Let me tell you a story. When I was seven, I went through a very tough time. Absolutely life changing. But this occurred in a broader context that was almost wholly for the good - a stable home life; dependable, if perhaps overly modest, parents who had left school at 14; a higher intelligence than most at my primary school; and popularity until 11 when in a new place things went rapidly downhill - between 7 and 11, voted by the other kids as the class captain or vice captain three years out of four.
Both my schools were 99.8% white. They were very different from each other. While there were some signs from 7 to 11 of developing problems based on what had happened, I was seen by others as "the achiever" and "happier than most". People used to congratulate my parents particularly on my sociability - "how has he turned out to be so unlike an only child?" and "would it be alright if my son spent the afternoon with you all - I feel that he is happier in your home and that Lateral is a good influence". Within a year of moving on to a new school, I was running away, in almost permanent fear, last out of 120 in exams for two years running, deeply unpopular, and placed on tranquilizers. Why? What had happened to me at 7 was now making a difference in a way that it hadn't before. I had also left my mates who went to the local school. The new culture was wealthy, priggish, supercilious and high achieving. While I could thrive in an ordinary place where I was a leader, I collapsed where I became the opposite.
Some would identify with parts of this account. Part of my shock was in finding that others had more confidence with their ability, wholly based on their achieving parents. Part of it was in finding out what this group was like. Because they spoke well, and were nicely turned out, no adult was able to receive the messages that actually many weren't pleasant and many were bigger troublemakers than anyone at the local place. Such was its reputation that accounts would simply be misbelieved. I kept things quiet - the day of the knife fight, the lunchtimes when teachers would be locked in their classrooms, the f you attitudes towards them - that "our fathers and we know best", and most of all the sheer hatred. Those were the Blairs, the Cleggs and particularly the Camerons in the making. 36 years on, the country has come to see what they are really like.
People who oppose them are in the main older than 12. They are less isolated, in touch daily with their own groups, so they are more inclined to express. Many started with problems too and some do not have an average IQ. They still turn to "medication" and don't even have a sense of token inclusion. Unlike me, there is not a feeling that if only they can sit this out for six or seven years, they might survive and even benefit from the experience. Was there anyone other than my parents and average, decent, friends, who helped me to achieve so much against the odds until the age of 11? Yes. There was a special teacher. One of the best people I have met in my life and extraordinarily kind. A middle aged woman who, as it happened, was a black Jamaican. The very first black person I knew and someone of remarkable integrity. Just as later, my senior school experience would leave me with a decades-long chip on my shoulder against elites, she alone shaped my views on ethnicity until this week.
What I feel is that she must have related to me more closely than the relationship between some of these people on the streets and their own mothers, let alone their fathers. While I am white, I almost feel that I benefited from a strong black upbringing more than they did. I don't see the Jamaican in them in the way that I feel there is a strand there in myself. I wouldn't want to be a teacher these days. I can't even begin to imagine it. But we speak about the influence of politics and the media and the economy and celebrity which all do so much damage, particularly where there are instabilities in the home. All early influence lasts for tens of years. No one seems to mention that these people spend or spent huge chunks of their lives - perhaps the biggest - in schools.
Both my schools were 99.8% white. They were very different from each other. While there were some signs from 7 to 11 of developing problems based on what had happened, I was seen by others as "the achiever" and "happier than most". People used to congratulate my parents particularly on my sociability - "how has he turned out to be so unlike an only child?" and "would it be alright if my son spent the afternoon with you all - I feel that he is happier in your home and that Lateral is a good influence". Within a year of moving on to a new school, I was running away, in almost permanent fear, last out of 120 in exams for two years running, deeply unpopular, and placed on tranquilizers. Why? What had happened to me at 7 was now making a difference in a way that it hadn't before. I had also left my mates who went to the local school. The new culture was wealthy, priggish, supercilious and high achieving. While I could thrive in an ordinary place where I was a leader, I collapsed where I became the opposite.
Some would identify with parts of this account. Part of my shock was in finding that others had more confidence with their ability, wholly based on their achieving parents. Part of it was in finding out what this group was like. Because they spoke well, and were nicely turned out, no adult was able to receive the messages that actually many weren't pleasant and many were bigger troublemakers than anyone at the local place. Such was its reputation that accounts would simply be misbelieved. I kept things quiet - the day of the knife fight, the lunchtimes when teachers would be locked in their classrooms, the f you attitudes towards them - that "our fathers and we know best", and most of all the sheer hatred. Those were the Blairs, the Cleggs and particularly the Camerons in the making. 36 years on, the country has come to see what they are really like.
People who oppose them are in the main older than 12. They are less isolated, in touch daily with their own groups, so they are more inclined to express. Many started with problems too and some do not have an average IQ. They still turn to "medication" and don't even have a sense of token inclusion. Unlike me, there is not a feeling that if only they can sit this out for six or seven years, they might survive and even benefit from the experience. Was there anyone other than my parents and average, decent, friends, who helped me to achieve so much against the odds until the age of 11? Yes. There was a special teacher. One of the best people I have met in my life and extraordinarily kind. A middle aged woman who, as it happened, was a black Jamaican. The very first black person I knew and someone of remarkable integrity. Just as later, my senior school experience would leave me with a decades-long chip on my shoulder against elites, she alone shaped my views on ethnicity until this week.
What I feel is that she must have related to me more closely than the relationship between some of these people on the streets and their own mothers, let alone their fathers. While I am white, I almost feel that I benefited from a strong black upbringing more than they did. I don't see the Jamaican in them in the way that I feel there is a strand there in myself. I wouldn't want to be a teacher these days. I can't even begin to imagine it. But we speak about the influence of politics and the media and the economy and celebrity which all do so much damage, particularly where there are instabilities in the home. All early influence lasts for tens of years. No one seems to mention that these people spend or spent huge chunks of their lives - perhaps the biggest - in schools.
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