Learning to be anxious: how not to teach - a lesson from the 60s

It's strange, but if I consider whether the world is becoming a better place, on a subjective level, I always seem to default to my school years. I started school in September 1966 and the first school I attended was Beckett Park County Primary in Headingley, Leeds (near to cricket ground, if you're not familiar with the place). Probably fair to say, I didn't enjoy the school experience: the whole freedom thing of the mid-60s hadn't reached that far north yet and the bulk of my teachers had spent their careers managing failure from a position of largely unquestioned authority - which was bad for them, and for the children submitted to their often not-so-tender care. By the time I was eight, I was in Miss Tipping's second year junior class. Miss T was the epitome of 'old-school'; white hair cut to accentuate the severity of her face, tweed-suited and flat-brogued, she ruled with an iron fist (backed up liberally with flailing ruler or flying board rubber). Boys were always referred to by surname only, the girls had the privilege of being called by their first name, but this was so loaded with vitriol or sarcasm the privilege was highly questionable. Along with a fair few others in my class, I went home for lunch and this entailed catching a school bus that left at 12.05; the lunch bell went at 12.00, so there was always a scramble. On this fateful day, La Tipping employed her absent-minded 'is that really the time' trick, which she deployed if we hadn't met her expected work/attentiveness rate in the morning lessons. As the clocked ticked on past the bell and we waited for her dismissal, I began to panic. Missing the school bus meant a longer walk to the main road for the service bus; I'd have less time to eat or spend at home. The panic grew and before I knew it, 'Miss' had noticed. In an irony-loaded voice she asked 'Hyatt, what's the matter?' She then took my hesitant answer as her cue for a rabble-rousing comedy routine that reduced my class mates to nervous laughter. We were eventually released. I don't remember if I made the school bus, but I can still recall - all too vividly - the panicked fear her little routine caused. She belittled me - and my childish fears - in a way I would never have done in my time as a teacher. Because if I had, I would have been subject to a complaint and faced some form of sanction; we now know that anxiety is real and stalks the classes and corridors of schools in all year groups. So, yes, in this respect the world is a better place. But accessing the care and treatment needed to overcome anxiety and depression is another story altogether. 'Miss' taught me not to be late for busses and trains; she also taught me that panic is no laughing matter.

Raymond and the Roman cavemen

In a move that was probably seen as really progressive at the time, my 1960s county primary school (we didn't have much truck with academies back then), boasted a Partially Sighted Unit, commonly referred to as 'PS' - where a small group of partially sighted children, aged between 5 and 11, were educated in glorious isolation from the rest of us. There were, however, a few exceptions to this rather patronising situation, and one came to join our Year 1 class of 7 year-olds, in the form of Raymond, who was permitted to join us for History lessons with Mrs Wonce a fortnight. A rather shy boy, Raymond had the look of a rather startled owl when we looked at him because of the thickness of the lenses in his glasses. Mrs W, who bore a more than passing resemblance to Frankie Howerd in drag, made Raymond sit at the table I shared with three or four others, and we did our best not to stare and generally to make as welcome as a group of 7 year-olds could (which in general terms wasn't very much and probably didn't do much to make him feel anything other than a strange addition, plucked from his comfort zone to join a mainstream class). We quickly learned that Raymond (never Ray...) was very keen on history as a subject, but that his fortnightly appearances could be very unsettling. Back in the early 70s, the history curriculum was highly selective and started with the Stone, Bronze and Iron Ages before taking in the Romans, Saxons and Normans - but if you only came to every other lesson, your appreciation of the majestic sweep of history could soon become disjointed. Raymond was doing fine until we got to the Stone Age and joined in with the depictions of cave dwellers and their animal drawings we were expected to produce in picture form and then label, but then for reasons I can't quite remember, he missed the next two lessons and rejoined us for the thrilling account of the arrival of the Romans. This caused a change in Raymond that was as startling as near miraculous. He wanted to know how we'd got from troglodytes to Legionnaires and from cave painting to Caesar hunting down Boadicea's Iceni. We hadn't much of a clue either, but under his earnest questioning and magnified gaze the only possible option was to make it up. Mrs W wasn't that much help - probably away with another table trying to titter ye not at their artistic interpretations, and - this in the age when talking wasn't allowed in class (as opposed to today, where discussion isn't so much encouraged as compulsory), so that our gap filling commentary was also conducted in whispers, with a few pointed references to pages in the text book. Chronology isn't a strong point at that age, and I can dimly remember Paul B introducing a dinosaur or two into the equation. I don't know how much Raymond managed to assimilate, and I've often wondered since how he ever managed to fill in the gaps between the making of flint tools and straight Roman roads and funny names for places, such as Olicana for Ilkley or Eboracum for York (which seemed to be about the only things the Romans ever did for us that we could glean from Mrs W and our Schofield and Sims junior history textooks). I just hope that we didn't bring to a very premature end the promising career of one of Britain's premier partially-sighted historians.

Bullying lasts

Research showing that bullying victims recall their feelings and sense of humiliation years after the event comes as no surprise to me. Bullied at primary school in the mid-sixties, I can still remember the sense of hurt and alienation. Even now I fear seeing the face of a tormentor in the crowd if visiting the place where I grew up. The effects, for me, are heightened when I remember the inaction of those supposed to protect me. Teachers then handled complaints of bullying by doling out the routine advice 'don't let them see it upsets you'. In other words, they expected the victim to modify their behaviour, rather than challenge or confront the tormentor.
A few years ago, I saw how things can change for the better. Now a teacher myself, I found a Yr. 8 boy crying in the cloakroom. A sensitive and intelligent child, he told me he'd been bullied by another boy. I mentioned this to a senior staff member, who asked that, as there were 'pastoral' issues surrounding both boys,  would I mind writing a short note for 'the record'? Remembering my own humiliation from decades earlier, I agreed, but asked that she take my comments onboard. Her response was swift and effective: both sets of parents called, bully confronted, and effects of his actions painstakingly explained.
We have learned something in the intervening half-century. It's not the victim that has to hide their feelings or the bully that's allowed to carry on unchecked anymore.
And Richard, if you ever get round to reading this, the kid you used as a punchbag in the cloakroom at Beckett Park Primary School in Leeds back in 1966 hopes you somehow learned to change your behaviour on the way to becoming the director of an electrical contracting business. If you didn't, you must have cost the business thousands in compensation claims by now. You see, your primary education failed to prepare you in much the same way that those charged with providing it failed to protect me. Either way, it did not allow us to grow into fully rounded people, capable of empathising with, and relating to, those around us.
But there's another face I fear glimpsing in the crowd, and that's your's, Chris. Because every victim can turn on another they perceive to be weaker or different to them, and that's what my senior colleague saw from my report: the victim had turned on a quieter boy, a victim of his own, to visit revenge of a kind, for the humiliation he'd suffered at the hands of others. Which is what I'd done to Chris - one who struggled at school, who now would have been identified as having needs to be addressed so he could make the most of the education he needed. Yet back then, he was singled out by the teachers and his fellow pupils, made to sit at the back with much easier work than the rest. They might as well have painted a target on him.
The bullied can bully too. I did, though thankfully not for long, because a deputy head intervened, but the harm I could have done shames me as much as the hurt I suffered.

Bullied children still suffer at 50 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-27063715