***
That assignment was to review a school.
It was seven o’clock in the morning and Thomas found himself standing outside its entrance. A bitter, chill wind was blowing, causing his trenchcoat to billow out behind him with dramatic effect. Add to this the fact that the entrance was blocked by a set of imposing iron gates, at least twice his height, and the image created becomes reminiscent of some epic adventure game, with Thomas the hero about to enter some boss’ lair.
Yet an epic adventure game it was not. Rather, it was simply the arrival of a journalist, come to write an article about a secondary school which had achieved exemplary exam results. This was not what Thomas had been hoping for when the Daily Herald had offered him the job those two years ago. He had dreamt of huge scoops and uncovering corruption; in reality, the best he could hope for was a weekly column at the bottom left-hand corner of page 32.
The headmaster was strutting out to greet his guest. At a distance, his manner was striking: he had the gait of man with authority, almost of a military man. This was not surprising. Although he now worked as a school teacher, his background had been the army. He boasted of being a veteran of Kosovo and Iraq and proudly showed off his medals to all who would see them.
As he neared Thomas, he reached out to him with a firm handshake and a refined smile.
“Good morning,” he chimed. “We’ve been looking forward to your visit for weeks. Please, follow me.”
The man’s name was Corporal Smith, or Derek to his friends. His face resembled an egg in many ways: it was shaped like one, and, aside from two slithers of hair on either side of his head, he was almost completely bald. The children had made fun of him when he first arrived at the school, but that soon stopped when they discovered that under the Corporal’s strict regime, any misdemeanour would be punished. Severely. The last boy to mock his principal’s appearance refused to divulge any details of the fate that had befallen him; nevertheless his silence, coupled with the embarassed and pained expression on his face whenever anybody inquired it of him, revealed more than words ever could.
Given the man’s reputation, Thomas obeyed without question and shadowed him as he marched his way into the school grounds of which he was so proud. The man’s fingerprints were all over this place: what must have once been a reclined school atmosphere now resembled an army barracks more than an educational estabishment. As the pupils arrived at school for the beginning of the day’s instruction, absent was the happy chattering and mischief normally associated with children of their age; rather, an air of discipline- some might say fear- pervaded the whole organisation. Teachers stood erect at various points about the premises, more like superior officers in appearance than compassionate educators.
The complete character of the place astounded Thomas. His first question, therefore, was how Corporal Smith had managed to instill such an ethos in such a short time, having only started working at the school one year previously.
“Over the last year we’ve really improved discipline here,” he explained. “Clamped down on any misbehaviour. It’s what the children wanted and they’ve responded well. Our GCSE results have gone through the roof.”
“What, specifically, have you done to improve discipline?” probed Thomas.
“We have adopted a zero tolerance policy on virtually everything,” declared the Corporal. “No drugs, no alcohol, no shirts tucked out- and any pupil who dares cross the line or disrespect a member of staff is sent home immediately. Immediately. We don’t believe in soft touch tactics here, Mr. Wilson. No namby pamby child psychologists here. Just do as you’re told, or face the consequences.”
“The last headteacher- Miss Winterbottom”- he said that name as if it was something dirty- “was quite the opposite of me. She didn’t believe in punishment. She wanted to understand her pupils. If one was caught swearing at a teacher, it was a session with the counsellor to find out if anything was wrong at home. If- God forbid, but it did happen- one was caught with drugs, he’d be sent for a week’s holiday in the Caribbean for rehabilitation. Bloody liberal.”
Thomas highly doubted this last claim. Nonetheless, he noted it down. It gave the story a bit of colour.
“Do you ever worry that such a disciplinarian approach may stifle your pupil’s creativity?” he opined of the Corporal. As much as he admired the transformation in this school, a clash of backgrounds between the two men was inevitable: Mr. Wilson, the bohemian journalist with a background in literature; Corporal Smith, the tough-talking military man who had fought in horrific battles where a self-controled attitude was essential simply to survive.
“Creativity?” Smith baulked. “Mister Wilson, the pupils here have far more real concerns than whether we are stunting their creative growth. I don’t know if it bypassed your attention when you were driving here, but this is a heavily run-down inner city estate. The kids here, without my help, face only a life of crime and poverty.”
The Corporal stepped closer to Thomas. “I know your type,” he continued. “Well educated, critical of the education system and its focus on exams and discipline, rules and recollection. Let me tell you, the best thing we can do for these kids is give them qualifications, whether or not the system be flawed. If we do our jobs properly, we can give them some sort of brighter future that doesn’t involve them being behind bars.”
Thomas could have winced at that biting response from his interviewee. In the midst of his hostile rant, the headmaster had moved close to his interviewer’s face so that his breath was palpable and warm on the journalist’s visage. This kind of retort had affected him in his early career, but two years down the line he was used to it. In fact, it told him that he was doing a good job: if he did not annoy his interviewee at least once during his questioning, he knew he was not probing deep enough.
Undaunted, the eminent professional,Thomas continued: “Have you had any difficulties in implementing your system of discipline?”
The Corporal did not reply for an instant. He appeared still to be eyeing up his questioner. Yet he soon came round, for the journalist represented an opportunity at national publicity, and whether that was positive or negative was in his control. He therefore resolved to treat his guest with civility.
“We’ve had trouble with the law,” he admitted. “There have been things we’d like to have done which we can’t. And several teachers have protested, too. We’ve had to sack some of them”
“You fired them? For what?”
“For dissent!” he barked. “A school is much like an army, and like an army it must have a hierarchy. That hierarchy collapses when the lower ranks openly refuse to obey a superior’s orders. When that happens, they have to go. Otherwise it sets a bad example to the pupils.”
“What kind of orders have they disobeyed?”
“Some of the staff refused to implement the new regime,” he conceded. “They thought it was too harsh on some of the weaker pupils.”
As he toured the school that day, Thomas began to see why. Of course, the new regime was constrained by law from using corporal punishment, but any loophole they could find was being exploited. Detention now signified a whole day of back-breaking labour in the playing field, pointlessly digging up holes only to refill them. This had become the penalty for the most minor of misdemeanours and was not spared even for the sick or disabled among the student body. There was no longer any compassion visible within this institution; no understanding of mental issues or family problems when students fell behind. Still, it worked. Thomas had to admit that their grades had improved remarkably, so that what was once one of the worst schools in the country now found itself near the top of every league table.
By the end of the day, he had mixed feelings about the faculty he had inspected. Before he could make a final judgment for his piece though, he wanted to get a pupil’s perspective on the place- without the interference of Corporal Smith.
The trouble was that he was always there. As much as Thomas wanted to absco
nd and undertake an independent bit of research, his guide refused to leave his side, constant as a shadow. It was not until the end of the day, when the Corporal had departed with the mistaken idea that Thomas had finished his story and was on his way home, that the intrepid journalist found his opportunity.
Most of the students had gone home. Yet he found one left over, sitting alone in the library with her head buried in something evidently fascinating to her.
At first the library had seemed deserted. As he was browsing around, however, he had spotted her ensconced on a beanbag in the corner, concealed almost completely by bookshelves. She was a petite little thing: though she was small, her skinny frame gave her the appearance of someone more lanky, as if she had been stretched out by a medieval torture device. Most of her face was hidden by the magazine which was engrossing her and a mass of disheveled brown hair, but just about visible behind them was a round, plain face, its only outstanding feature being a prominent collection of freckles sprinkled across her nose and cheeks. The effect was almost attractive.
The magazine stood out more than she did. Its bright front cover attracted the eye immediately to the bold, brazen title: Science Today. As Thomas came closer, he could make out the headlines: the main story was entitled Cortical Confusion: Are You Who You Think You Are?. It amazed him that a girl of her age (she must have been no more than thirteen years old) could comprehend such material when he, a man of twenty three years, could not. Then again, his background was in literature, not science; although he prided himself on being scientific in his approach to life, rather than mystical or irrational, he had only ever excelled in English when at school.
Thomas had moved too close. His quarry jumped, startled, and stared wide-eyed into the face of her visitor. Apologetically he moved backwards and gestured to her that he was friendly and bore no grudge; she looked embarassed to have been found here, reading material which would no doubt have singled her out as a ‘geek’ to her classmates, so Thomas knew he had to reassure her. She lowered the magazine and gave a shy smile.
With the magazine lowered, her body was suddenly unobscured and her uniform became visible. It was of course identical to all the other uniforms worn by all the other pupils in this establishment, but some little touches had marked hers out as unique. For example, her trousers were a lighter shade of grey; she wore her tie loosely, as if she simply did not have the dexterity to put it on properly; a pink wastcoat was visible underneath her blazer, and a flower protruded from its pocket. Little touches like this marked her out as unique, different, special- in other words, an outcast.
Perfect, thought Thomas. He had always liked outcasts. He had never been a popular kid himself.
“Excuse me,” he introduced himself. “My name is Thomas Wilson. I’m a journalist doing a piece about your school for a national paper. Would you mind if I ask you a few questions?”
The girl looked at him astonished, as if it was a rare occurrence that anybody should speak to her. She focused her gaze on his eyes and twisted her head quizzically. It was quite unnerving.
“What’s your name?” ventured Thomas.
“Vera. Vera Pidgeonsworth.” The girl spoke in a strange, mystical voice. She spoke absent-mindedly, as if there were deeper, more important things going on in her head. It appeared that these things were slowly coming to a realisation about something, for her eyes grew wide and her mouth rolled itself into an unexplained ‘o’ as she stared at her strange interviewer.
“Vera, would you mind if I ask you a few questions?”
She did not answer, but her silence insinuated that she had no interest in his queries. Rather, her eyes grew ever wider as the cogs in her brain turned, slowly, deliberately, and stumbled upon a sudden realisation about the man before her.
With sudden urgency she picked up the magazine she had been reading and ruffled through its pages until she found what she was looking for. Thomas could not see what she was reading, but the way her pupils darted to and fro in her eyes revealed to him that it was a matter of great importance to her. When she had finally finished scanning the page in front of her, she slammed the magazine shut and pressed it hard into the carpet, lest someone try to take it off her.
Her gaze turned to Thomas, and she scrutinised his features meitculously.
“Your eyes…” she mumbled, her gaze transfixed.
“What about them?” asked Thomas.
“Your eyes… there’s something in your eyes…”
She flicked quickly through her magazine once more until she found the relevant page and scanned it again for a full minute. As she was reading, her expression passed from excitement to fascination through fear, all in one bewildering moment until suddenly she returned her gaze to Thomas, eyes even wider than before.
Yet she was not looking at Thomas anymore; rather, her eyes refocussed on a point behind him. A subtle cough prompted him to turn his head and behind him he saw the form of Corporal Smith, who seemed less than pleased to see him.
“Mister Wilson, I thought you had finished here,” he remarked. “Miss Pidgeonsworth, you should have gone home hours ago. Off you pop.”
Their gaze was broken; the moment was gone. Thomas desperately wanted to ask the girl what she had seen in his eyes, but she was more interested in avoiding detention and leapt from her beanbag to escape the wrath of Corporal Smith. In a second she had vanished from the scene and two seconds later, Thomas heard the library door slam shut as her little feet pounded away.
“I must apologise for her,” began the principal. “She’s one of our more special pupils. Not a good representation of the average learner here, I’m afraid. It would be best to forget her when you write your article.”
Thomas made a mental note to definitely not forget her. She had been a puzzle to him, one that would bug him for days until he solved it; moreover, she was evidence of this school’s dark side: the same authoritarianism which had created record exam results was also responsible for an attitude that shunned the odd and decried the different. Vera was a victim of the system, clearly disliked by the management despite her evident intelligence simply because she was odd.
At the gates, the headmaster shoved a booklet into Thomas’ reluctant hands.
“Some extra information about the school, Mister Wilson, should you need it for your report. I’ll look forward to reading it.”
With that, Mister Smith about-turned on his left heel and marched back into the school grounds appearing very pleased to have rid himself of his meddling guest.
Thomas glanced at the brochure that had been placed into his hands. It was essentially an advertisement for the school: photographs of smiling teenagers; impressive statistics from the last round of GCSE exams; details of all the extra-curricular activities available at this establishment. On the back page was a list of the school’s sponsors. When Mister Smith had become headmaster, he had brought with him a veritable list of corporate bodies willing to put some money- and influence- into the school: Cybertech Industries, TanFlan Incorporated, SMT Foods, Smart Films Inc. The back page had brief blurbs for each of these companies, showing them off to be the very best of their kind of business and in no way using the money they invested in the school to influence education.
Thomas put the brochure into his bag as an interesting source of information and went home to write his article.