Old School by Tobias Wolff

Superficially, Old School by Tobias Wolff suggests the gentility of an adolescent memoir. The paroxysms of growing up will be heartfelt, but from the distance of adulthood they will surely claim no more than the relative insignificance they deserve. But Tobias Wolff’s book is not of this mould. An apparently idyllic paradise is shattered not only by a taste of forbidden fruit, but also by a significant kick up the proverbial by an angry farmer!

Again superficially, Old School presents an adolescent male in an environment of privilege, certainly one to be envied. The school’s atmosphere seems rarefied in the extreme, with the study and generation of literature elevated to render writers and would-be writers to almost God-like status. Students compete to publish in the school’s journals and employ criticism from the adulatory to the vicious, thus forming alliances and confirming enemies. 

The teacher, of course, are co-conspirators, never unwilling to voice an opinion of their own, often implicitly, thereby doubly wounding. This Old School has a tradition of inviting some very famous writers to judge its competitions.

The entries, of course, are pre-selected by teachers, but not all pupils are aware of this preservation of power. For Tobias Wolff, the prospect of a visit by Ernest Hemingway is tantamount to an invitation to dine with God. Unfortunately, his previous attempts at creative writing have not exactly set the editorial committee on fire and he has never come close to winning any of the previous events. Then one day he finds inspiration in the words of another. He finds a story that is so clearly his own that he seems to live the lives of the characters he imagines. It is a story he commits to paper and submits for the great man to consider.

You may have guessed that all does not turn out well for our young student. Years later, having made his way through whatever life he could cobble together in New York, estranged from a previously supportive family, he returns to the Old School to discover that all was not as it seemed when he was a student there. His own recalled misdemeanours had only ever been part of the story. The book’s principal character recalls the childhood impression that personal conflicts are all that matter and that the adult world is a place where such tensions are not allowed to exist. He then realises, apparently suddenly, that this adult world is no more than an aged version of childhood’s continued confusion. It is the school and memories of it that have become old in this surprising book.

Notes On A Scandal by Zoë Heller

In Notes On A Scandal, Zoë Heller presents a novel narrated by Barbara Covett, a history teacher in St. George’s, a comprehensive school in north London. When Bethsheba Hart joins the staff as a pottery teacher, Barbara realises that a special person may just have entered her life. Sheba seems to be much that Barbara is not. She is younger, attractive, apparently free-thinking, married, has children and is irretrievably middle class. What she is not, unfortunately, is an experienced teacher, having trained only after bringing two children into adolescence. She is thus going to find life at St. George’s rather tough.

For reasons best known to herself, the sixty-ish, self-assessed “frumpy” Barbara decides to keep a journal. Sheba figures in its pages and eventually comes to dominate them. It is an out of character pastime, perhaps, since Barbara seems to have little but contempt for her colleagues, and survives her educator’s role by constantly keeping her students at arm’s length. Perhaps this is what Barbara has done with every aspect of her life, despised it and shunned it in one. Strange, then, that Sheba, her character, her actions, even her words come to dominate Barbara’s thoughts.

Like many who meet this new teacher, Barbara becomes apparently infatuated with this elegant, apparently free spirit. And also, we learn, does one of her pupils, a fifteen year old boy called Stephen. Sheba, of course, is not the confident, satisfied, fulfilled dominatrix that others invent. She is a vulnerable, not quite organised mother of two. The elder daughter is a difficult teenager, the younger son disabled. Her husband is considerably older than her. Like Barbara, she also suppresses emotion, suppresses it, that is, until it takes over her life with abandon as her relationship with the boy simultaneously fulfils both reality and fantasy.

It lasts for several months before it inevitably comes to light. Barbara’s role, throughout, is central. She is in the know. She is watching. She is not in control, of course, but exercises considerably more power than an onlooker. And when, eventually, the muck hits the fan, Barbara, who has done her share of the slinging, gets hit by some of the fall-out. The denouement is both surprising and logical. Though it is Sheba’s motives that the police, the national press and her colleagues want to dissect, it is Barbara’s that must interest the reader. She as been an informed, motivated diarist, it seems.

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Please Sir, There’s A Snake In The Art Room by Keith Geddes

In Please Sir, There’s A Snake In The Art Room author Keith Geddes has his principal character, Tom Thorne, address a series of challenges. Thorne, this principal character, is a pre-school principal, or headmaster, depending of the regime in question. His first task is to manage and strengthen a Twickenham prep-school, to bolster its students’ performance in common entrance exams. Along the way he has to deal with unruly parents, some of which are so despicably attractive that they quite put his off his stroke.

There are problem teachers, some of whom scheme, wheel and deal, or even take days off sick. There are, inevitably, students. Some of them perform, others under-perform. Some are almost anonymous, while some excel. There are sports fixtures where the school could do better, and there are success stories that outnumber the disappointments. And amid this, Tom Thorne finds himself a new wife, a new family and, believe it or not, a new job. Tom takes up the challenge of a headship in a Kenyan school, near the Ngong Hills outside Nairobi, right on the boundary of the Game Park.

There he institutes a similar mix of curriculum reform, staff management, pupil stewardship and parental relationship that he used in Twickenham and, you’ve guessed it, things work out well. Tom is certainly kept busy. In addition, Kenya provides him with occasional experiences that Twickenham would not, such as snakes, hippos, lions and even flowering plants.

Please Sir, There’s A Snake In The Art Room is not really a novel. In the tradition of Gervase Phinn, it’s more like a fictionalised professional diary, a diary containing the things that were too unprofessional to put in the real thing. It remains of interest to a general reader, because we have all been to school and so we can all empathise with the events, many of which are displayed with considerable humour. Head teacher Tom Thorne, we realise quite early on, bears a strong resemblance to a certain Keith Geddes, whose own life history has witnessed the exact transformations that the author inflicts on his fictional hero.

And so Keith Geddes’s book begins to read more like an autobiography than fiction. It is an anecdotal, light and light-hearted depiction of the professional and personal challenges that a head teacher has to address. And throughout it is also an enjoyable and often humorous experience for both pupils and teachers, despite the fact that navigating its waters is rarely plain sailing.

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