Chapter 2: Reading a Kestrel for a Knave
Chapter 2: Reading a Kestrel for a Knave
Introduction
This chapter returns to the world of Billy Casper in 1970. It aims to document the KES-like deficiencies of the education system we were so eager to reform, and to explain our emerging critique of selection and its consequences for children who failed the eleven plus, especially those from disadvantaged backgrounds. We also draw on David Hargreaves’ study of Lumley Secondary Modern to check the credibility of the scenes and characters depicted in the novel. The value of KES would be much reduced if Mr Gryce and Mr Sugden were grotesque cartoons drawn in the style of Wackford Squeers[1]. Hargreaves, however, provides a detailed sociological description of the behaviour and attitudes displayed by teachers and lower stream boys at Lumley. This account is consistent with the scenes depicted in book and film. Hargreaves recognises the inescapable difficulty of teaching disadvantaged children who fail the eleven plus and gravitate towards the bottom stream; and helps us understand the systemic nature of the problems generated by secondary modern schools.
Barry Hines, the author of Kestrel for a Knave, describes the novel as a ‘slim book about a no-hoper and a hawk’ but the story also presents a vivid portrait of a secondary modern school and its flaws and deals in memorable terms with the impact of poverty on young people’s education and future prospects. Successive generations of students and teachers have been captivated by the scrawny figure of Billy Casper, aimless and bullied at school but raptly attentive as he extends a gloved hand to the circling falcon. The film of the book has also touched and influenced a wider cinema audience.
The story of Billy Casper’s life at home and school
Kestrel has as its central character young Billy Casper, a 15-year old boy who is in his final weeks of school at the local secondary modern school in Barnsley and lives at home with his single mother and older brother Jud, a mine worker. It is a cold, Spartan existence with no warmth or material comforts in the home and very often no food. Billy is inadequately dressed for the grim Northern weather. No one seems to care whether he has a proper meal or not or how he spends his time. Billy drags himself up and does his best to defend himself against a loutish, bullying brother and a feckless mother who is far more interested in her male friends than she is in her son. School delivers yet more hostility and futility. Boys like Billy, from the wrong end of town and very poor, are written off from the start.
Not being ‘one of an in-crowd’, Billy is bullied by his peers and by most of the staff, a victim of a culture that is driven by the head teacher, Mr Gryce. Lacking support both at home and school, Billy is a resourceful loner with a love of nature and we are reminded that, although pitheads besmeared the Barnsley landscape, everyone also had access to the wonderful countryside beyond and the sense of freedom and wellbeing it could offer. This is Billy’s domain; this is where he achieves some happiness. He is a passionate observer of nature and wildlife and comes into his own in the countryside, demonstrating respect, interest and sensitivity.
He has reared all kinds of birds and animals, even a fox cub, but Billy’s care, skills and talents really shine when he trains a young kestrel. He dedicates himself to the task with the focus, energy and organisation of a single-minded expert - starting with research from books, extracted without permission from the bookshop and read with difficulty. He developed a structured programme of training and practice. It takes knowledge, skill and outstanding resilience to do this. Billy’s new found passion brings joy and a sense of purpose to his dismal existence and he experiences for a short time a sense of pride when one kindly soul, his English teacher, takes a particular interest in what he has achieved with the kestrel. The happiness comes to an abrupt end, however, when Billy pockets the money Jud left for him to place as a bet, instead of depositing it with the bookmaker. When Jud’s horses win and he realizes Billy has stolen the money, he takes his revenge by destroying the kestrel. The reader is left to guess at future avenues for Billy after this devastating act of vengeance. In his anger, Jud destroys more than the kestrel. From the start, the story captures the plight of disadvantaged children, ill equipped for the risks they face.
We meet Billy Casper in his final weeks of schooling, coming to the end of his childhood and in theory preparing to enter the world of work and take on adult responsibility. Although he was only fifteen, leaving school would mark entry into the adult world for Billy, as he would soon have to earn a living and make his own way in the world. How well have the adults in Billy’s life helped prepare him for the future? And what kind of family life has Billy experienced?
The novel opens with a grim tableau of Billy’s sleeping arrangements. No private bedroom, no comforts and no evidence of former toys or hobbies. Instead we learn that Billy has to share a bed with his older brother Jud and has no privacy or personal space of his own. The room and window are harsh and comfortless. The child continually reminds the adult that the alarm has gone off and he needs to get up for work. Jud finally responds by repeatedly thumping Billy in the kidneys. This early introduction to Billy and his living conditions sets the tone for his whole experience of the world. He is seen as a little forlorn creature seeking comfort, kindness and security in a hostile environment.
As we move from the bedroom to the kitchen, we learn that the house is ‘gloomy’ and ‘cold’ and the bread bin and the milk bottles are empty. Billy chops wood for kindling and lights a fire with the skill of a young man well practised in the task. Then he sets off for his paper round on foot because Jud has taken his bicycle. His clothing was as inadequate as the comfort in his home.
Jud asserts his aggressive and bullying version of ‘brotherly love’ from the very beginning. Neither Billy’s mother nor anyone else protects him from Jud. The insults and the blows are incessant. When Billy wants to share his newfound joy and passion in watching the kestrels, Jud shows no brotherly sympathy or interest in his younger sibling who seems to serve only as a punch bag or a useful run around to place Jud’s bets.
What of Billy’s mother? What kind of care, support and protection does she offer? Unconcerned about Billy’s welfare, one of his mother’s earliest utterances in the book is: ‘You haven’t got a fag on you, have you, love?’ This is one of her rare terms of endearment and each time the word accompanies a request for something or occurs when she is likely to leave him on his own yet again. Her request is soon followed up with: ‘Do me a favour, love, and run up t’shop for some fags’. And then his mother adds to the shopping list, suggesting he pick up butter, eggs and bread while he’s there. Billy is already late for school but this is of no interest to his mother. What is more, on a previous errand, the shopkeeper has already told him that there will be no more credit until his mother pays her bills. When Billy refuses to go to the shop, he is met with blunt language: ‘We’ll see whether you’re going or not, you cheeky young bugger.’ followed by ‘I’ll bloody murder you when I get hold of you’.
There is almost a reversal of roles in this household. Billy lights the fire; he is expected to go to the shop and cajole the shop owner into letting him have goods ‘on tick’; he is charged with the responsibility of placing Jud’s bets; and he is expected to feed himself and be independent enough to spend most evenings by himself. In contrast, the adults need him to do things for them and they spend their evenings in the company of others in the pub.
Our first glimpse of Billy’s school life is during form time with the aptly named teacher, Mr Crossley. During the calling of the register Billy answers ‘German Bight’ when Mr Crossley calls out ‘Fisher’. Billy excuses himself by saying that he likes to hear the names on the shipping forecast.
‘It just came out, Sir’.
‘And so did you, Casper. Just came out from under a stone.’
The mockery and hostility of the teacher is as much to entertain the rest of the class as it is to belittle and ridicule Billy. His peers readily join in the mocking and baiting. The neatness of the teacher’s register was far more important than any of the children in his care. For Billy, one painful experience succeeds another at his local secondary modern. Morning Assembly, an act of Christian worship, exposes the many ironies of the gathering. The hymn is ‘New Every Morning is Thy Love’ and, once announced, the head teacher, Mr Gryce, flexes his cane, determined to catch boys who are coughing in assembly: ‘Gryce was straining over the top of the lectern like a bulldog on its hind legs’ while the ‘teachers moved in closer, alert like a riot squad’. Mr Gryce then bellows at the boys to open their mouths and sing ‘Or I’ll make you sing like you’ve never sung before.’ And the ironies continue with the Bible reading: ‘Never despise one of these little ones...’ If Mr Gryce achieves anything in leadership terms, it is to show his staff exactly how to despise the boys in their care and embed a culture of bullying and intimidation.
Billy is seen to be a nuisance to all teachers except Mr Farthing. He is not part of a ‘cool gang’ and spends his day running the gauntlet of sarcasm, jibes, insults, blows, thrashings and general misery. In reality boys like Billy, in the bottom sets, were treated as though they had been placed in school to make teachers’ lives a misery and could not possibly amount to anything in life. Suspicion and mistrust were at the core of this unhealthy bullying culture led and encouraged by Mr Gryce. The MacDowells and Juds of this world learned how to hone their insensitivity and aggression early on. Follow the lead of your teachers, form a gang and exert your power.
We know little of Mr Gryce’s formal school policies and the chances are they were not explicit, but the ethos he encourages is a barrier to fostering pupils’ wellbeing. An outstanding exponent of this ethos is the PE teacher, Mr Sugden. For Billy, one hour of football with Mr Sugden represents ‘an hour o’ purgatory’. Slightly late for the PE lesson because he has been with Mr Farthing, Billy is greeted with: ‘Skyving again, Casper?’ When he informs Mr Sugden he has no PE kit, his comment is greeted with: ‘Casper, you make me SICK’. There follows a sideshow where Billy is ridiculed and exposed by Mr Sugden because his mother will not buy him PE kit. Mr Sugden ‘bounced the ball on Billy’s head, compressing his neck into his shoulders’. The other boys grinned and giggled. Mr Sugden continues with his show when he throws Billy a pair of shorts ‘that would have made Billy two suits and an overcoat’. At the centre of the show, Billy, ‘like a brave little clown’, was busy trying to make the shorts fit while the other boys pointed, shouted and laughed.
The lesson consists of a game of football and two captains choose teams, one of whom is the teacher who insists on having first pick. Not a single skill is taught during the lesson and many boys do not get a touch of the ball because Sugden has to keep possession at all costs. At one level, in the book and the film, it makes for amusing light relief in a story about young Billy’s cheerless life. On another level, it is upsetting that such a puerile bully is allowed responsibility for these young boys. The football match shows him as a sour loser and an incompetent teacher. But his real sport is entertaining the class with his unrelenting bullying of Billy.
Power in the hands of the very worst practitioners is exceptionally dangerous. Who is the child and who is the adult? Billy is confronted with an inversion of roles and responsibility at home and school, and it is the boys who have to appeal to their teacher for clemency: ‘It was only a game’. In Billy’s school effective discipline rests on male aggression, threats and humiliation. It comes as little surprise that MacDowell and others adopt the same behaviours; they do not witness any other styles. Even Mr Farthing, the English teacher, adopts the prevailing model. The difference in his case is that he seems to have a sense of fairness and does know the boys and takes an interest in their individual lives. To others, 4C are the class sent to ruin their lives as teachers.
Farthing not only takes an interest in Billy but gives him an opportunity to shine and share his unique knowledge and experience in training the kestrel, all of which he accomplishes entirely on his own. Billy is praised as having the skills of an expert. He tells Billy: ‘That was very good, I enjoyed it, and I’m sure the class did.’ This is possibly the only praise Billy has ever received in secondary school. It is acknowledged in front of the whole class that he has succeeded brilliantly with a difficult task. Billy researched his topic, he used skill and sensitivity to manage the bird, and he was dedicated and resilient in his many attempts to train the kestrel. At least one teacher has noted that he has a special gift with wildlife. And Mr Farthing’s interest is genuine; he follows through by watching Billy feed and exercise the bird, and is genuinely thrilled by what he witnesses: ‘Marvellous, Casper! Brilliant! That’s one of the most exciting things I’ve ever seen!’
We could argue that Billy is lucky, that there is at least one teacher who takes an interest in him and is sympathetic to his situation. Without Mr Farthing, it would have been possible to spend four years at this secondary modern school and not have a single kind word addressed to you in all that time, nothing but four years of bellowing and bullying. Teachers appear to be left to manage things in their own way. In this case, a group of ‘professionals’ behave in independent and idiosyncratic ways. The only thing that seems to unite their practice is an ugly and insensitive bullying culture that is led from the top and firmly inculcated in daily life. In Kestrel we have no sense of a shared responsibility for the learning and welfare of the boys. Instead, teachers operate as islands and fiefdoms in a sea where the pupils are the troubles and storm that upset their tranquillity.
The story deals with a very small slice of Billy’s final year in compulsory secondary education. Like most secondary modern pupils at the time, Billy was able to leave school aged fifteen. As expected, Jud had gone to work in the mines and the same future awaits Billy. When Mr Farthing raises the question of his future and what he would like to do when he leaves school, the conversation is bleak:
‘I’m not bothered. Owt’ll do me’.
‘You’ll try to get something that interests you though?’
‘I shan’t have much choice shall I? I shall have to take what they’ve got’.
‘I don’t (like school) but that don’t mean I’ll like work, does it? Still, I’ll get paid for not liking it, that’s one thing.’
Billy is a realist. What point is there in thinking about apprenticeships and acquiring new skills when school has encouraged him to accept his place at the bottom of the pile? He knows his mother and brother are only interested in him earning money as soon as possible and so contributing to his own subsistence. The only time Billy shows any enthusiasm for the subject of work is when he realises earning money would enable him to buy a goshawk.
The school does at least have a careers officer who interviews all boys before they leave school with the primary aims of acquainting them with available opportunities and supporting them into appropriate routes after school. The interview is little more than a formality. With no prior knowledge of Billy and with no notes or recommendations from teachers, the employment officer works his way through a hierarchy of opportunities and skills, beginning with office work. Billy declares that ‘I’ve a job to read and write.’ The officer writes down the word ‘manual’. This is an unfamiliar term for Billy. The employment officer extols the virtues of ‘getting a trade’ and serving an apprenticeship, emphasising that ‘the money isn’t too good while you’re serving your apprenticeship’ and that it will require some form of further education. Seeing the future from Billy’s perspective and putting it in the context of a very negative school experience that has left him with little self-worth, it is highly unlikely that he will sign up for continuing education, especially given the family requirement to earn money. His future matters little to anyone, least of all the Youth Employment Officer, who simply works through his checklist.
As the novel movingly reveals, Billy lacks the warmth, care and security he should have been able to enjoy with his family, adults in the community and his peers. While his dysfunctional and uncaring family has much to answer for, how far is the school also responsible for his isolation and unhappiness? Our young loner reveals in an English class story how he would like to see the return of his dad, the removal of Jud, and for his mum to prepare nice food, He also dreams of a warm house and carpets on the floor, but it also features a school where the teachers are good to him, smile at him and give him interesting things to do. The dream is counterpoint to the grim reality of Billy’s life.
Life at Lumley Secondary Modern School
Social Relations in a Secondary School[i] is a disinterested sociological account of Lumley Secondary Modern for Boys, a pseudonym chosen to safeguard the anonymity of participants. The research was conducted by Professor David Hargreaves, who spent a year as a participant observer at the school. Situated in a northern industrial town, it has much in common with the fictional school Billy attended. He examined the attitudes and behaviour of fourth year boys (now called year 10, ages 14 to 15) and their relationships with their teachers and one another. His study contains observation, evidence and insights that enable comparison and contrast with Hines’ portrayal of Billy’s education.
Lumley was a school with 450 boys on roll, taught by 26 teachers. The pupils were streamed by ability, mostly decided by their scores in the eleven plus examination. When boys had the same scores, placement in streams depended on reports from their primary schools. The boys were drawn almost exclusively from six different primaries in the town. As the boys were taught in streams (as at Billy’s school), their friendship groups were largely decided by the stream they were placed in. In Lumley, the top stream in the fourth year was expected to contain boys who were going to stay on for a fifth year (now year 11) and CSE (Certificate of Secondary Education)[ii] examinations, introduced into the school by the headmaster in 1964. There were five streams at Lumley, classified A (top) to E (bottom) but Hargreaves did not include the E stream because those boys formed a separate group and were thought unable to cope independently with his questionnaires and interviews.
Hargreaves found the structure of social relations in the school was to a large extent ‘moulded by the streaming system’. He observed that teachers showed a very clear bias towards the A stream, populated by boys closest to the teachers in terms of achievement, ability and values. This was clearly reciprocated. There was a marked tendency for higher stream boys to be more favourably disposed towards their school and teachers. It is no surprise that most of the school’s prefects were drawn from the A stream. Younger, less experienced teachers were given junior forms and older, more experienced teachers were allocated to senior forms. Teachers who were less well qualified or who had poor discipline were given to the lower streams.
From the beginning, those in the C and D forms viewed themselves as relative failures, and their negative perceptions were reinforced by attendance awards, examination results, sports fixtures and other measures the school used to reward success. The tendency of teachers to favour higher stream boys and the kinds of relationships they made with those boys contributed in fundamental ways to their overall outlook.
A D stream boy said: ‘I don’t think they bother about us here. They can’t do ’cos they don’t mark our books. If [the head teacher] saw our books he’d go mad ’cos of all the things wrote over them. Mr X doesn’t say owt’.
Another D stream boy was described in his end-of-year report as:
‘Mediocre; untidy in every way; lazy; doesn’t care two pins for anyone except himself; vicious; sly; smoker; uncooperative; liar; paranoiac; moaner; bully; hates anyone intelligent; trouble-maker’.
Hargreaves notes that a less favourable report than this is hardly possible, and adds that much of it was true. He also concludes that the very loud and ‘loutish’ behaviour represented an adaptation to belonging to a stream whose members were regularly penalised and insulted, whereas the upper streams, especially A, were treated very differently. That such a school report was permitted tells the reader a great deal about the culture generated and led by the senior teachers. Lower stream boys were deprived of status in the school and wider society and they adjusted by rejecting teacher and societal expectations and substituting their own set of peer group values. A high incidence of poor classroom behaviour was a consistent feature of streams C and D, with the most challenging behaviour found in the D stream classes. Hargreaves also found that, in the D stream, over half the boys had appeared at least once in court and admitted current petty larceny to him. By contrast, only one boy in the A stream had a court conviction.
The degree of the boys’ participation in the social life of the school and sense of belonging through commitment to sport, music and trips, was clearly reflected in the academic hierarchy of the streams. The higher the stream, the better the participation and commitment. Hargreaves found the boys imported values and attitudes from family and friends that influenced life in school. He noted that ‘where the home influence fails to support the teachers’ values, the anti-academic culture is given free rein’. Whilst acknowledging that giving questionnaires to the boys on parental attitudes is an imprecise tool, he nevertheless concludes that the higher the stream, the greater the tendency for parents to be more ambitious for their sons’ future careers; more severe in their attitude to poor academic performance; less permissive about smoking; insistent on their boys doing jobs at home and eager for the family to spend leisure time together.
The opposite was true for boys in streams C and D whose parents showed less ambition for their sons, increased tolerance of low academic achievement and greater tolerance of the boys smoking and going out in the evenings (most likely to a local billiard hall or cinema). Disengaged, dissenting lower stream students at Lumley appeared to lead unstructured lives similar to Billy’s and displayed a comparable acceptance of the limited opportunities available for their future.
Hargreaves therefore provides a factual and impartial account of a secondary modern school in the late 1960s and confirms the essential plausibility of Hines’ description of the life and education of Billy and his classmates, in their rather similar school in the same period. The dramatic scenes in KES seem justified by the social reality of secondary modern schools reported by David Hargreaves.
KES does not pretend to be an educational documentary but we believe strongly that it captures the moral essence of the selective system and its miserable consequences for children from disadvantaged backgrounds. Such children were disproportionately likely to find themselves in lower streams and were often beaten for minor incidents.
An Agenda for Reform
Both book and film were a call to arms for idealistic young teachers keen to campaign for and practise comprehensive education. Billy’s secondary modern school experience was utterly remote from our aspirations for the children we would teach as our careers unfolded.
Billy’s problems begin in an emotionally and financially impoverished and dysfunctional home. They are exacerbated by an education that offers no positive or compensatory response to his needs. His school may have reflected aspects of the local community but did not attempt to influence parents, families or other partners for the better. It reinforced all that was dysfunctional around him. We intuitively believed very early on that good homes, caring schools and supportive communities are the foundations for successful human development.
We were also aware of the harm caused by bullying and labelling children as ‘no hopers’ or ‘’trouble makers’. As headmaster, Mr Gryce enacted a coercive, bullying leadership style based on the cynical assumption that lower stream pupils were intrinsically troublesome and unpromising. He despaired at the boys’ negative reactions to life at the bottom and believed his morning assembly routine was the only way to control loud and ‘loutish’ behaviour. Mr Gryce ruled through personal power, backed by the frequent and exemplary use of the cane. A culture of harassment and intimidation was adopted as the most effective answer to unruly boys. Teachers like Mr Sugden were bullies who encouraged cruel humour and violence at the expense of vulnerable young people. Hargreaves noted that at Lumley many teachers felt free to insult and denigrate pupils via official documents and school reports. In the light of these insights we became determined to create caring and warm school communities.
We were disturbed by the unenviable standing of secondary modern education, and the humiliating lack of status associated with placement in low streams. This is evident from Billy’s story and Hargreaves’ analysis at Lumley. The secondary modern school’s second-class status within the selective system, and its internal organisation into ability streams, may have suited the government and local authorities of the day but did not serve the long-term interests of their pupils. These schools were supposed to provide a curriculum that matched students’ needs but the stigma of eleven plus failure was inescapable and could last a lifetime. Streaming within grammar schools and secondary moderns alike compounded the effects of initial selection. Children were not treated as if they were equally worthy or valuable and individual needs were seldom recognised. Our mission began with the aim of achieving equal opportunity and worth for all the students.
Selection was driven by the idea that intelligence, narrowly defined, was a fixed, context free property, to be measured by IQ tests. Children were assumed to be divided by ability into two broad types, those capable of abstract, academic work, around 20 per cent of the population, and the majority, around 80 per cent, endowed with practical skills and naturally suitable for manual trades. Little was expected of pupils who were disadvantaged by apparent lack of ability and the low expectations of their families. As teachers at Lumley told Hargreaves, revealing their own low expectations: ‘...you’ve got to remember these kids haven’t much ability...you’ve struck the bottom of the barrel here.’
This was the rationale for curriculum differentiation from age 11 and for funding grammar schools more generously. Gender further restricted opportunities, with boys steered into ‘masculine’ disciplines like science and metalwork while girls of all abilities were directed towards ‘feminine’ subjects like typewriting, needlework and housecraft. The IQ principle also justified excluding the majority of children from public examinations. On reaching the statutory leaving age of fifteen, below average pupils were expected to depart with no qualifications at all. There were no suitable examinations until the introduction of the Certificate of Secondary Education (CSE) in 1963, first examined in 1965. Even then, before the raising of the school leaving age, the early school leaver was unable to complete the prescribed two-year course. We became increasingly aware of the need to create a curriculum that would meet the needs of all children, not just the privileged few or the disadvantaged minority.
The accounts discussed here include no reference to a behaviour code for pupils or any kind of policy for dealing with bullying or other incidents of disobedience or disorder. Pastoral systems were undeveloped in this era. No one recognised Billy’s miserable home life and its impact on his learning or intervened to help him. At the end of four years in school, mostly spent in the same teaching groups, early leavers were offered little, if any, support or guidance about their future career options. Billy’s careers interview is comical, with the youth employment officer arriving at the term ‘manual’ by an elementary process of elimination. The ‘A’ streamers had a better deal. Some were able to access apprenticeships and enter skilled trades. Others continued at school and with the introduction of CSE gained access to basic academic qualifications. Some pioneering secondary moderns did enter their best students for General Certificate of Education (GCE), facilitating transfers to sixth forms at local grammar schools for successful candidates. These were the exception rather than the rule.
Mr Farthing represents the beginning of a change in the teaching of English. He encourages Billy and others in the class to talk about their experiences and responds warmly to their contributions. But even Mr Farthing is influenced by the prevailing culture, shouting at and threatening the less cooperative pupils and so reinforcing the macho character of relationships between teachers and students. Discipline often drowned out learning. The prevailing system and its assumptions defined the nature of the learning opportunities available to students and reduced the scope for personal growth and progress. Intuitively, we committed ourselves to become teachers more in the mould of Mr Farthing than in the style of his colleagues.
Billy’s acceptance of the harsh reality of his daily life, and his resourcefulness in overcoming economic and emotional deprivation so that he can pursue goals that matter to him, are the inspiring, uplifting theme of KES. Billy is despised and written off by his teachers, with the sole exception of Mr Farthing, but something burns within him, not discerned by the school. Despite the bleak surrounds of the coalfields, Billy responds to the open country nearby. He imagines himself a falconer, training a fierce, wild kestrel to fly free but also to his command. He researches the art and creates a private world removed from his tormentors. Billy’s inner compulsion to communicate with and to care for another creature, to lose himself in nature and eventually to orchestrate the world around him, represents the child’s soul that survives oppression and transcends school, teachers, petty crime and even more petty punishment. We noted that Billy was participating in his own learning under his own steam and this influenced our approach to teaching and learning.
[1] Wackford Squeers is the head of Dotheboys Hall. He appears in Charles Dickens’ novel Nicholas Nickleby.
[ii] The Certificate of Secondary Education (CSE) was introduced in 1965 for a broad range of subjects. It was intended to provide a nationally recognised examination for pupils at secondary modern schools.
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