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Sunday, November 15, 2009




I have always found that a stern look can quell the incipient hysteria that usually greets my attempts to illustrate points I am making with apposite drawings executed with élan, panache and other French words I can’t remember, as I work my artistic magic on the whiteboard.

In our unutterably tedious text books (which are treated as infallible sacred books by the pupils) we had reached a Unit which listed the appendage nomenclature of various animals: horn, fin, flipper, wing, claw, paw etc.

In order to make these mere words come, as it were, alive (or sear them into the memory as the kids might say) I created with the aid of a mere board marker a series of dazzling sketches of various animals which, when I had completed them, looked as though they were the product of a mind raised on Breughel, Dalí and Bosch. I have to admit that my elephant looked a trifle alien and my rhinoceros looked like the emanation of a nightmare, but my lion looked positively playful and my tortoise - well, professional!

I could tell (being a professional and experienced teacher) that each new monster added to my growing zoo of horror was eagerly anticipated by my class and their appreciation seemed to necessitate some more permanent form of remembrance than just their fallible memories.

Modern pupils have added a further dimension of horror to their laughter as I found out when I turned around after adding a particularly fine bird to the menagerie. As I turned towards the class every (every!) pupil had taken out and aimed a mobile phone at the whiteboard! For all I know my drawings are now the talk of YouTube or the currency of laughter on Face Book!

One of my colleagues was most disgruntled to find out that the title of Worst Drawing by a Teacher might now be snatched away from her by an upstart Welshman!

The whole experience has given me pause for thought. The fact that all of my pupils had mobile phones capable of taking photos and that all of them used them as almost a reflex action was disconcerting. It is, it has to be said, a gross invasion of privacy and, even if I didn’t really mind on this occasion, it does suggest that there might be others when it would not be appropriate and does one then confiscate all mobile phones and delete all offending images? We work towards nightmare!

Mobile phones, with all their photographic and communication possibilities are seen as essential by pupils. They see them in the same light as their pens and pencils – life without them is unthinkable. They use them in the same way as they would chat: they are an absolutely normal form of talking. For me the mobile phone is ‘other’ and, were I to forget to take it to school for the day, it would not be something which unduly worried me. For the kids it would be like tearing out a tongue!

There is a whole area of privacy concerns which has not really been tackled about the use of mobile phones in places like schools. I can see personal freedom concerns on both sides of phone use: allowing them in schools and banning them. Most schools have some sort of fudged policy which says that kids can have phones but if they are seen then they will be confiscated until the end of the day. In our school this does not seem to be the common and consistent approach of colleagues.

The whole incident of my ‘individualistic’ drawings, though funny and conducted with good humour throughout has made me think. It is another of those areas of modern life where the thought of how to approach the use of the phone is nowhere near its accepted importance in young people’s lives.

Meanwhile my artistic endeavours live in an electronic world over which I have no control and in which god knows how far they have spread.

Perhaps I should have signed the whiteboard and then unscrewed it from the wall and stored it so that I could capitalize on the increased value of the work of art as its fame spreads!

Another lost opportunity!

My efforts to resist reading the second volume of Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy “The Girl Who Played with Fire” came to nothing as I ploughed my way through the 600 odd pages of the paperback version that I have.

It is compulsive reading and its length allows a satisfying development of characters and events.

I have decided that it is basically a ‘super-hero’ or ‘super-heroine’ book as we relax with the character of Lisbeth Salander as she sets the world to rights or sets it topsy-turvy with her individualistic approach to what is right and wrong. By the end of volume one in this trilogy she has ceased to be a human character and has become something like a force of nature: nothing can stop her when she has decided that something needs to be done.

Her ‘super skill’ is computer hacking; she has trained with a professional boxer; she has a photographic memory; her hobby is high level mathematics; she is immensely rich; she has psychological problems which are strengths and weaknesses for her; she is bi-sexual and so on. Hardly your run of the mill heroine.

Larsson’s writing is functional: he tells you what you need to know so that the action can proceed. His writing is unobtrusive – this novel is one of action and the writing is the means by which he tells you what is happening so that you can follow the relentless narrative thrust of the book. There are few longueurs in this book and it is inevitable that you get caught up in the sometimes frenetic action.

I shall wait for the third volume to come to me rather than buy it. I am not sure if that says anything about my response to the books, but I can certainly wait for the next episode in Lisbeth Salander’s eventful life!

I can feel the sun shining on the back of my nick so it might be time to go to the third floor and see if it is in any way possible to sit out and listen with sympathetic resignation to the weather forecast on Radio 4!

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