Dsxeiyla Relus OK Part 3 - Essay Blues
Despite being labelled illiterate in my first year of secondary school and finding education difficult, and somewhat distressing, there were some high points. Two of them appeared in my second or third year.
We had a student teacher for English Language. He was definitely counter Grammar School cultural. He had long hair and a long straggly beard. He wore loons. He was like a semi-domesticated hippy. He came with the legend that he spent the whole of his time at university barefoot. His name was Art Billington.
One high point was he introduced me to the incredible Howlin’ Wolf. He lent me the album The London Howlin’ Wolf Sessions, which Howlin’ Wolf recorded with Eric Clapton, Steve Winwood, Charlie Watts, and Bill Wyman. He is still my favourite blues artist.
The other high point was to do with English. Art asked us to write an essay for homework. And as usual I wrote the bare minimum to reduce the chance of spelling and grammar mistakes, After he had marked it he took me aside and asked me why I had written so little. I explained that the more I wrote the more mistakes I made, the less marks I got. The next lesson he set us another essay. He came up to me as the lesson finished and he said don’t worry about spelling or grammar, just write.
It was like being set free. I wrote pages. I still remember the story. It was set in a dystopian world where the winner of a lottery became the victim of a jealous, angry mob. And he liked what I wrote. He liked my story. He liked my ideas. It was a revelation.
I did not have him for many lessons. He was only at the school a short time. English lessons reverted to minimising mistakes, short essays and low marks.
If only he had been around longer.
I’ve just remembered. I knew that there was no way I would be able to write enough to complete the essay in my English O Level. My coping mechanism was to pre-compose and learn verbatim two essays. I was hoping I could fit one of them to one of the essay questions.
Luckily the strategy worked.