BleepMartyn Ware and #SteveCoogan on the #ElectronicallyYours podcast https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gjkpO6K2L8
YouTube
Coogan makes an interesting point in this conversation that made me think of something that I probably won’t communicate well: Coogan was from a working class Middleton home & had his horizons broadened by going to a grammar school where he encountered Blake & Wilfred Owens and it opened his mind. I was from a middle class home & went to a shitty comprehensive even though I was primed (braced even) for how school would give me the education my parents got, but nothing happened when I got there.
my school was about containment and crowd control rather than developing young minds. Under Thatcher there was no Head Teacher the entire time I was there, there were no resources for teaching, no text books, no oil to heat the building and the teachers seemed to be continually on strike. My year had a large intake - 5 form classes instead of the usual 4 and lessons had an average of 45 pupils per class. They used to teach maths on the playing field because there were not enough classrooms.
What I am trying to say is this - from a middle class home where my parents and siblings were all pushed at school, too much sometimes, I was not pushed at all. I was prepared for how much work I would do and how challenged I would be and how school would be the foundation on which the rest of my lift would be built. How I responded to that opportunity would be the making of me. And the school basically had no opportunities for us.