Maths Lesson is another dark tale of social history in verse form so count this as a trigger warning. It should be read or listened to in conjunction with my other verse on the theme of learning and punishment Poor Johnny of Seann Cathair.
Verse
Looked out of the high window Outside the rain poured down It was first class on a Monday And Jimmy Skinner had a frown. He was a teacher of some repute For ferocious temper on short fuse So Jimmy Skinner's expression Much increased our Monday blues. "All, show me your home-work!" Came the  curt command For we had his last class on Friday So our weekend he'd planned. Now towers over each pupil's desk Eyes gaze down in protracted pause Judging each child's attempts Before declaring, applause, or tawse. "But where is your home-work?" For he had reached the last "I couldn't do it sir" Lit Jimmy's fuse for the blast. This miscreant was now dispatched To the front of the lengthy queue So that numeracy be encouraged From counting each blow that's new. The condemned awaited their fate But first came a symbolic pause Allowing Jimmy Skinner to unlock his desk To select the 'best' of his tawse. But the expected didn't happen For reasons I'll now explain For what then next occurred Transcended any tawse's pain. Jimmy Skinner was now ready "Why didn't you do the homework as I asked?" Again a pathetic, "I just couldn't sir " Jimmy's volcanic fury; now unmasked. "Liar! ..." exploded from his mouth And his right arm took savage swing His blow then connected with the face With as much power as he could bring. For the recipient, time became frozen Stunned, he was felled to the ground No sense of pain or anything Just memory, of the whip-crack sound. A great silence then descended And the shock was everywhere For even the hardest of the lads Had never made such anger flare. Jimmy knew he had gone too far And so he quickly left the room As his target picked up himself His slapped face began to bloom. "He can't get off with that" Some of the hard lads would say But Jimmy was also Deputy Head So could pretty much have his way. Though in his savage punishment And by unleashing his inner beast Jimmy's total loss of control Had miscreant's status increased. Jimmy then came back into the room His hot temper now much cooled Sent the queue back to their desks For he'd demonstrated that he ruled. He continued as though all was normal Expounding his abstract proofs As though the audience had not witnessed A more concrete set of truths. Jimmy Skinner was not a bad man Though surely frustrated by his fate Of reluctant miner and farmer progeny Viewing his beloved maths with hate. Like others, his answer was to beat us Force fear lessons in our head For if we were to just strive harder We'd understand what was said. What he, and others, failed to grasp They had created environments of pain Where love of learning could not evolve By thrashing lessons into brain.
About
The aim of Maths Lesson and its companion verse Poor Johnny of Seann Cathair is not to offer tales of unfortunate victims or the preferred more modern mantle ‘survivors’. For, in the world described, nearly all such children could claim to be so. Corporal punishment was so normalised because it was sanctioned by the state and in most cases, those delivering it, truly believed it to be an unfortunate but necessary part of their pedagogical armoury; although a minority were undoubtedly less objective in their delivery. The purpose here is simply to record a tiny piece of lived experience as spoken word and written verse. A lived experience shared by many.
Schools can, at times, undoubtedly be extraordinarily difficult environments to work in and so teachers need to be masters and leaders of both individual and group dynamics. Easier said than done and so, perhaps surprisingly, I find myself understanding what made Jimmy Skinner the maths teacher and Deputy Head snap that day. It wasn’t personal. He just believed the miscreant couldn’t be bothered to do the homework and so should be prepared to take the expected punishment in lieu of effort. Not delivering said punishment would, therefore, undermine his position and only encourage others to do the same. The miscreant’s unfortunate error was to tell the truth. Had he said he had forgotten (or some other obvious schoolboy excuse) then the tawse would have been sufficient. But to claim he couldn’t do the homework because he didn’t understand it, that was an insult to Jimmy’s teaching. Compounded with whatever else was going on in Jimmy’s life at that moment was enough to become the unfortunate target of his momentary loss of control. Nowadays, he would certainly have been instantly suspended, probably dismissed, arrested and prosecuted, and even imprisoned.
But back in those days, it was business as usual. It was so business as usual that it’s interesting to reflect on whether some of those authors and scholars who contributed to the educational theory and practice canon of particularly the 1960s, 70’s and even 80s had teaching backgrounds in which they themselves participated in this ‘robust’ approach to enforcing and maintaining class discipline. If so, I assume such participation must have engendered some dissonance with their later published writings that so informed my own and others teacher training and higher education in later life.
And the school? The orginal day and boarding school in rural Scotland was amalgamated with another and the site was shut in the 1970s.
