Shaking hands with school

On this grey and miserable first Monday of September, I come to understand that many young people across the country are returning to school today. How my heart weeps for those poor unfortunate souls. I'm sorry for their inevitable treading/sitting/placing their hand on chewing gum incidents. The 'it was only banter' name calling. The painful realisation that this year is not the year they become cool, but maybe next year. And I’m sorry for the drudgery of Gove's shadow - aspirational grades and targets and their teachers having breakdowns and their friends having breakdowns and Learning Objectives and What am I Learning Today before they've had a chance to sit down.

I don’t miss school. I used to worry I would because I don’t like change and my life up until now has been very familiar and simply a case of placing one foot in front of the other on a very even terrain. But now that I’ve jumped off that pavement and onto a sort of yellow brick road, heading towards this big green mystery, I can see that the pavement was quite grey in places and didn’t have much of a view because there were so many speed limits and signposts in the way.

School was fun and made me laugh and shaped me in a way that nothing can knock out of place. School filled me with insecurities but it also filled me with a raging fire and I am finding value in both. School is the home of my early adolescence and that’s a connection that doesn’t leave you. But I honestly can’t say I miss it. In year nine Mr Lucas played the entirety of ‘Summer of ‘69’ by Bryan Adams in an assembly and told us that we were in our golden years. I believed him for long enough to appreciate school for what it was, but I realise now that my ‘golden years’ lie very far from the confines of over-sized blazers, science classrooms and parents evenings.

But perhaps there are things I do miss, if I dare to let myself admit such a sin. I may not miss the grey and gritty institutional side of school, but there were little by-products of being a teenager in a familiar environment everyday with the same people that were pleasant. I miss the simplicity of it all. I think that's something I never knew to appreciate because it didn't feel simple at all at the time. I sorely miss the biggest deals in my life being what part I got in the school show or my incompetence in French lessons. Even at A Levels, when I felt more worn down and empty than I have ever felt in my life, I recognise a year later that there was still a certain simplicity about that time. I remember Mr Morrow telling me in Year 12, when I was staying after school to do a history mock exam paper, "A Levels are the hardest thing you'll ever have to do in education. Honestly, University is much easier". And in many ways, he was right.  University is freedom, but school had its own type of freedom too - the freedom of still being a child. It's tempting to try and shake that label off as soon as you can but there's really no need to - children are allowed to find things overwhelming and challenging and children are helped by grown ups when they struggle. When children cry they are comforted and their deadlines are extended and their essays are marked before submission. That's not to say that Universities are any less supportive - there are many means of seeking comfort and guidance, but it's not part of the package and it doesn't seek you out in the same way that a teacher who has known you since you were 11 would notice you're not quite yourself. You have to make the effort and help yourself, which isn't quite the same but it's adult.

I left school very bitter. My favourite teacher suddenly stopped making an effort with me right when I needed them most and my final grades were much lower than I had predicted. I was filled with a feeling that all was for nothing, but that was as untrue as Mr Lucas telling a room full of 13 year olds that their school years were their ‘golden years’. Sixth form was a sad time but I guess the rest was pretty great. This was cathartic.

To end, here is some advice for those still trapped:
Stay in school kids, but there’s no reason to cry at prom.