Harrods and heartache

The Jehovah family was on good form today. They are off to Harrods for haircuts. Apparently the girl wants to have a shampoo with crushed diamond in it. 

Harrods really is a tacky theme park extravaganza. They have over a hundred Harrods points to spend which means they have spent several thousand pounds in store at the very least. 

I am really curious about the nature of their father's business. They seem to have a lot of funds going through foreign bank accounts. 

What is interesting is how quickly the family has let down their guard in terms of their behaviour. I suppose it gets to a point where you can't hide everything that happens from people like teachers, cleaners and nannies who come into your home. I see the mother terribly upset sometimes, although today I had the privilege to see their very sick child, who suffers from a genetic disorder, lift her own cup and drink by herself. This was the first time she had done this. It was very moving to see. 

It reminds me that I must not dismiss these families out of hand. For all their money, they are not protected from the heartache that life shovels out from time to time. 

Pastoral Oedipal

He came into the room with a sullen look on his face, barefoot, and clad in shorts and T-shirt, even though it was the middle of November. There was something drowsy, almost panda-like about the way he lumbered into the room. He was short for a sixteen-year-old but his arms were well-built and long. He didn't really know what to do with them and they swung awkwardly by his side. 

'This is David.'

His mum put her arms around the boy but he pulled away. 

'Hi,' I  said. 

David nodded at me and made a grunt. 

'Mum, it's cold down here. Can't you put the heating up.'

His mum ignored him and turned to me. 

'I will fetch his work. David, why don't you make Mr Golding some tea.'

She left the room and for a moment David and I stood there in silence. 

'So David, tell me a bit about what's been going on.'

'I am home schooled now,' he answered. 

I knew that much. I was still unclear as to what exactly happened at the school but it sounded as though he had been asked to leave. He had been suffering from lots of nervous illnesses such as eczema; he had also been getting up to go to the toilet half a dozen times a night according to his mother. 

'You want tea then?'

'Please.'

'What sort?'

'Just regular.'

'What's that?' 

'English breakfast.' 

He threw a bag into a cup and then from a cupboard he pulled out a huge tub of whey protein and creatin powder. 

'Do you go to the gym?'

'Now and then,' I replied. 

'I have to work out or I get this bit of fat on my stomach.' 

He spooned the unappetising powder into a milkshake glass and poured in skimmed milk. 

'How often do you work out?'

'Every day except Sundays.' 

'I suppose you have to eat tonnes?'

'No. I don't eat that much. I don't want any body fat, you see.'

'That can't be healthy.' 

'You have to work out lots when you drink this stuff because if not you get breasts. My older brother got breasts.'

I later found out that creatin can cause water retention. There were probably hundreds of sixteen-year-old boys walking around with a B or C cup.

As he put the protein powder away I noticed that he went to the oven and checked all the gas knobs were turned off. There was something deliberate about the action, as though he were counting them or ticking things off in his head. 

His mother returned. 

'Here is all the work. I sorted it out into files. They are a bit of a mess.'

'I told you not to touch them.'

'I told you days ago to sort them out but you've been staying out all night and sleeping all day sweetheart.'

'Fuck sake.'

His mum let the swearing go by.'

I looked through David's work, although it was perhaps a bit much to call it work. The scrawled half pages of notes, torn paper and doodles of stick men doing rude things to one another seemed to be the bulk of 'work' he had undertaken in history. 

'I see we've got a lot of work to do.' 

The boy and I went up to a study at the top of the house. It was one of those envy-making rooms full of beautiful books, a stunning oak desk with a leather inlay on top, and a view of Hampstead Heath.

I was about to sit down when the boy said:

'No, that's my chair. I'll get you one.'

When he returned I watched as he carefully placed all his work and pens on the desk all in line with each other. 

We started to work on some material about the Weimar Republic but after five minutes I became aware of the extent of his problems. 

'I will turn the pages,' he said. 'I don't let people touch my books.'

'David, can I ask you something? Do you have certain things you need to do to feel safe?'

'What do you mean?'

'Like rituals. Checking things are switched on or off. Cleaning. Things like that.'

'What are you saying?'

'It's just you seem very anxious.'

'I'm fine.'

Later when I spoke to his mum she too seemed to dismiss the issue. 

'He just didn't settle into his last school, that's all.'

'But,' I said.

'I like him being here with me. I can keep an eye on him.'

'And his father?'

'We're divorced. He doesn't see his father. He lives overseas. Please don't worry about him too much. Just teach the subject.'

Over the next few weeks I began to do my best to get them both to see what was going on. David needed to see someone about his OCD issues and anxiety but the mother continued to be reluctant. It turned out that some nights he was so anxious that he slept in his mother's bed. I ended up acting as best I could as some kind of antidote to what seemed like an Oedipal nightmare but there was only so much I could do in the three or fours per week we spent together. The mother finally agreed to take him to a doctor but only after I harassed her about it. 

Teachers and tutors do have a responsibility for pastoral care, but the incident made it clear to me that there were boundaries between teaching and parenting. Teachers can provide stability but they can't provide the answer to the problems of the home. The assumption that neglect happens largely in the homes of the poor is incorrect. The dysfunction that exists in the homes of the comfortable and wealthy can be just as harrowing to see. 

It's a dog's life.

Dogs. They are a part of the profession. Most of the families I have taught have had several of them. There have been times, when the mother has shouted up the stairs, at which it has been impossible to distinguish between the names of the children and the pets. I have had the pleasure of meeting a Samson, Algernon and Biggles in both dog and human form. The dogs have generally looked less inbred. 

These pedigree dogs all had below average IQs for their species but, even so, they all had more get up and go than the students and that's saying something considering the average dog spends most of the day eating and sleeping with perhaps a twenty minute break for rutting every piece of soft furnishing in the house. 

The dog, however, has often provided a useful insight into the psychological make up of the family I am working for. They are sponges for stress and are often as unruly as the kids. I have also seen pets terribly abused. I was not surprised to hear the news story this week of a boy at a Catholic boarding school skinning a live cat. I have seen a dog hit with a tennis ball after it refused to stop barking.

The only dog I have time for is a Golden Retriever and all the other dogs know it. We have a mutual disrespect. I have been knocked over by a Doberman, fondled by a Labrador, but the worst case involved poodles. 

I was teaching a seventeen-year-old A level student whose mother had two poodles. They yapped and fawned at me with their little paws. I came in one day and while I was waiting for the student to come downstairs the mother took me into the kitchen to make me some tea. The poodles followed. One started at my leg, so I gently nudged it away. But then the other lay down on it's back and the one who had just been at my leg began to fellate him. And I mean fellate. 

At that moment the student comes in and what did I do but point. 

'Look at those two.'

At which point the student let out a curdled kind of scream and kicked the fellator so hard it yelped. 

The mother turned but the dogs were now barking and running around half crazed and that's when I got bitten. I tried to calm it down. A little nip. The student looked at me mortified as did the mother but I shrugged it off. I'd had a tetanus booster recently and, to be honest, I would have been pissed off if I was that dog. 

Anyway, this is all to say, beware the dogs. Those poodles followed me everywhere and were always seeking attention when the mother was out and she was out a lot.They would whine and yelp all the time. They hated being left at home alone. I found out the student felt the same way. She was often at home by herself and only went to college a couple of days a week. Her father was away on work a lot and her sister was at uni. And I began to see that she treated the dogs with great resentment. After all, as pets go, poodles are pretty rotten company. 

Confessional Courtesies

So, here is the first of many posts that aim to chart my experiences in the world of private tutoring, although I hope to discuss many topics related to education. For obvious reasons I have changed the names of those involved and I am writing under a pseudonym, but pretty much everything that follows has happened. I’d love this to be a safe space for people to discuss and talk openly about what is going on with education in this country. I feel I have been part of a largely unregulated industry that very occasionally does good, but more often than not has aided the gap between the ‘haves’ and ‘have nots’. I grew up in rural Suffolk, attended a state comprehensive and had no extra help other than what I received at school. My education was pretty good but all schools are different and there have been moments in the last six or seven years when it has felt like I’ve been shitting on my fifteen-year-old self by helping those who really don’t deserve it. However, although I have seen amazing levels of privilege I have also been privy to levels of neglect and maltreatment that have shocked me. I have begun to move away from tutoring and into running workshops and following my first love writing and performing. This is really a record of some of the things I have experienced and seen and you can make of it what you will.