Poison in the well

Politicians are viewed with some disdain by the general public. This is a profession that attracts little respect

Politicians, rightly or wrongly, are viewed as habitually mendacious, self-seeking, dishonest and wholly untrustworthy.

At the same time, they are all over the media all the time, all day. Today, the World at One, PM are almost wholly dedicated to political stories. The newspapers carry political stories as headline news daily, and TV and the internet bring live and replayable dishonesty to a screen near you.

Like urban rats, it feels as if you can never be more than 10 metres from a politician.

Perhaps it has always been the case that politicians and the truth are strangers. Not just the truth, but any truth. The Elizabethan joke was that an ambassador was someone paid to lie abroad for his country.

What’s different now is the ubiquity of politicians, and with them their ever-present slightly suspect discourse. And it’s hard not to wonder if politicians are poisoning the well of public discussion with an all pervasive dishonesty which, like dry rot, gets a grip and spread rapidly everywhere.

Political parties worry that voter apathy lowers electorate turnout, and thereby weakens the legitimacy of their claims to be representative, democratic, and accountable.

Perhaps one reason for the apparent public secession is that politics simply does not have a trustworthy level of discourse and that that perceived lack of honesty is alienating. Talking about the American political scene, Vonnegut commented that when you listen to a politician you are not really assessing the message, but asking yourself the more basic question: is this an honest man/ woman.

Too often the answer has to be no. Do the test yourself. Think of a few political names, and ask yourself: if my life depended on getting the right advice, which politician would I trust ?

The adversarial nature of British politics, the low intellectual level of parliamentary debate, the 6^th form debating society atmosphere of the House of Commons, the cheap and infinitely depressing barracking in the commons, and the stultifying puerility of PMQs makes one despair.

This kind of poisonous influence pervades political debate in our media. It serves none of us well, and we deserve better. We should demand better.

The Boss

Mr L C Henry was my boss for a while.

He was always Mr Henry in school, and even those few who called him Chuck only used that name in private. In the staffroom he was always Mr Henry or The Boss (pre-Springsteen).

Chuck was a tiny undersized guy whose office door was for some reason massively over-sized. When he swung  the door open you were momentarily tempted to ask if his dad was in. But you would have needed a hangar to house his spirit.

Chuck was really very small, and had a slight hunch on his back. A colleague and friend who used to regularly get a lift with Chuck, often joked that he would stand around waiting for the Marina that arrived without a driver, and know that Chuck had come.

Chuck always wore a suit, but invariably looked slightly dishevelled. He gave the impression that his clothes had put up a terrific struggle before he had finally subdued them. He was always irregularly shaved, as if he had been in the dark with a blunt razor and no mirror. He had a gruff voice, which he never raised. Children and adults alike knew that he wanted quiet and were keen to oblige. He may have been small, but he had the pugnacious stance of a bulldog. He didn't need to bark. You could see that he meant business.

He had a very sharp intellect indeed, and did not suffer foools gladly. Not even ungladly. You didn't put anything past Chuck. His handwriting, however, was indeciperable and struggled across the page as if drugged. I still have the notes he gave us during a pep-talk on Presentation. The handwriting appears to have been written with a banana as guide, and peters out at the end of each line as if exhausted. If he had meant it as a sort of post-modern irony, he did not let on.

He ran a fantastic school. Teachers were able to be themselves, to play to their strengths, and to develop their skills. You knew where you stood with Chuck. If he thought you had got something wrong, he told you straight. He didn't gush with praise, but he showed his approval in encouragement. If you were prepared to work hard, Chuck would be behind you. He thought that headteachers should help their teachers by getting rid of things that got in the way, and he would fund new thinking generously, while looking out for problems that he could toss aside on your behalf. If you could think it, Chuck would help you do it, as long as he could see that the kids would benefit.

He could have a been a businessman, like his brother. He has a talent for raising money and turning a profit. From tuck shop to collecting newspaper, there were a zillion schemes for increasing funding, and his was one of the first schools to have a computer in every classroom, rather than merely one sad BBC B parked in the hall under a budgie cover. And he funded more table tennis equipment than could reasonably be expected, and weekends away with the kids at sports camps in Derbyshire.

He charmed the birds out of the trees. People seemed unable to resist the urge to give up their time and expertise for free when Chuck needed it.

Teaching styles in his school were varied, and teachers' very different personalities were given full rein. This was a vital lesson for me: it became clear that good teaching might look bizarrely varied, but what mattered was the result. My way wasn't the only way, and teachers there were achieving great results from the kids through a rich diversity of routes. 

Teachers wanted to work hard for Chuck. Those who didn't like table tennis might be irritated by the endless noise of bouncing balls wherever there was space to put up a table, but we were all, without exception, keen to make that school fly. And it did. Those were the happiest and most productive years of my career, and my learning curve was steep enough to loop the loop and then some.

Perhaps because Chuck  was happy to let his teachers be individuals - even eccentrically so - we in turn respected the children's individuality and rejoiced in it. There was no room for homogenised conformity. Chuck wanted us all to be tall poppies, children and teachers alike.

When the school was praised, Chuck always made himself scarce. He made clear that any success of the school was due to the teachers. He tried to become invisible if anyone got gushing about the place. He also hid when it was time for the school photograph. He hated having his photo taken and I do not think I ever saw a picture of him.

When I moved from headship to an adviser's job, Chuck wrote me a warm and generous reference I would be embarrassed to put up here. I treasure it still. I treasure him still.

Chuck did not like the idea of dying, but retired too late, when he was already ill. Visiting him at his home for the last time, I came away and rang a couple of people I knew would want to see him, both headteachers, and all three of us grateful to the part Chuck had played in our lives.

At his funeral, the place was packed, just bursting with people. I sat on steps at the back of an aisle, and felt lucky to have squeezed in at all. The vast and unexpected crowd was a profoundly moving tribute to a man who was well-respected professionally, and well-loved personally.

It was the loss of a colleague and friend, but felt like the loss of a father.

Ten humanist commandments

I used to love reading Bertrand Russell. He always seemed such a clear thinker, and a clear writer, too. And his uncompromisingly rational approach was very attractive. He was a champion of thinking, of culture, of the rational.

And behind the ruthless ratiocination there was always a twinkle of the eyes, a lurking sense of humour. When he was imprisoned as a conscientious objector in the first world war, he was laughing so loudly on reading Lytton Strachey that a warder had to ask him to remember that he was in a prison.

When, as a student, I came across these 10 commandments, I felt galvanised by them. 40 years later, they still feel inspiring, true, a bright star in a dark night. I am not sure they can be bettered.

Perhaps the essence of the Liberal outlook could be summed up in a new decalogue, not intended to replace the old one but only to supplement it. The Ten Commandments that, as a teacher, I should wish to promulgate, might be set forth as follows:

 

Do not feel absolutely certain of anything.

 

Do not think it worth while to proceed by concealing evidence, for the evidence is sure to come to light.

 

Never try to discourage thinking for you are sure to succeed.

 

When you meet with opposition, even if it should be from your husband or your children, endeavour to overcome it by argument and not by authority, for a victory dependent upon authority is unreal and illusory.

 

Have no respect for the authority of others, for there are always contrary authorities to be found.

 

Do not use power to suppress opinions you think pernicious, for if you do the opinions will suppress you.

 

Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.

 

Find more pleasure in intelligent dissent than in passive agreement, for, if you value intelligence as you should, the former implies a deeper agreement than the latter.

 

Be scrupulously truthful, even if the truth is inconvenient, for it is more inconvenient when you try to conceal it.

 

Do not feel envious of the happiness of those who live in a fool’s paradise, for only a fool will think that it is happiness.

As Large as Alone

 

It's a mistake to think I have Aspergers. Closer to the truth: Aspergers has me. On a good day I like to think I call the shots in my life, but the reality is different. In one way or another Aspergers runs the game. It always did.

We don't see things as they are, we see things as we are. 

Things always look slightly odd to me, and Anais Nin was probably on the money.

There are some things I am pretty good at. Not many, but some, at least. Mostly they are useless things, like crosswords, having a terrible memory that can't forget anything, being able to hear more than most people think possible, Latin, music, some amusing maths. Being able to figure out how things work.

How things work. I never could figure out how people work.

Or rather, I don't have a sense of how people work, think, feel. Their motivations are inexplicable to me, so I tend to project onto them my own motivations, and I am not always sure even what they are. A lot of effort goes into trying to figure out what is going on. I can often get there in the end, but it is an exhausting mental effort to analyse even the most trivial situations to reach some kind of understanding.

Larkin, considering the experience of being dead, talks of "nothing to love or link with". For many with Aspergers, that is the experience of being alive. It is a lonely condition, and one is conscious of being always essentially alone, even in a crowd of people.

Aspergers people tend not to have circles of friends, but rather the dot of a friend. (Singular).

We seem to have difficulty with linking, I mean really linking. We might KNOW that we are loved, but we tend not to be able to FEEL it. When I was a kid, a constant question in the house was "Are you friends ?"  Noone was sure. It's a question I still ask at 63, and will keep on asking, just to feel temporarily surer. It is peculiar question, and insane to anyone with normal circuitry. But checking that out has been as compulsive as hitching up my trousers to check that I haven't gained a stone since breakfast.

As for loving and linking, well, for Aspergers people, those are hard to feel. The intellectual constructs seem to make sense, but feeling them is different. Aspergers gives you a burning need to come home, but you always find yourself locked out. It is hard to describe this exactly, but it is somehow being quite unable to feel what people express towards you. You know something is there, but it as if you are trying to feel a texture without any nerve endings in your fingers. You know it is rough, silky, warm, but simply do not have the apparatus to feel that. Love is as large as alone*.

And, of course, without the resilience that comes from feeling loved, self-esteem is at best brittle and uncertain, and small setbacks and large can be devastating, undermining. There is a strong chance that this seems unfathomable to you, reading this. Aspergers separates us with a chasm of mutual emotional incomprehension. (And there is an uncomfortable joke there, too, in the interminable tense symbiosis of thought and feeling.)

Someone said to me recently that Aspergers was like seeing life from behind a glass screen. It made me think a lot. To me it feels more like trying to watch a movie through a keyhole while wearing slightly inefficient earplugs. You know that something is happening beyond the keyhole, but no end of scrabbling about is going to get you through that door. When you understand a few frames of plot you are flushed with a sense of triumph.

Kurt Vonnegut created an alien from the imaginary planet of Tralfamadore. He had an important message to deliver to earth, but his only means of communication was through a combination of tap-dancing and farting. His message was lost in translation (actually before translation) and he was clubbed to death. There is something of Aspergers tucked up in that image.

Yes, Anias Nin was right.

If you want to now how Aspergers feels, look closely at the next heron you see. They look how we feel.

* A simply brilliant simile from maggie and milly and molly and may by e e cummings