Dear Teacher

The following letter is often quoted by an English academic, Richard Pring, who gave a lecture in Maynooth College recently. He is concerned with the moral role of educators (in a pretty tame, non-radical  sense). It was written by a school principal in outer Boston inspired by the work of Lawrence Kohlberg. She works in large school and  gives a copy of this letter to the new teachers on her staff every year. My own college lecturer shares it with his students, claiming it’s the secondary school teachers (focused on the pressures of dragging their students through the state exams) that get rattled by it.

Dear Teacher

I am a survivor of a concentration camp. My eyes saw what no man should witness:
Gas chambers built by learned engineers.
Children poisoned by educated physicians.
Infants killed by trained nurses.
Women and babies shot and burned by high school and college graduates.

So, I am suspicious of education.

My request is: Help your students become human.
Your efforts must never produce learned monsters, skilled psychopaths, educated Eichmans.
Reading, writing and arithmetic are important only if they serve to make our children more human.

Thank God I Learned Some More

It’s hard to know what someone who didn’t grow up in Ireland will make of this poem. I thinking knowing a bit about who Pat Ingoldsby is, on-street poet, straight-talking Dub and guest of the Late Late Show when it had more to say, gives my reading an extra depth. It’s not even a poem from my generation, but if we want to understand the closed-minded, constrained Ireland of sin, silences and censorship, this poem, for me, describes the route towards intellectual liberation our stuffy little nation has as its trajectory (we can hope).

Then I Learned Some More
-Pat Ingoldsby

I used to believe
There were little men in the radio
There was nothing my father didn’t know
I must eat all my dinner to grow
And then I learned some more

I used to believe
A hand will grab me from under the bed
Fire engines are always red
I mustn’t sleep till my prayers are said
And then I learned some more

I used to believe

Pat Ingoldsby in Dublin

I’m a boy so I mustn’t cry
Priests go to heaven when they die
My tongue turns black if I tell a lie
And then I learned some more

I used to believe
You milk a cow with a three-legged stool
Black babies are a penny each at school
I must not call my brother a fool
And then I learned some more

I used to believe
Cabbage and carrots will make me strong
Sermons on Sunday are much too long
Every other church is wrong
And then I learned some more

I used to believe
America is good and Russia is bad
I mustn’t cry when I’m feeling sad
Anyone who acts strange is mad
And then I learned some more

I used to believe
English people have got horns on their heads
Only married people sleep in double beds
Big boys smoke in the bicycle sheds
And then I learned some more

I used to believe
If I get my sums right all is well
If I kiss a girl I must kneel and tell
If I enjoy it I’ll go straight to hell
And then I learned some more

I used to believe
My father has got all the money he needs
In Africa you buy things with beads
Sex has got something to do with seeds
And then I learned some more

I used to believe
All poor people eat bread and lard
The teacher is allowed to hit me hard
I must be tough outside in the yard
And then I learned some more

I used to believe
All Gaul is divided into three
Everybody knows about sex but me
There are parts of my sister I mustn’t see
And then I learned some more

I used to believe
The same road waits for every man
A good job has got a pension plan
Money is the measure of who I am
Thank god I learned some more

Plays, books and films about education

Any more? Add your favs in the comments section

Still from Educating Rita

Educating Rita by Willy Russell (play)
A classic play about an enthusiastic naive working class student and her cynical professer.

Oleanna by David Mamet (play)
Another female student and her male lecturer. This is ultimately a play about gender, power and its abuses. Sharp pros which reads like its running on a treadmill, I can’t wait to see it onstage sometime.

Etre et Avoir (film)
Slow-burning, detailed and moving. This is a year in the life of a French rural primary school and documents the school teacher and the lives of his young students.

Entre les Murs (film)
Another Frenchie which is, frankly, the oppositie of Etre et Avoir. Written and fronted by a teacher who produced this work based on his own teaching life, this film is made up of real students rather than actors. It details the teachers’ battle to keep order around attempts to instill grammar into his students.

The Wire, series 4 (tv series)

Powerful and painful, this indicment of bad school policy and a failing school systems offers hope in its classroom experiments, intelligent kids and a few teachers who treat the kids as humans.

The Wire

An Education (film)
A colourful and good-looking film set in 1960s London which follows the female protagonist as she negotiates her role as independent woman and asks what is a good education for anyway? Based on a true story, which gives it an extra omph.

Dead Poets Society (film)
A classic of course, but a bit too earnest. Still, it might encourage you to pick up Walt Whitman and have a read, so I’m up for it. You will, of course, cry during THAT part. Ah, why am I so hard? I’d watch it any day.

Mallory Towers (childrens books)
Yes, I was one of those kids who thought midnight feasts and boarding school would be the epitome of excitement. And yes, Enid Blyton is not exactly known for her views on racial harmony or class consciousness, but, tally ho girls, anyone for a spot of Lacrosse?

Sister Act (film)
Getting a little too nostalgic here now, but this is a fun film (go, Whoopie, go) and worth checking out as a who’s who’s to 90s hip hop.