This highlights the importance of communication in the school, you are told once and once only, and if you don’t listen, then you’ll do without. There seems to be no care and understanding of these children and their ability. Alternatively, new comers will have to go through this isolation stage until they learn to be responsible and be independent, regardless of their tender ages.
To emphasize this idea further, Williams mentions the school introducing this high-school “timetable” for them, and being told to think of this timetable as a “game of battleships”. For whatever reason these military images are presented by the headmaster’s wife, they highlight how regimental the school is.
The school is almost being set up like a military army, in which children are disciplined to follow routines and take responsibilities. Williams exemplifies this, by mention of the somewhat comical image of him being caught “wearing the wrong shoes” by the headmasters wife. Presumably, he was punished for this, as we later come to understand how strict this boarding school actually is.
Williams’ idea of the boarding school being enjoyable is utterly transformed and he begins to even dread it. It is to such an extent that what children usually find boring – “waiting around” is a preferred by him than doing work. We feel empathetic towards him, as we are now presented with a little boy whom was anxious of starting this boarding school to one in which he suffered miserably in, and one in which doesn’t understand his ability.
The school offer books of the “Beacon Series” to children, which are frankly boring curriculum books, as opposed to what he and many other children of similar ages find enjoyable - the “Billy Goat Gruff books”. But being such a stringent boarding school, they choose not to offer them to children.
Williams is expressing the great extent at which he is different to his peers at the school, whom may jolly well be content with these “Beacon Series” books. The fact that he differs to all the other pupils, as well as not being able to fit in to the regimental system of the school is adding greatly to his feeling of isolation and bewilderment. Despite this, however, he tries his best to cope through use of his own learnt defense systems to protect himself from the interrogation of his teachers (questions about these books perhaps?), as William admits: “then I started saying nothing”.
Williams is transformed to become an individual disliked by the school and rather neglected. He becomes the centre of attention in the school for the wrong reasons, “every day my name was read out” for apparently trivial misdemeanors – “because I had forgotten to hang something up”. Indeed, the alienation Williams is feeling is demonstrated by his forgetfulness, as Williams carries on portraying how he’d forgotten “how to get dressed”. Although this is quite touching to read, it is intended by the writer to inflict some more humor as he is showing how he is forgetting to do some simple things as taking “off your shirt and vest after you’ve put on your pyjama bottoms”
In fact, what Williams is actually trying to show is the level of strictness at this school, which makes children do the most trivial of stuff within set rules. This along with the idea of the school being a military one is further enhanced when we go on to read how the headmaster’s wife came round for “Inspection”. Notice how Williams chooses to use a capital letter to highlight this word, presumably in effect of emphasising it to be an important aspect of the school routine.
As we approach the end of the poem, we are confronted once again with another instance of Williams’s forgetfulness as seemingly he has forgotten to brush his teeth, “she wanted to know why it (his tooth-brush) was dry”. Again it is enhancing our view as to the level of strictness and close analysis of pupils this school maintains.
Finally, we are left with a unhappy child whom has been subjected to a school with very petty rules feeling isolated and lonely in this eerie environment wishing to go back home, as Williams describes – “I was miles away, with my suitcase, leaving school”.
It is clear that Williams is expressing his disgust at the educational, moral, and social system of this school. He has shown in this poem what school life at a boarding school made him go through and perhaps is suggesting that the change from state school to boarding school can cause children to be very anxious or insecure.
The poem “Dear Mr. Lee” takes the form of a letter in which a certain individual expresses their dislike at the school education system. Considering that the poet is a woman (U A Fanthorpe) and the way the poet expresses the feelings of this character in the dramatic monologue, we have a reasoned decision to think that this individual is a girl.
The poem explains as to why this girl has failed her English exam through sending this apologetic letter seemingly to the author (Laurie Lee) of her favourite book, Cider with Rosie. This girl wants to make it clear to the author in this letter that the prose that they were studying in preparation for their exam had contributed not in the least for her failing. Rather, it was the poor education system of both her school and the collective English qualification system as a whole.
For the poor education system of her school, it can be recognized that she is pointing the finger of blame at her English teacher, Mr. Smart. Ironically, as we read through the poem we cannot help but to think that this English teacher of hers is anything but smart! Rather, this girl is depicting that this teacher is worthless and arrogant, who doesn’t strive to make lessons even remotely pleasant for them. Apparently he is completely contrary to this, and rather chooses to teach them by the standards of the formal English syllabus presented to the teachers, as opposed to simplifying it for them. This also forms one of the reasons as to why she later goes on to criticize the English syllabus.
If we begin to look at this poem from the first few lines we can identify that although assumingly this poet is trying to send a formal letter to Laurie Lee, she is certainly not succeeding at doing so. What seems more apparent is that she is being very much more colloquial than needs be, by letting out all her thoughts out immediately in a stream of consciousness, rather as if she was talking to him directly face to face: “Dear Mr Lee (Mr Smart says it’s rude to call you Laurie”.
Humorously, the poet then goes on to begin this “letter” once again after her comment in parenthesis; presumably this can be interpreted as her not wanting to stick to the conventions of formal letter writing taught to her by her teacher. Else, she may not know how to, or even have never been taught so. Whatever the reason is, the idea is further enhanced when we realise that the whole lengthy letter is one whole long sentence, with only commas used to try to split it up. This could certainly signal one possibility as to why she failed her English exam.
The poet then goes on introduce her feeling of deep contempt to firstly her teacher Mr. Smart, and then secondly on to William Shakespeare. It is to such an extent with Shakespeare, that she exaggeratedly describes him as “a national disaster” because of how uninteresting and especially unamusing she finds his plays. She explains this by portraying how her teacher constantly has to explain to the class as to why Shakespeare’s jokes are “jokes”, and yet after when he does “even then no one thinks they’re funny”. Really, she is conveying this in attempt of downgrading her teacher to the level of lowness she feels even towards William Shakespeare, the writer of plays in which she is obliged to study for by the English system. She furthermore juxtaposes the remaining poetry writers (T. Hughes and P. Larkin) with Shakespeare, as she was also obliged to study their works for her English syllabus when she didn’t find them the least bit interesting or even “a laugh a minute”.
In what should be her new paragraph, the girl goes on to praise the idolised writer of her favourite book, “Cider with Rosie”. In fact, she says that she liked his book so much that it “made up for the others”. She depicts this through mention of how she often took him “to bed with her” in comfort (perhaps as her English studies are depressing her?). The writer’s book is an asset to her that has lived with her through her adolescent years, “stained with Coke and Kitkat” and through days in which she was ill and “had a cold”, clearly therefore forming an important contribution to her development.
The essence of the letter is presented to us as we go on to read the girl apologising to Laurie, “Dear Laurie, I want to say sorry”. We understand why this girl has failed her English exam as firstly, she clearly doesn’t want to do what is often asked of her, for presumably personal reasons, “I do not want to write a character-sketch of your mother”. Furthermore, the writer attempts to change tone using italics to signal how she did not even understand some of the questions presented to her in the exam “social welfare in the rural community…the seasons as perceived by an adolescent”.
This girl is very of with this English system which qualifies students based on their analysis of novels without much concern into feelings and personal response (“I didn’t think you’d want your book read that way”), in which certainly she can express herself considerably well as she knows the book “so much by heart”, however the examiners wont be “impressed”. Not only that, but she is portraying how even English questions have been made difficult to understand and hence answer due to the way the questions are produced, which she clearly feels very disillusioned about “I’m not much too good a terse and cogent”.
Her ambition of becoming a poet is ridiculed by her malicious, arrogant teacher who explains that anyone with her punctuation wanting to aspire to be a poet is “enough to make the angels weep”. She is being critical once again of her teacher, who believes that successful poets are a result of being excellent English students which clearly is contrary to what she believes, however is being inflicted with this reality rigorously by her lame ‘teacher’.
Ending the poem with her being very disheartened, she expresses this ultimate sorrow to her idolised author in a post script, “please don’t feel guilty for me failing the exam, it wasn’t your fault, it was mine, and maybe Shakespeare’s and maybe Mr. Smart”. Clearly, therefore, the writer has addressed Laurie to express mainly her contempt of this unfair English system in which she feels she has been betrayed and bored by, as she presumably put considerable amount of effort towards. Furthermore, she also has expressed her disgust at her English teacher whom she feels he is very unfair, unjust and in fact not worthy of being a teacher. Nevertheless, she wants to make it clear to Laurie that this hasn’t changed anything, “I still love cider, this hasn’t made any difference”.
“Reports” is a poem that encompasses a different attitude of presenting this critical notion of the educational system. It differs from the other two previous poems in that it has been written from a teacher’s perspective as opposed to being written by the actual students as is evident from the poems “Leaving school” and “Dear Mr Lee”. Basically this poem incorporates advice and instructions to teachers on writing students’ reports. As we read the poem we understand how unfair this can be for students and hence enhancing this image of how unreliable the educational system can be. Furthermore, this poem presents ambiguity in that this whole poem can be seen as a metaphor for life and how people live it.
The language used by teachers when they write reports is conveyed to us in italics. The first that we come across, “Has made a sound beginning” is one that is often employed by teachers when writing the early reports to good students. It is ironic how this is put right at the beginning of the poem. What is often considered as a positive merit by students is seen here by this adviser as nothing but “dull”. Clearly thus beginning to break the ice of sullying the “positive comments” that are seen in reports.
This is further enhanced in the following stanza, “the good have no history, so don’t bother, satisfactory should satisfy them” which certainly does intrigue us. This is indeed alarming to read by students as the idea of some teachers almost blindfold idly “deploying” these words uncaringly, regardless of how good the students are, does make us feel quite annoyed. It is like this person is advocating that teachers should guard themselves from making any solid judgments about individuals whatsoever.
This severity of writing students reports is continued to be advocated throughout the poem with more examples of report clichés such as “fair and quite good”, is meant to mean “nothing” which can be applied “to all” students regardless of who they the are, “feel free to deploy them”.
Ironically it is evident that in most reports, teachers begin their reports with some positive remarks before moving to the dire ones as this poem is clearly showing. The adviser has moved from the “sound beginning”, to “satisfactory” then to “fair” before getting into the more ‘unpleasant’ ones, “finds the subject difficult” which is said to be acquitting “oaf into idiot, usher to master”. The poem has become even more serious and dull which is produced by the tone that helps to conceal emotions; this reflects exactly what some people think of reports.
The end “common-room cliché” is presented to us in the following stanza, “Must make more effort”, which seems to be as if it is being reiterated to any person regardless of who they are, hence the reason the person is calling it a “cliché”.
Finally, the poem takes a turn, and we are introduced with this ambiguous notion of the poem at last in which we understand that the poet is somewhat using school to symbolize reality as ironically “school is the world”. The person summarizes the essence of the poem in this stanza reflecting on how each of the common report remark utilities are related to the world and possible hereafter, “born at sound beginning….last we could have done better”.
The poem ends with “rest in peace” to make it finally less subtle to readers who have not picked up on its metaphorical nature. One can look back into the poem and understand why the poet has put,
“Parent, child, head,
Unholy trinity will read
Your scripture backwards”
as this is clearly done to express the poems religious image of the final judgment or the set of “reports” that will be presented to the authoritative figure in charge on the day of judgment, be it God or an examiner.
Because the poem has taken this ambiguous turn, one cannot fully take this poem to be very critical of the education system only. Rather, it is being critical of life in general and how we are constantly subject to reports based on our performance, be it in school or actions done during life. Whatever the case may be, the reports are scrupulous in the sense that they are done according to which cliché you fit as apposed to receiving your own personal account as an individual in society.
Having looked at each of the poems “Leaving School”, “Dear Mr. Lee” and “Reports”, clear similarities and differences can be identified between all. Certainly, the most effective poem I found has to be “Dear Mr. Lee” which presented a perspective with much originality and heartfelt emotions. This perspective can be shared with the ‘voice’ of the poem that failed the English exam. Presumably, this is because it is easy for me to identify with this adolescent girl’s projected feelings which may be shared with many other people as well. Not only that, but she depicts how sometimes we can encounter some teachers that have no appreciation for level of intellect, ability, understanding and aspiration of students. The poet, whether it is her persona or not, has also certainly succeeded in giving a very critical and sombre feel of school and the qualification system in general more than the other two poems.
I believe that “Dear Mr. Lee” is more critical than the other two for reasons. Firstly, although in “Leaving School” we feel very disheartened and empathetic towards Williams for being prematurely ascribed to adulthood and being sent to a boarding school, we have not really conjured the aspect of him being critical of all schools but rather specifically of that one boarding school. Indeed therefore, the blame is directed towards that boarding school and perhaps his parents for exaggerating his apparent maturity. Secondly, the poem “Reports” really only gives a general critical view, focusing on school reports and how unfair they can be. However, in “Dear Mr. Lee” the critical aspect of school has been given in numerous cases with real life results. The girl has been let down by her teacher not only by poor teaching, but by ruining her aspirations; she has also been subject to what she feels a rigorous way of judging her English capability that resulted in her failing. She therefore has been very critical of both how poor the quality some teachers can be as well as being critical of how the qualification system chooses to asses people in English, which reflects what I and undoubtedly what many others may also believe.
