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marnanelCW non-sexual child abuse, ableism
Today I found a book about the use of computers in schools in the town I grew up in, written while I was at school. It actually mentions me in passing.
I also discovered a part about the teacher who abused me. It's good news: if he had almost retired in 1990, he's almost certainly dead. Here's an excerpt from my notes for the childhood memoir I may one day finish. Text from the book comes after that.
---------
I was always told at school that intelligence wasn't enough, since they evidently thought I thought it was. Obviously I have some level of intelligence or I wouldn't have got into Cambridge and so on, but I seem to be lacking in whatever else it is. And when I started secondary school I was happily underperforming.
Every child in our school was required to take some tests. I believe they were fairly standard IQ tests, and I think they were something specific to our school: Mr Hutchinson's pet project. I remember him invigilating them, and telling us how to fill in the forms for the sample question, which he slowly and carefully said was "question treble zero".
After the IQ tests, and perhaps because of them, I became a sort of project of the Special Needs department, or perhaps of Mr Hutchinson's.
Mr Hutchinson was the head of Special Needs at my secondary school. I don't remember his first name. Cecil? Cyril? He was Australian, Cantabrigian, in his forties, wore a tweed jacket everywhere, and smoked a pipe. He write everything in fountain pen using brown ink.
He would take me out of lessons; one of the other children said to their classmate, "He has to have special lessons because he's so clever". Mr Hutchinson would take me down to his office, which was room X1, and sit and talk to me for hours.
He exhorted me to try harder. I told him that trying harder wasn't quantifiable, that I didn't know what to do, that if he'd told me to run round the field every morning I'd know what I had to do, but what WAS trying? I think he thought I wasn't taking it seriously, but I was rather frustrated. I would often go home and cry secretly.
Later, he said I was being like a rabbit only eating the lettuce it was given, and that I should try to seek out my own lettuce. He used to follow me into lessons sometimes and sit among the children, and ask questions (presumably the sort of questions he thought *I* should be asking). Sometimes I would get my work back from other teachers with scribbles on it in brown ink such as "*To see HCN*" (HCN was the staff code for Hutchinson), and sometimes he would comment on work I hadn't shown him. So I assume he was actually reading all my work. This is cross-referenced in my head to the part in *Nineteen Eighty-Four* where O'Brien shows Winston the photograph that Winston had thrown away; I can't tell whether this connection is one I'm making now or one I made at the time.
He reprimanded me for walking in a shuffly way (I have flat feet). He said, "There's no reason for you to walk like that at all. And do you know how I know?" "No." "Because I've researched you."
Once the timetable changed and he asked me the next week what my next lesson was, and I said I didn't know. He shouted at me, "You *should* know. It's *your* lessons and *your* timetable." I faltered, "But it only changed last week..." He said, "Oh. Yes. So it did. I apologise."
Later, he put me into permanent detention. At least, I assume it was his doing, but the detention would be given for a particular reason, by a teacher whose class I was actually attending that day, every single day. It was very well orchestrated.
And then one day he gave up on me and ordered me down alone to the dining hall. I followed him, and he barked, "Walk properly, please. When I want you to walk like a parody of a deformed circus rabbit, I'll ask you." He sat me down there, told me everything he was frustrated with me about, and that I wouldn't amount to anything, and ended up by saying, "Thomas Thurman, who the hell do you think you are?" I was careful not to start sobbing until he left the room.
-----
Text of image:
“The needs of young people as the end”
Break time at Highfield School and, as usual, Chris Hutchinson is by himself smoking his pipe at his place next to the window. He keeps himself a little apart from the rest of the Highfield staff and, being just a few years from retirement, his initial reaction to Education 2000 was stand-offish. He'd heard about too many educational initiatives in over 30 years of teaching to be enthused by Education 2000 rhetoric; its practice, however, has made him something of a convert.
It is worth recounting Mr Hutchinson's change of heart as an example of how the fourth and final component of the Education 2000 formula — ‘satisfying the needs of young people’ — has come to life. In 1981, some while after the Publication of Baroness Warnock’s report, "Education of Handicapped Children and Young People," Mr Hutchinson transferred from being head of Highfield's English department to head its new special needs department. Early on he discovered that 20 per cent of children needed the remedial attention his department was offering, which presented him with the chore of finding out who they were and then monitoring their progress. “The essence of my job is collecting information,’ he says. ‘You can't make a diagnosis unless you have that information.’ It was the cue for him to describe the database he’s written; he showed me a sheet of computer printout listing details of children and their special needs. Further columns across a wide spreadsheet contained notes like ‘can't link ideas ... verbal diff... gives up easily’ and the final columns outlined the teaching programmes of each special needs pupil. ‘By having all the information stored reliably in a single place’ says Mr Hutchinson, ‘we get to children quicker and can be more consistent in helping them.’ That success is due to Education 2000 which first had him taking a computer home and later supplied him with the machine to run the database.
Other things have earned Education 2000 his support: "The computers we have can help remove the stigma of special needs children and are partially useful with problems of illiteracy. Beyond this Education 2000 has brought about changes of attitudes and brought both departments and schools closer together. We've got more individual activities going on in the classroom."
Highfield integrated its special needs teaching within mixed ability groups so he was working across the curriculum before Education 2000 had ever been heard of. But he is certain that Education 2000 has enhanced this and other cross-curricular work at Highfield. “Nobody here is fighting Education 2000 any more," says Mr Hutchinson. ‘It has enabled us to do what we wanted to do anyway.”
Thus Mr Hutchinson's database of special needs pupils can be defined as meeting the needs of young people and therefore as exemplifying the fourth aim of Education 2000.
Today I found a book about the use of computers in schools in the town I grew up in, written while I was at school. It actually mentions me in passing.
I also discovered a part about the teacher who abused me. It's good news: if he had almost retired in 1990, he's almost certainly dead. Here's an excerpt from my notes for the childhood memoir I may one day finish. Text from the book comes after that.
---------
I was always told at school that intelligence wasn't enough, since they evidently thought I thought it was. Obviously I have some level of intelligence or I wouldn't have got into Cambridge and so on, but I seem to be lacking in whatever else it is. And when I started secondary school I was happily underperforming.
Every child in our school was required to take some tests. I believe they were fairly standard IQ tests, and I think they were something specific to our school: Mr Hutchinson's pet project. I remember him invigilating them, and telling us how to fill in the forms for the sample question, which he slowly and carefully said was "question treble zero".
After the IQ tests, and perhaps because of them, I became a sort of project of the Special Needs department, or perhaps of Mr Hutchinson's.
Mr Hutchinson was the head of Special Needs at my secondary school. I don't remember his first name. Cecil? Cyril? He was Australian, Cantabrigian, in his forties, wore a tweed jacket everywhere, and smoked a pipe. He write everything in fountain pen using brown ink.
He would take me out of lessons; one of the other children said to their classmate, "He has to have special lessons because he's so clever". Mr Hutchinson would take me down to his office, which was room X1, and sit and talk to me for hours.
He exhorted me to try harder. I told him that trying harder wasn't quantifiable, that I didn't know what to do, that if he'd told me to run round the field every morning I'd know what I had to do, but what WAS trying? I think he thought I wasn't taking it seriously, but I was rather frustrated. I would often go home and cry secretly.
Later, he said I was being like a rabbit only eating the lettuce it was given, and that I should try to seek out my own lettuce. He used to follow me into lessons sometimes and sit among the children, and ask questions (presumably the sort of questions he thought *I* should be asking). Sometimes I would get my work back from other teachers with scribbles on it in brown ink such as "*To see HCN*" (HCN was the staff code for Hutchinson), and sometimes he would comment on work I hadn't shown him. So I assume he was actually reading all my work. This is cross-referenced in my head to the part in *Nineteen Eighty-Four* where O'Brien shows Winston the photograph that Winston had thrown away; I can't tell whether this connection is one I'm making now or one I made at the time.
He reprimanded me for walking in a shuffly way (I have flat feet). He said, "There's no reason for you to walk like that at all. And do you know how I know?" "No." "Because I've researched you."
Once the timetable changed and he asked me the next week what my next lesson was, and I said I didn't know. He shouted at me, "You *should* know. It's *your* lessons and *your* timetable." I faltered, "But it only changed last week..." He said, "Oh. Yes. So it did. I apologise."
Later, he put me into permanent detention. At least, I assume it was his doing, but the detention would be given for a particular reason, by a teacher whose class I was actually attending that day, every single day. It was very well orchestrated.
And then one day he gave up on me and ordered me down alone to the dining hall. I followed him, and he barked, "Walk properly, please. When I want you to walk like a parody of a deformed circus rabbit, I'll ask you." He sat me down there, told me everything he was frustrated with me about, and that I wouldn't amount to anything, and ended up by saying, "Thomas Thurman, who the hell do you think you are?" I was careful not to start sobbing until he left the room.
-----
Text of image:
“The needs of young people as the end”
Break time at Highfield School and, as usual, Chris Hutchinson is by himself smoking his pipe at his place next to the window. He keeps himself a little apart from the rest of the Highfield staff and, being just a few years from retirement, his initial reaction to Education 2000 was stand-offish. He'd heard about too many educational initiatives in over 30 years of teaching to be enthused by Education 2000 rhetoric; its practice, however, has made him something of a convert.
It is worth recounting Mr Hutchinson's change of heart as an example of how the fourth and final component of the Education 2000 formula — ‘satisfying the needs of young people’ — has come to life. In 1981, some while after the Publication of Baroness Warnock’s report, "Education of Handicapped Children and Young People," Mr Hutchinson transferred from being head of Highfield's English department to head its new special needs department. Early on he discovered that 20 per cent of children needed the remedial attention his department was offering, which presented him with the chore of finding out who they were and then monitoring their progress. “The essence of my job is collecting information,’ he says. ‘You can't make a diagnosis unless you have that information.’ It was the cue for him to describe the database he’s written; he showed me a sheet of computer printout listing details of children and their special needs. Further columns across a wide spreadsheet contained notes like ‘can't link ideas ... verbal diff... gives up easily’ and the final columns outlined the teaching programmes of each special needs pupil. ‘By having all the information stored reliably in a single place’ says Mr Hutchinson, ‘we get to children quicker and can be more consistent in helping them.’ That success is due to Education 2000 which first had him taking a computer home and later supplied him with the machine to run the database.
Other things have earned Education 2000 his support: "The computers we have can help remove the stigma of special needs children and are partially useful with problems of illiteracy. Beyond this Education 2000 has brought about changes of attitudes and brought both departments and schools closer together. We've got more individual activities going on in the classroom."
Highfield integrated its special needs teaching within mixed ability groups so he was working across the curriculum before Education 2000 had ever been heard of. But he is certain that Education 2000 has enhanced this and other cross-curricular work at Highfield. “Nobody here is fighting Education 2000 any more," says Mr Hutchinson. ‘It has enabled us to do what we wanted to do anyway.”
Thus Mr Hutchinson's database of special needs pupils can be defined as meeting the needs of young people and therefore as exemplifying the fourth aim of Education 2000.
