Education
Gerhard Kress
I was already used to travelling into the city on my own. Using the overground tram to school every day since we had moved to the edge of town. Today is different. I’m using the tram to get me to the city centre, to my new school. Today I’m leaving my friends behind. They are carrying on to year nine to prepare for the life of an apprentice. I am on my way to the new school. Today my friends are forgotten. No sense of loss. I don’t know yet that I won’t see them again for many decades, until the onset of school reunions and the inevitable: ‘do you remember’ and ‘wasn’t so bad after all’ and ‘is so and so still alive?’.
Alighting the tram and crossing several busy roads, I feel very grown up. Perhaps the word is ‘cool’. No fear, no anxiety, at least not yet. How bad can it be… The tram I travel on is one of the old rattling carriages with wooden slatted seats if, at this time, you can get one. Not very likely. Standing room and it’s draughty. Runny noses and body odour when standing in uncomfortably close proximity with adults who keep looking at their watches, hoping not to be late for work. And there is that girl from my parallel class, daughter of the teacher who always shouts. She walks as straight as a tree. Always aloof, never talks to anyone. Is she going to my school. God I hope not. I’d die of embarrassment. I wonder if anyone I know will be in my new classroom.
The old tram has a wooden frame. The inside is trimmed in old hardwood. It must be a survivor of the era before the war and survived the war, more or less, patched up, it has the feeling of something from the 1920s. How it survived the bombs I cannot imagine. Tram lines and cars are still sharing the roads. And there is mayhem. There is talk of an underground and much later it’ll be my job to photograph opening ceremonies of new tunnels, of huge tunnelling machines, of ministers’ wives smashing bottles of bubbly and naming thee: Machine Bertha.
Just another road crossing, and there it is. A huge multi-storey monolith. Anonymous. It houses several schools. Mine is on the fifth floor. I climb the stairs with several hundred, or so it seems, mostly older teenagers. It is tight. Everybody is on a mission, everybody, seemingly, knowing where to go. Here’s my floor. I wait and stand with 28 anonymous faces, doing the English in a London tube, pretending that other people do not exist. When the door opens I automatically flee to the desk furthest away from teacher and blackboard. Only the wall is behind me. I dare not look at my new desk neighbour. Nothing but a sea of bodies in front of me. And each one of them looks way more mature than I feel. I am intimidated and it is a feeling that does not leave me for the entire first year. After that I am called before the rector; my class teacher is standing beside him. I am asked to leave the school. “You’ve shown no effort whatsoever. We advise that you seek an apprenticeship.”
I knew this would happen and now it has. I am dumbstruck. And then I wake up like from a bad dream. Both rector and teacher terrify me, but even more is the thought of leaving the school. By the end of this meeting I have found my voice and I am pleading. Yes, pleading and arguing that from now on I would work hard, do my homework and no longer be intimidated by other pupils in my class. My class teacher whose special subject is German, Geography and Sociology knows that I’m no idiot in those subjects and that my essays are not lacking, suggests that I could stay if I’m prepared to repeat that first year. I agree and I’m relieved. The next two years are different. I have learned to see my fellow pupils for the infantile clods that they are. That I was one year ago. Two years later I get my exam results and pass in every subject. With a little help from my English teacher who looks like she’s come straight from Carnaby Street, wearing the shortest mini I’ve ever seen, given us boys and a few girls hot flushes.