The children often coalesced into a single unit, the school cohort. All might be quiet, concentrating on their activities, or more noisy, sharing experiences with a smile on each face. They listened to each other and seldom interrupted, except in eagerness to add a thought, and their conversations would follow a trajectory straightforward and easy for even the youngest to follow. On the first day, the kids had told me that two important things they wanted from school were chances to spend time with each other and to be happy. All through each day, that spirit reigned. They loved being together, and all treated all the others, from oldest to youngest, as their best friends.
Of course, certain preferences were expressed and subgroups formed from time to time. The younger boys certainly liked to play their outdoor games as a little male team; they ran and kicked balls or batted away contentedly without the involvement of the girls. Sometimes, though, Susie would join in with Carol in tow.
‘Hey, move aside,’ she’d say. ‘Let me in, make room for us.’
‘Okay. You’re on Will’s team, and Carol’s on Jack’s,’ was the usual answer.
Vickie, Lindie and Debbie, who enjoyed spending time chatting in a group, might also simply take their place alongside the other players. The game just rolled smoothly on.
When we did our prescribed physical activity sessions, the kids were one group. Tunnel ball, with height-matched teams, was always fun for the whole group: Tom with Charlie on one team, and Jack with Susie on another.
My pupils would request stories, read aloud or invented by me, and sometimes I’d find one that each child could enjoy, in their own way and as appropriate to their age, while listening together. It was remarkable the appeal, for example, an Oscar Wilde fairytale had for all of them: our oldest, Tom, and our youngest, Charlie, would listen enthralled.
Activities executed as a single group reinforced and cemented feelings of unity and solidarity, but such feelings were natural among these children and would have emerged without my deliberate support.
I had heard one-teacher schoolchildren described as forming a ‘family’. Among us at Weabonga there were members of eight family groups, but many of the children were kin. We did have older kids sharing the classroom with much younger ones, and this was unusual in a school. So the children were thrust together by circumstance—they chose to come together, though, from their natural instincts. Did this make them a ‘family’?
Sometimes people speak of arguments and even feuds as being natural between siblings. Our group never displayed any conflict or disputation, so if negativity is an important component in constituting a family, then our Weabonga group wasn’t such.
But the children cared for each other, supported each other and looked after each other as one would hope that family members would do. Tom acted, in the best possible way, as a big brother to all the others. The Grade Five girls would often play a big sister role. There was a solid sense of them being together as one—and if this makes a family, then a family they were.
What did that make me?
At college my lecturers had discussed the ‘in loco parentis’ relationship that formed the basis for the granting of authority over children: teachers must have authority to perform their role. A literal translation of the term indicates that teachers are ‘in place of parents’ when a child comes into the school. A teacher must always act in the best interests of all the children and, at all times, keep them safe. Children were forced into the care of schools, so schools had to accept a caring responsibility for them.
I was happy to accept these legal responsibilities, but I wasn’t accepting of any broader definition of ‘in loco parentis’ than the legal interpretation. I wasn’t a parent, and I was certainly not the parent of these children. Some aspects of caring for kids were ones that I wouldn’t and shouldn’t have accepted, but that a parent must. So I didn’t think of myself as the father, not even as the ‘paterfamilias’ or oldest male in the family as ancient Romans had it. I was the teacher, and over those two years I was learning more about that role, gaining skills and working through my doubts.
Like the kids who were made to be at school, in a way I was forced to be teaching at Weabonga. I took it upon myself to continue my professional development, as I received no assistance from my employer, the Department of Education, to do so. I had three visits, each of less than three hours, from Mr Flood in my two years. While I liked the man and he tried to be helpful, there was little he could offer except encouragement, which he gave in huge loads. I was thankful for that, but I was literally on my own. In those two years I met no other teacher and spoke about my work only with the inspector.
Although my professional isolation was complete, I didn’t think of myself as anything other than a professional teacher while I was with the children. I wasn’t a big brother, I wasn’t a paterfamilias, I wasn’t a dad. I needed to be proud of my profession, pleased with the choice of occupation I had made as a teenager, and I worked hard to become as good a professional teacher as possible.
There were many challenges—every day, it seemed, gave rise to a pedagogical or broader educational question. I thought deeply, considered what I’d experienced and what I’d learnt at college, analysed my observations, and attempted to derive a solution or answer that would best serve the children. I’d realised early on that my two years at Weabonga would be a great chance to progress as a teacher; I now felt that was happening and that I was learning on the job. But having someone with whom to talk it through would have been so rich and rewarding.
I hoped I was leading the children well, treating them with respect and modelling a professional at work.
By term three in the first year, I’d never had cause to reprimand a child. Sometimes I redirected an activity, but I never spoke harshly or became cross with any of them. Being totally and pleasantly surprised by this remarkable phenomenon, I sometimes reported the blessing to other adults.
Invariably they’d ask, ‘No cross words in all this time? How come?’
Fair question, I thought, and my response always ran along these lines: ‘The kids are just a pleasure to be with and to teach at all times.’
Then I’d hear, ‘Well! That’s just extraordinary. You wouldn’t go five minutes with most kids without having some disciplinary problem. Why then are the Weabonga children so good? Are they angels?’
I always answered the same way. ‘No, these are ordinary kids. They’re just good kids. Not angels. They show me that any ordinary kid, anywhere, can be delightful.’ As some folk, really intrigued by my claims, pushed me further, I’d add, ‘Not every child, even given all the support and assistance, and living with the same expectations, will be as well behaved as the children are with me at Weabonga.’ That required further explanation, so I’d add, ‘All the conditions of nurture align for the Weabonga children. I know that won’t be the case for every child. But, I believe, given best support and facilitation, most children can develop as happy, cooperative and respectful. These Weabonga children are helping me become optimistic about the potential for all children.’
Why my pupils were so easy and rewarding was a question I had frequently asked myself. Indeed, I’d been asking myself questions about behaviour and discipline since day one at the school. On the first Saturday in Weabonga, while inspecting the school and going through the stores, I’d come across a Punishment Book. This was an official record book in which to register my use of corporal punishment, and its discovery made me reflect on the unlikely use of any caning in this little bush school. I was disconcerted that someone had covered the book with flowery wallpaper. Which teacher of the past had attempted to reduce the horror of this register by hiding its reality?
At Kegworth, there had been three classes in a General Activities (GA) section. GA schooling was designed for those pupils of post-primary age who, it was judged, couldn’t cope with an academic curriculum at high school but still had to be held in school until the legal leaving age. The GA pupils at Kegworth were all teenage lads, and I thought they seemed disaffected, unmotivated and alienated. I’d been glad I didn’t have to teach those youngsters. The four experienced teachers assigned to the GA classes created and modelled a harsh regime, believing they were containing the lads through the frequent daily use of corporal punishment. Each GA teacher possessed a cane, and two carried a cane with them at all times, only putting them aside when in the staffroom.
This approach to ‘instruction’ had reminded me, miserably, of the ‘schooling’ that had revolted me and against which I’d eventually rebelled when I suffered with the Christian Brothers during my own high school years. At that institution, rather than canes they wielded straps: instruments made from two strips of leather, each about two inches wide and eighteen inches long. Between these leather pieces a length of metal was introduced, and the three were stitched together with a thick, raised cord. This created a formidable weapon capable of delivering severe pain to any lad who couldn’t remember the full conjugation of the Latin verb ‘to love’.
‘Amo, amat.’
‘Hold out the left hand.’
Thwack. Flinch.
‘Now, again.’
‘Amo, amaert.’
‘Hold out your right hand.’
Thwack, thwack, thwack. Flinch, flinch, huge flinch. But no matter what, don’t express pain, and, please God, don’t cry.
All would watch the culprit’s hand swell up and glow an orangey-red—relief sought, perhaps, by stuffing the throbbing appendage under armpits or shaking it with vigour.
All Catholic schools permitted corporal punishment, but Christian Brother teachers had a reputation for being unrelenting floggers, worse than most. They wielded the strap in almost every lesson, never just a gentle tap but unrestrained belting. In my experience, most Brothers deliberately used their full strength to deliver real pain to the unfortunate lad holding out his hand. It seemed the Brothers believed if it was going to happen it might as well happen properly. No point otherwise.
The state also allowed the use of canes for corporal punishment in their schools. Alongside the Punishment Book in the Weabonga storeroom I had found an order book for replenishing Department of Education supplies: inks, nibs, exercise books. When I’d flicked through it I’d been surprised to find I could order, by sets of ten, a supply of canes. Of course, I’d known canes were frequently applied in public high schools. Supposedly, all use of canes had to be recorded in the official register like the one I was holding—but my friends who’d attended state high schools assured me little of their punishment had ever been recorded. All high school boys, not just my Christian Brothers classmates, had learnt to accept daily physical assaults as a rite of passage in their educational journey. Brave and unflinching lads had come to be admired by the rest of us. A few foolish but courageous boys defied their teachers to give them more ‘cuts’. Secondary school could approach open warfare, and that had certainly often been the case in mine.
My fervent pledge had been never to treat a child as I’d been treated by those so-called Christian Brothers, but to surround kids with positive, supportive learning environments. It had distressed me to witness the treatment of the Kegworth GA boys—teenagers just like me when I was teaching there at the time—in what I thought should have been a calm atmosphere designed to assist them to repair and learn what they hadn’t yet mastered.
I was never going to hit the Weabonga children, I had decided, no matter what. So, before I’d met them I’d decided I would support and facilitate their development, as much as I could, through gentle encouragement. Since then I’d kept an open eye on them, expecting to encounter some inappropriate activities. I never did. I found no reason at all to punish any of them.
By nature, the children were their families’ offspring, I had no doubt. But I wondered: had they inherited their admirable qualities or learnt them from their families and the environment in which they were raised? Nature versus nurture had often been debated during my teacher training and is still hotly debated by scientists today. I just knew that the children’s calm and equable approach to life had developed in their homes before they’d come to me.