Kate Clanchy

On the face of it, this is just a collection of anecdotes — sad, touching, inspiring, embarrassing, funny — about some of the more remarkable young people Clanchy has come across in her thirty years as a teacher in Scotland, Essex, and the Midlands (out of respect for the privacy of the kids, she changes names and obfuscates the identity of the schools and towns concerned). But of course it's rather more than that: it's a defence of what real teachers do in the real world of the late 20th and early 21st century, it's an attack on the politicians (and voters) who continue to shape the English education system as a tool for keeping the children of the poor in their proper place at the bottom of the heap, and above all it's a compassionate plea on behalf of the many kids who show brilliant promise at some point in their school career, but never realise it.

Over and over again she tells us about someone who seemed to be on track for university, the stage, or a brilliant writing career, but drops out into dead-end jobs, teenage pregnancy, self-harm, or is hit by one of the many types of accidents and illnesses that fall so much more heavily on the poor than on the middle classes. She points out how difficult it is to keep up self-confidence and believe in the delayed gratification of long-term goals (exams, university places, etc.) if you come from a background in which only hopeless dreamers think beyond the end of the month. The middle-classes are trained from birth to believe in jam tomorrow, but that's hard to do when no-one around you has ever seen any sign of jam or knows what it might be good for.

There's also a lot here about the shared excitement of poetry, and how much more interesting it is for both kids and teachers to create original work in response to books than it is to dissect them for exams. And Clanchy also shares a lot of her pleasure in the multi-culti world of the school where she teaches, where the absence of any dominant majority culture means that the students quite naturally fall into the habit of treating it as a neutral space in which to respect and enjoy their different backgrounds.

Very strong, engaging writing, with a lot of compassion and anger behind it. Definitely not just a book for teachers to read.… (meer)