Christina

Educated in Suburbia

Reading about the richness of my mother’s childhood living over my grandfather’s shop in Battersea High Street I realise how suburban and dull my own childhood turned out to be. 

Being immersed in that community with the bustle and smells of the market and constant interaction with other people was very far from my life in suburban South London.

My grandfather was well off and my mother’s brothers finished degrees at Cambridge before the Second World War. But being younger than them, her education was interrupted by evacuation.  But *like most of the women in her day her vocation was to marry and have children. She met my father during the war when class divisions had suddenly eroded. He was handsome, amusing and very kind.

My father was is the youngest of eleven children in a poor family in Forest Hill, South London. He only once told me that he had to kill the bugs on the furniture with candle each night before he went to bed and at some points he had no shoes to wear. Otherwise he never talked about this childhood. But he was fastidious about his personal cleanliness to the point of obsession which I always attributed to the traumas of his childhood. 

The Boy’s Brigade gave him a focus in his young life. He started his career as a messenger boy at Citibank, recommended by his Boys Brigade Captain. He gained his education in the army before he returned to the bank. Ultimately, he became a Vice President despite his working-class background and lack of a university education. This would not have been possible in an English bank that required a middle-class upbringing. 

After the Second World War my parents did, in fact, begin their married life over the shop in Battersea with the same tin bath for our ablutions. There I was famed for tapdancing along the counter and saying my alphabet backwards for sixpences from the customers. Never a retiring character!

My father was a popular man: ebullient, full of jokes and fun when my sister and I were young. Then, when I was about six my parents took out their first mortgage on a cottage in Mitcham. And here my father’s dark and unpredictable rages began, according to my mother. She surmised that he felt insecure from this point because he was the first in the family to have a mortgage and feared, irrationally, we might lose the house. He had also made significant changes in order to pursue his banking career. For example, he always spoke in a middle-class accent with correct grammar: there was no trace of a South London accent. This must have set him apart from his many brothers, bus drivers and postmen, whom he loved but was also embarrassed about. They were, indeed, equally clever and one had gained a place in grammar school. But the parents could not afford the uniform. Life is just a series of chances.

My father never liked the Mitcham house after they found animals buried in the garden. He conceived a kind of irrational fear and soon moved to Motspur Park where I attended the local state primary school with my sister, Marion. I was always near the top of the class and enjoyed my schooling there, although one of my reports said, ‘Christina displays periods of great activity with periods of great lassitude’. My mother had to look up ‘lassitude’ in the dictionary. I’m still like this now and our son agrees he has inherited the same tendency. Very busy, or snoozing…

I still have the photo of my last class in junior school. I am in the back row in the middle taller and wider than all the other children. By that time, I had enjoyed my first kiss behind the bike sheds. But I, unexpectedly, failed the 11 plus because I had started menstruating on that day. My mother, very bravely, went to all the authorities and told them what had happened - in those days, menstruation was a taboo topic particularly in talking to men. I shall be forever grateful for her persistence as I had the best grammar school education in a single sex school that you could ever ask for. Mitcham Grammar built up my confidence taking science, maths, the arts and culture in my stride. Indeed, single sex schools are very good for girls and very bad for boys? So, of course, now, most state schools are mixed- who decided that?

I gained eight good GCEs but did not take English Literature. Those who were taking this subject in the sixth form were treated to a year of background English Literature which was the foundation of my love for this subject throughout my life. In the sixth form I took English, French and German. I had wanted to do history but my father had posted to Milan and wanted us all to go with him. The school strongly objected to this break in my education as they saw it. In fact, the bank were willing to send us to boarding school in England but my father was against that so to Italy we went for about nine months. 

At the International School in Milan, I did English with a teacher from Mississippi. With a pronounced Southern State drawl, I thought she would never get to the end of a Jane Austen sentence. But the school was 80% American army children always on the move who would not learn languages. So, I rose to fourth year Italian in a matter of days - assisted by my Latin studies.  I improved my French immeasurably with a private tutor from the Sorbonne who refused to speak English. German, I undertook in a secretarial school in Italian which was sometimes a problem when I came back to German classes in England because I only knew the Italian translation of a German word, not the English

So, I only did one year instead of two, in the sixth form at Mitcham Grammar, but gained my predicted grades. What I learnt about life from living abroad was an extra for which I have been profoundly grateful all my life. With this experience I think many children will gain from the break in their education during the pandemic. Learning is not all in a book in my experience but the fortitude and empathy we have to develop to meet new situations.

My father’s mood swings were getting more pronounced at this time as well as his desire to keep us two girls under lock and key as we matured. Much of the time he was loving and funny and very popular with their friends. But behind the front door he was unpredictable. When I was in the sixth form he sent away a young man who called for me with a flea in his ear and engaged in ever more violent quarrels with my bullied mother. Typical was the incident when I bought him a green fountain pen for his birthday. He threw it across the room shouting, surely I knew green was an unlucky colour and he would never use the pen. Marion and I were always on our guard and worried in case one of our so-called misdemeanours were blamed on our mother. He seemed often to be on the edge of hitting her, but his snarling criticism was a more powerful way to undermine her spirit.

He was very much against me going to university which entailed more fights with my mother. Eventually he was placated when I went to teacher training college in Hull. But this was the first year when teachers were offered a degree in education if they did an extra year at the university. So, I was awarded a Bachelor of Education degree from Hull, always seen as slightly inferior to a Bachelor of Arts. 

However, I did not get a full grant because my father was earning well.  He refused to make up the difference so I was very glad of the box of biscuits we were given at the start of each term. When we both left home my mother was accepted for teacher training as well but my father refused to let her take up the place.

Whilst I was teaching at Ashburton School in Croydon I applied to write an educational adventure game at King’s College, London. I was seconded to do this and was awarded a King’s College Associateship, slightly below a full Masters. The adventure game that I designed with a team of teachers was an international best seller. Finally I decided to take my doctorate at the Institute of Education, London…but this is an Ed.D, slightly inferior to a Ph.D. The story of my academic life. 

On the other hand, my forte has been to bring professionals together to share knowledge and ideas and to inspire new directions in education through innovation. I have five international awards for setting up professional networks and taking action to improve education, particularly for women. The best award, perhaps, being the European Union Woman’s award for Humanitarian Achievements that I shared with my Czech colleague, Bozena Mannova. 

My father did not live to see my doctorate, my professorship in education innovation or my other awards. I predict he would not have shown unalloyed joy in my achievements. Of course, like Tara Westover In Educated, I only came across bi-polar disorder later in life and realised why my family life had been so unpredictable and unsettling. My mother does not accept this and makes all kinds of excuses for him, including the Parkinson’s he died from. Let’s agree anyway that like many good comics, he was much loved for his humour and kindness when he was at this best. He loved us girls fiercely, but not always wisely. In stopping us from going to university, he was just a man of his generation in terms of women’s education.

I take after my father in many good ways. But what I am most proud of is that my husband and children have never been subject to the mood swings and aggression that I had to live with. He was too proud to take the pills he was prescribed. I take the pills - always.