progress reports

Also in the mysteriously boxed stuff were ten of my school reports (of which, presumably, I once had 12, as they came twice a year I think). 

I have probably whinged here before how disgusting John Gardiner High School was to attend on a daily basis and how much I hated my time there 1977-1982. I am always surprised when I meet people - occasionally, and not necessarily dumb people - who think they peaked at secondary school and that was the best time of life. Similarly when it comes to JGHS I am genuinely surprised to find on fb a testimonial from one former teacher 'We had some wonderful times, spanning from the sublime to the ridiculous but at the heart of it was a dedicated band of educators. There were others too. I was privileged to have had that  time there with them.' I mean even pushing through the formalities of polite language there, seriously? So many of those people sucked so badly, not just as teachers but also at life, I would say, completely dysfunctional. Of course, looking at their pictures today (I'm thinking about the teachers at the moment) many of them were of course more than half the age I am now and about as equipped to live in the world as I was, and I was aged 14 or whatever, but still, wtf could anyone say they were dedicated to!? As for the students all cracking hearty on the fb page not quite 'best days of my life' (look, maybe some of them are saying that) but fuck's sake. It was so grotesque. 

It's forty years later though give or take and I think I seriously have to get a grip on how angry I continue to be about that poor education. The fact is, I can't really sue the Education Department; those who should (?) be punished are now dead anyway, and even if I was successful the end result would not be interpretable by society at large as yes! public education should be much better but either that was public education in the 70s/80s who gives a fuck or private education you pay a massive amount for is the only way to go. 

The other thing is that I might well have to face up to the two-way street that maybe I have, or had, some complicity in this. It was not necessarily my teachers' job to challenge me (or pander to me for that matter) at every juncture, and just because I had arcane interests at that stage doesn't mean I was particularly special. Clever little boys aren't the precious commodity they were brought up believing they are. It's arguably true that the jerks I had to share a classroom at school with, the ones who ended up going to jail a few years later or whatever, had no prospects or proper guidance outside that institution and possibly deserved some extra care (who knows if it did any good). 

Well, I could go on (and may at some time) but it's difficult sometimes to face up to the fact that you aren't as hard done by as you've worked yourself up to imagining you are, so I might have to brood on it for a little longer. 

PS I can't believe I kept these, and that was a six-year project obviously, to keep them, and to retain them. Certainly my parents wouldn't have filed them away and certainly no-one ever said 'go back and look at them again' or anything like that. So strange I still have them.