II. RULES OF BEHAVIOUR

ZOE HELLER. What Was She Thinking? (2003)

Because Highgate is part of its catchment area, people often assume that St. George's is one of those safe, soft comprehensives full of posh children toting their cellos to orchestra practise. But posh parents don't surrender their off­spring to St. George's. The cello players get sent to St. Bocolph's Girls or King Henry's Boys, or to private schools in other parts of London. St. George's is the holding pen for Archway's pubes­cent proles - the children of the council estates who must fidget and scrap here for a minimum of five years until they can embrace their fates as plumbers and shop assistants. Last year, we had 240 pupils sit their GCSEs, and exactly six of them achieved anything higher than a grade E pass. The school represents - how to put it? - a very volatile environment. Attacks on the staff are not uncommon. The year before Sheba arrived, three second-year boys, leaning out of one of the science lab windows, pelted the school secretary, Dierdre Rickman, with Bunsen burners. (Her resulting injuries included a fractured clavicle and a head wound requiring fourteen stitches.)

The boys naturally present the worst problems. But the girls are no picnic either. They're not quite as disposed to violence, but they are just as foulmouthed and they possess a superior gift for insult. Not long ago, a girl in my third-year class - an angry little virago - in-training by the name of Denise Callaghan - called me, without any apparent forethought, "a chewy-faced old bitch." This sort of thing occurs very rarely in my classroom, and when it does, I am able, in almost every case, to stamp it out immediately. But for more junior members of the St. George's staff, maintaining basic order is an ongoing and fre­quently bloody battle. For a novice like Sheba - a wispy novice with a tinkly accent and see-through skirts – the potential for disaster was great.

III. DAILY ROUTINE & ACADEMIC YEAR DIVISION

TALBOT BAINES REED. The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's (1887).

The Notice Board

The four o’clock bell was sounding up the staircase and down the passages of Saint Dominic’s school. It was a minute behind its time, and had old Roach, the school janitor, guessed at half the abuse privately aimed at his devoted head for this piece of negligence, he might have pulled the rope with a good deal more vivacity than he at present displayed.

At the signal there was a general shuffling of feet and uproar of voices—twelve doors swung open almost simultaneously, and next moment five hundred boys poured out, flooding the staircases and passages, shouting, scuffling, and laughing, and throwing off by one easy effort the restraint and gravity of the last six hours.

The usual rush and scramble ensued. Some boys, taking off their coats and tucking up their sleeves as they ran, made headlong for the playground. Some, with books under their arms, scuttled off to their studies. The heroes of the Sixth stalked majestically to their quarters. The day boarders hurried away to catch the train at Maltby. A few slunk sulkily to answer to their names in the detention-room, and others, with the air of men to whom time is no object and exertion no temptation, lounged about in the corridors with hands in pockets, regarding listlessly the general stampede of their fellows, and apparently not knowing exactly what to do with themselves.

Date: 2015-12-11; view: 775