Education | And then again …

Often in interviews you hear someone asking “who has influenced you most in your life?” “Who helped you become what you are today?” Presumably this is because there are all sorts of people out there who led vague and undefined lives, wandering aimless and unsatisfied because they weren’t sure what it is they were ‘meant’ to be doing. That is, until that special someone was able to point them in the right direction, after which they would forge ahead resolutely pursuing what it is that they were born to do.

I regret that I have obviously never met that someone. I have on the other hand met a number of people who seemed determined to make me not enjoy what I already knew I enjoyed doing! University was a perfect example. I loved English, love English (why a blog if I don’t like writing?!). So I majored in it. Big mistake. Just like Julia Roberts said in ’Pretty Woman’ – “Big mistake. Big. Huge.”

My lecturer for the whole of first year gloried in making us hate him and his lectures. Tutorials were hell to sit through. He insulted everyone and said he would prefer it if we didn’t talk at all. No-one did a thing. I doubt if anyone believed us. I did my big project on Ted Hughes and at the end, got back a ‘marked’ essay with only one word written down the side – Crap! How is that helpful? It may well have been but some indication of how or why would have been useful.

Years later I married an Economics lecturer and as fate would have it, he returned to teach at my alma mater. One night at a party I came into the kitchen – where else did groups gather at parties in the seventies? – to hear my old lecturer pouring forth pearls of wisdom about how he ‘maintained control’ in his class. Turns out he always wore a tweed jacket, never went without a tie and carried a pipe to indicate that he meant business and that students should pay him due deference. Apparently inspiring students and helping them to enjoy what they thought they would like to enjoy, doesn’t curry the same favour nor bring the kudos you so deserve!

School wasn’t any better. Maths, Latin, History … All done under duress. Drama on the other hand was great – would I be allowed to say that the person who affected me most while growing up was Elizabeth in Pride and Prejudice?

pride___prejudice__hands_by_ladama_llama

In the end, I think it’s bits and pieces from all sorts of people that affect one the most. Wonderful stories about growing up from my dad. Memories of how my mother copied with a debilitating disease. Friends who laughed and cried with you as you grew up. Family who can tell you straight out that you’re a pain or who can tell others that the best person in the world is you, their sister. Plays I’ve gone to, music I’ve listened to, books I’ve read and places I’ve been. There is definitely not one person who has ‘made’ me – and anyway, who says I’m quite done yet?

I have been fascinated since I started writing this blog by how much music is intrinsic in my life – the background to all I do. I recently read an article in which the author described songs as “a constant soundtrack to one’s interior world”. I so agree. They are a source of inspiration and consolation and pure enjoyment. The mystery of a song is how it interacts with memories and experiences and becomes intensely personal. “More than any other form of artistic expression, people claim songs as their own.”[1]

They are tied to actions and feelings and once linked, the ties cannot be undone. Good songs become bad, bad are good just because of what you felt while listening to them. You usually don’t know all the words to your personal anthems, or even perhaps their original meaning. What they evoke for you becomes their meaning.

Remember Tina Turner belting out Simply the Best? That gravelly voice and those legs. I saw her here in Johannesburg and embarrassed my daughter by dancing wildly in public – she was only nine at the time and hadn’t got to the stage of her own revelry.

I call you when I need you

When my heart’s on fire

You come to me, come to me

Wild and wired

What is “wild and wired” anyway? Crazy for love? High? A bit of a reprobate? But that’s not the point. It is for me all about a time when I was working with one of my best friends and the incredible fun we had for nearly 20 years. It’s also about my learning what I was good at and what I wanted to do with my life. I travelled the length and breadth of South Africa working in rural schools. Give me a pin and a map and I doubt if there is a place you’ll find where I can’t tell you the name of a local B&B.

Over those years I really did have simply the best time. Most public schools in South Africa are not for the faint-hearted, especially in deep rural areas. There is much wrong with education here but there is also good to be found everywhere. And definitely humour, even amongst the heartbreak. I have sat in classes in mud huts on top of a hill in the old Transkei with dung-smeared floors and watched as goats wandered in an out, rhythmically chewing the teacher’s notes as she put them down to write on a blackboard propped on a chair. I have walked up the same hills to schools through knee deep mud after rain made the dirt tracks impassable – and loved the looks on the faces of the children when they looked askance at my wiggling bare toes.

I sat through good lessons and bad, heard stories about how schools have been turned around and also terrible excuses about how something couldn’t be done. I have caught dysentery, viral mumps and measles in schools, but have also listened to songs, seen plays, been to prize givings and sports days. I even actually had one class sing to me