foolhandy

Back in 1990, King Edward VIth Grammar School Stratford-Upon-Avon employed a man named Peter Whittle to be an English teacher. One of his first classes was our A-Level class - 30 testosterone-filled 16 year-old students who had spent the last five years at an all-boys school where empathy and understanding were in short supply. Showing your feminine side wasn’t the done thing. He tried to teach us English literature by feeling the texts and worked to help us understand that, contrary to all that had been taught before, literature isn’t all zeros and ones. He didn’t stand a chance.

Over the two years he taught us we systematically destroyed him, to the point where he simply left us a note for what would have been our last lesson with him. The note told us that we had made his life a misery, that he would never teach sixth form students again, and that he hoped maybe one day we’d understand what he had been trying to teach us.

It’s not a part of my education that I am in anyway proud of. I don’t know what Mr. Whittle is doing now, but I hope we didn’t cause permanent damage. I wish that he had been our English teacher from the beginning, we would have understood then.
One of the anecdotes he used to explain a particular feature of a text, one of Donne’s love sonnets I believe, was of his wife badly banging her head in their kitchen. He told us that her head was bleeding profusely, that it had formed a large lump, and not being at all practical in medical issues his only solution was to hold her in his arms. As he held her to comfort her she cried, and he found himself crying too. He wasn’t hurt, but the feeling of helplessness caused by the knowledge that the woman he loved was hurting and there was nothing he could do to ease that pain made him cry in empathy for her. Her sadness made him sad. Her pain caused him pain, and although it was a different pain it stemmed from his love for her, because he would have moved the heavens to ease her anguish but he was just a man holding her in his arms. He was powerless, and all he could hope for was that his arms would draw away from her some of the sadness, and his heart being heavy for her pain it would take some of it upon itself to carry.

You told this to a bunch of arrogant, alpha-male teenagers and we laughed. I think finally understood you a while back, but today this thirty three year old was again reminded about exactly what you meant and how you felt. I’m sorry Mr. Whittle, we were a waste of your time back in 1990, but I do understand now.