Of Me and Others. Alasdair Gray
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Название: Of Me and Others
Автор: Alasdair Gray
Издательство: Ingram
Жанр: Биографии и Мемуары
isbn: 9781786895219
isbn:
A while after this abortive visit I entered a public house, bought a drink and sat beside a friend who was talking to a stranger. The friend said, “I don’t think you two know each other,” and introduced the stranger as a sound technician with the British Broadcasting Corporation. The stranger stared hard at me and said, “You may not know me, but I know you. You arranged for a BBC camera crew to record you talking to your old school-teacher in his home, and didn’t even turn up.” “I never arranged that!” I cried, appalled, “I never even discussed the matter – never thought of it!” “Then you arranged it when you were drunk.”
I left that pub and rushed away to visit Mr Meikle at once. I was sure the BBC had made a mistake then blamed me for it, and I was desperate to tell Mr Meikle that he had suffered intrusion and inconvenience through no fault of mine.
Again I entered his close and hurried up to his flat, but there was something wrong with the stairs. They grew unexpectedly steep and narrow. There were no landings or doors off them, and in my urgency I never thought of turning back. At last I emerged onto a narrow railed balcony close beneath a skylight. From here I looked down into a deep hall with several balconies round it at lower levels, a hall which looked like the interior of Whitehill Senior Secondary School, though the Whitehill I remembered had been demolished in 1980. But this was definitely the place where Mr Meikle lived, for looking downward I saw him emerge from a door at the side of the hall and cross the floor toward a main entrance. He did not walk fast, but a careful firmness of step suggested his arthritis had abated a little. He was accompanied by a party of people who, even from this height, I recognized as Scottish writers rather older than me: Norman MacCaig, Ian Crichton Smith, Robert Garioch and Sorley Maclean. As they accompanied Mr Meikle out through the main door I wanted to shout on them to wait for me, but felt too shy. Instead I turned and ran downstairs, found an exit and hurried along the pavement after them, and all the time I was wondering how they had come to know Mr Meikle as well or better than I did. Then I remembered they too had been teachers of English. That explained it – they were Mr Meikle’s colleagues. That was why they knew him.
But when I caught up with the group it had grown bigger. I saw many Glasgow writers I knew: Morgan and Lochhead and Leonard and Kelman and Spence etcetera, and from the Western Isles Black Angus and the Montgomery sisters, Derick Thomson, Mackay Brown and others I knew slightly or not at all from the Highlands, Orkneys and Shetlands, from the North Coast and the Eastern Seaboard, Aberdeenshire, Dundee and Fife, from Edinburgh, the Lothians and all the Borders and Galloway up to Ayrshire.
“Are all these folk writers?” I cried aloud. I was afraid that my own work would be swamped by the work of all these other Scottish writers.
“Of course not!” said Archie Hind, who was walking beside me, “Most of them are readers. Readers are just as important as writers and often a lot lonelier. Arthur Meikle taught a lot of readers that they are not alone. So did others in this mob.”
“Do you mean that writers are teachers too?” I asked, more worried than ever.
“What a daft idea!” said Archie, laughing, “Writers and teachers are in different kinds of show business. Of course some of them show more than others.” I awoke, and saw it was a dream, though not entirely.
An Essay in the Future Tense*
THE NEW EDUCATION BILL will be passed only after much opposition and delay. Strikes, protest meetings, demonstrations will shudder the country, and the Government will be forced into a general election. Nonetheless, the Bill (being conceived by a Scots Minister of Education) will eventually pass into law. Under it, pupils will attend whatever classes they wish and each teacher will be paid according to the number of his pupils.
At the start of the new system, schools throughout the country will pass into a time of wonderful confusion. Pupils will devote the first days of their new freedom to those subjects they enjoy. The gymnasiums and football pitches will be unusually crowded. But by the second week even the most vigorous will have had enough, and will drift into other classes.
This drift will be sustained by the second part of the Bill – the part which has the teacher paid according to the size of his class. While the P.T. teachers are earning £50 per week, the other teachers will have to leave the profession or make their instruction interesting.
They will do this in many ways. Probably a progressive art teacher will lead the way, replacing the drearier cylinders and stuffed ducks of his classroom with specially hired artists’ models. Similarly, the classroom with rows of hard desks, bare walls, and black-boards, will give place to rooms bright with colour, hung with good pictures and interesting apparatus, and well designed furniture. For instance, the maths room of the future will be fitted with working models which explain geometry and algebra in terms of aeroplane designing and boat-building. The walls will be decorated with murals depicting incidents in the lives of famous mathematicians (such as Archimedes leaping from his bath shouting “Eureka”). Cinema and television screens will be in every classroom.
Pupils who naturally dislike a subject, and who have not just been discouraged from it by dull teaching, will not attend that class. Why should they? Should a boy who loves engineering and will eventually make his living by it, be forced to attend classes on painting, unless he wishes to? Force him to study painting against his will and he will hate it. In the same way the artistically inclined pupil will not be taught mathematical problems used in building machinery, unless he enjoys them. Of course, the dull teachers who are not interested in making their subjects enjoyable will have no pupils and no pay, and will leave the profession. They will become what nature intended them to be – bank clerks, commercial travellers, and museum attendants. Similarly, pupils lacking interest in all subjects in the curriculum will leave school and become gravediggers or politicians.
There are many drawbacks to this scheme, but these will be gradually overcome by wisdom, imagination, and experience. By that time Whitehill will have its own canteen, swimming-pool, kitchen-garden, theatre, newspaper, dance-hall, psychiatrist...
THE STUDENTS CHRISTIAN UNION
The S.C.M wants to make more students consider thoughtfully the teaching of Jesus. It does this through debate. The members discuss different ideas of Christianity, each giving his own view of the matter, whether it is orthodox or heretical. The meeting has a place for many shades of religious (or irreligious) feeling. The only condition of membership is a willingness to listen to the ideas of other people, and to explain your own. The founders of the S.C.M. believe free discussion is a step nearer the truth – which is also a step nearer God.
The Whitehill branch of the S.C.M., at present designated S.C.S. (Student Christian Society), was founded at the start of the year. We began with quite eighteen names on the roll. Through time, the meetings have become more and more select, until now we have an average attendance of six (seven, if you count the chairman). Although this has not impaired the quality of the speeches, it does not make for variety, for by this time most of us know what the others think on the most important topics.
This is not satisfactory. We would enjoy the Society more if it had new members with more ideas. If you are an intelligent, talkative person in the Fifth or Sixth Year you may wish to try us. The S.C.S. meets fortnightly in Room 81; usually on Wednesdays at 4.15. Mr. J. M. Hutchison is our chairman. WARNING: Don’t come if you dislike discussion of your deepest beliefs, or object to being contradicted.