on in disgust and delight at their predicament.  One child burst into tears and cried “No one has taught me this game before”, a comment I took to be a condemnation of our whole education system. This was greeted with hoots of derision as others pointed out no one had been taught this game. 

Usually there was one child who just never ran out.  Every time I would shout change and point at them they did not hesitate and would tap/twist/point/scratch/slap something totally and wonderfully original that everyone would be stunned by.  They would betray their skills by having a completely relaxed posture and you just knew they could go on for a complete lifetime with novel inventions.  Watching those knowing eyes is a rare privilege and their creativity is contagious.  Children love games and they love to get better at them, so they watch and they learn.  Gradually they all became so good that I would introduce ridiculously unfair rules.  “Today you can only move one finger on one hand.”  But towards the end of the year, whatever tortuous rule I thought up, I would be faced with a circle of confident faces daring me to really challenge their expertise.  That’s the really scary thing about teaching.  Pretty soon you realize that however fast you try, progress, adapt, the little guys in front of you are a hundred times faster.  Their ability to learn, change and adapt is truly frightening and at times I would feel like a carthorse trying to control a herd of thorough breeds.  But the laughter was good.  Oh, how I loved to hear the class laugh.  A great big belly laugh from all of them that cleared from the room all the worries, jealousies, fears and nastiness.  Hope, encouragement, growth, progress, change all felt suddenly possible and in their happiness I glimpsed the real joy of teaching.