EDUCATION: NIALL MacMONAGLEreviews School BluesBy Daniel Pennac, translated by Sarah Ardizzone Maclehose Press, 274pp, £16.99
CRAZY JOE, in Seamus Deane's Reading in the Dark, asks: "Why is it sad when I ask what will become of you and not sad when I ask what will you become?" And becoming, in a classroom context, is the central idea in Daniel Pennac's latest book. Pennac was once a dunce, and now this teacher, novelist and philosopher, revered in France and published in over 30 languages, explores how and why and what school offers.
Believing that “the only thing the future teaches us” is that “nothing ever turns out as expected”, Pennac revisits his adolescent self, the bad reports, the petty theft, being sent to boarding school. He interviews other teachers; he seeks advice and solutions and is grateful that at 14, when “labelled unfit for purpose”, he was rescued by a teacher who, having heard his string of excuses about non-existent homeworks, commissioned young Pennac to write a novel, at the rate of a chapter a week.
The immediacy of the moment is vital, says Pennac. "Learning requires a special kind of tense. The present tense incarnate. . . When everything works the student will think, 'Here I am, in this class, and I understand, at last. I've got it. My brain is reaching out to the rest of my body: the word is being made flesh.' "
Even morning registration, the few seconds given daily to naming each individual, is significant in establishing identity, individuality, and “for my students to be present, I have to be present . . . physically, intellectually, mentally”.
Anecdotes abound, but the charming and the sentimental are sidestepped. Invigilating an exam, Pennac is summoned by one "smart, quick, lazy, inventive, funny and determined" student only to be told: "You've no idea how this bores the shit out of me, sir!" Pennac, wondering should he "shoot him there and then", asks, "Might we know what doesinterest you?" only to be handed his pickpocketed fob watch. What would Pennac make of Ireland's brutal Leaving Cert? The lad went on to become a famous magician.
A heartbroken girl whose parents were divorcing is encouraged to read Henry James's What Maisie Knew. Literature is central. Old-fashioned, unfashionable dictation, learning by heart, reading: all play a huge part in enriching and developing the individual.
But Pennac is also self-deprecating and realistic. "When I happen to meet a former student who professes to have enjoyed the hours spent in my class, I tell myself that at the same moment, walking by on another pavement, there may be someone else whose interest I extinguished." And he rightly dismisses Dead Poets Societyas "dumbed down, complacent, old-fashioned, silly, sentimental" and "cinematically and intellectually impoverished".
Like Pennac's The Rights of the Reader(2006), this is genial and provocative, a sane, realistic, affirming and philosophical book. Of course, marking homework is Sisyphean, but "when I'm with them or marking their homework, I'm not somewhere else. But when I'm somewhere else, I'm not with them."
It offers sound, practical advice: “Never ask a student to put himself in his teacher’s shoes; temptation to laugh would be too great”; “Never talk louder than they do”; “No one is quicker to shout at you than a teacher unhappy with himself”.
“A good class isn’t a military regiment marching to the same beat but an orchestra working on the same symphony. And if you’ve inherited a triangle which can only go ting-ting, or a jew’s harp which can only go bloing-bloing, what matters is that they do it at the right time, and to the best of their ability.”
He’s not blind to unemployment, marginalised communities, ethnic ghettoisation, the tyranny of designer brands, one-parent families, the growth of a parallel economy and trafficking of every kind but says: “Let’s not underestimate the one thing we can do something about, which goes back to the dawn of pedagogical time: the loneliness, the shame of the student who doesn’t understand, lost in a world where everyone else does.”
Pennac identifies “five sorts of children on our planet”: child producer, child soldier, child prostitute, the dying child and, closer to home and equally exploited, the “child customer”. This is the child who has never worn a hand-me-down. This child consumer “becomes a property owner without much opposition”, and this, according to Pennac, is not only an essential difference between students then and students now but has had a detrimental effect on becoming one’s true self.
“Teachers, they do our heads in, Sir!” and Pennac replies: “Your head’s been done in already. Teachers are trying to give it back to you.”
Like Ezra Pound, Pennac believes teachers must like their subjects but should like their pupils even more. School Bluesis for the dip ed, the teacher in the home stretch, and every teacher, parent, educationalist, inspector, minister in between. It will cheer you up.
And one last piece of advice: “The good teacher goes to bed early.” Good night.
Niall MacMonagle teaches English at Wesley College, Dublin
