EDUCATION, EDUCATION, EDUCATION...

The aforementioned Liz Ely (she of the eminent talent) posted on her blog a while ago about education as it pertains to class structure, titled "My Nu Labour Education is OVER - Post Uni ANGST...", which I just read properly today. Dyslexia, and my until-recent frowning-upon of making time to read blogs, makes me a skim reader, and I remember reading the start of this blog them wandering off to do something else. It really is a wonderful piece of writing and I'm glad I gave it the time it deserves, especially since this is a subject close to my heart and one which has shaped who I am today, for better or worse. Probably worse.

Coincidentally, I was talking about this with Jef on Monday. We were having one of those vast, sprawling conversations about Life, much of it focusing on our education (or lack of, in my case). She mentioned her secondary school conditioning to "reach for the stars, but don't forget you'll need to pass maths to go to uni", and the problems there-in. She talked about her guidance teacher (who was, funnily enough, a maths teacher) telling her she shouldn't even bother applying for RSAMD, even though, in retrospect, she would probably have been accepted, and how she's trying to teach her teenage sister to sift through the bullshit conditioning she'll no-doubt be being subjected to right now.

Anyway, I listened politely while she talked about all this, thinking "I can't relate to any of this". At first I commented on how this difference was probably based on her living and going to school in a pretty affluent area, while my parents fought pretty hard to get us into a school outwith our catchment area of rough-as-fuck Castlemilk. See, this was in the dark late 80s/early 90s when parents didn't have the right to choose schools. It was very much a fight, but once they got Andy, my elder brother by 3 years, accepted for King's Park, it was much easier to get the rest of us in.

As such, while we officially had access to the same opportunities as all other pupils, we were still treated differently from the other kids. I remember one occasion in particular. Probably the first time Andy was suspended (first of many, but I can't help but think his treatment was part of a wider reinforcement of the behaviour expected of him as a "troublemaking", poor working class kid), he had been caught doing something or other with his friend Mark. Now, Mark lived in King's Park (the nice area with the big houses, not the park itself). As such, when my parents were called in to discuss Andy's misdemeanor, he was identified as the ringleader  (if someone can be the ringleader of 2) because, and I'm obviously paraphrasing here as I wasn't in the room and was only about 9 years old at the time, Mark "came from a nice family". The implication was pretty obvious and has stayed with me since, along with my parents' fury.

During my standard grade years (3rd & 4th year) I remember vague discussions about university going on around me. My peers discussed courses and which were the best universities to go to, how if you wanted to apply for Oxbridge you needed to apply earlier. That sort of thing. I must have been sat down with a careers councillor, my guidance teacher or whoever has these conversations with pupils... I must have been. I cannot remember a single conversation about university in the context of me actually applying. I have never seen a UCAS form. I know they exist, and I know if you apply for one uni you may as well apply for 5 because the cost is the same, but it was never made part of my plan. I do remember someone pointing out that, in the section of the school library nominally used as the 5th year common room while the room above the assembly hall was being refitted sat a computer, and that computer contained a database, and typing a job or career into that database would bring up a career plan detailing the best course to apply for and entry requirements... I remember using it once. I wish I could remember what job or career i entered, but I can't. Maybe teacher. I remember I entertained that notion for a while.

Anyway, when Jef was talking about her experiences, I assumed that the reason university made up so much of her post-school conversation and I didn't have a post-school conversation was based on the class divide and the way I was viewed in school as being somehow less than,  nothing more. During the course of this conversation, however, I realised something else was much more of a factor.

Liz mentions in her post that she started school shortly after Labour took power. I started secondary school in August 1992 at the age of 10 years and 5 months. I left shorty after the start of my 6th year, in August 1997, at the age of 16 years and 6 months. I was lucky enough to have scraped 3 highers at "C" level, despite my undiagnosed dyslexia, and officially left to pursue further highers at Langside College. More realistically, I was looking forward to 2 years of not having to work particularly hard and spent most of those 2 years in bed (the first year my own, the second , somewhat surprisingly, someone else's).



On a side-note, I remember my first lesson of this new and exciting post-Tory world was Modern Studies. A quick check of the electronic calender informs me this would have been on the morning of Friday 02/05/97 and memory suggests it would have taken place between 9:25 and 10:15. My teacher (named, in one of life's little jokes, Ms Blair), who was a wonderful, passionate, patient teacher and probably the first one I had any real bond with, betrayed her neutrality with her unashamed delight and optimism. She had probably spent her entire career fighting against the current of a Tory government and was looking forward to a brighter future. She did, however, add an important caveat, one I've never forgotten. She said, and again I'm paraphrasing, "Watch out for this Peter Mandelson character. Never trust a Minister without Portfolio".