Live and Learn

When I was in Secondary School, I was taught English by an Englishwoman who was strong-minded, sharp and sure of herself. As students, we often quailed under her critical eye. Some time in the middle of the year, she commanded that the whole class write her a book review, an order that was met with great complaint.

I hated writing book reviews simply because I didn’t see the point of them and so tried to put this review off until the very last minute, when I grew frenzied over recess and cobbled together a hasty piece of work. It was a review on a book that I had read and re-read and so knew from cover to cover. With this knowledge and strings of grammatically correct English, I managed to pull off something that I thought looked decently passable, nevermind that the handwriting was scrawling and slanted untidily across the page.

I handed it in and promptly forgot about it in favour of the latest Backstreet Boys single. When the review came back, the mark on the top right hand corner was a big, red one inscribed in a large circle that had been dented into the paper with force.

She had failed me.

I didn’t understand what had happened until I read the comments at the end of the assignment. “This is too good to be your own work,” she had written. “Do not hand anything else in to me until you are capable of something more original than copying the blurb off the back of the book.”

I don’t think I’ve ever been more angry in my life. I actually couldn’t see straight for a few minutes and only managed to sit, shaking in my seat as the other papers were handed back. Other students had been corrected and criticised, but no one else had been flatly failed on the grounds of unorginality.

Frankly, I was insulted. Not only had she blatantly accused me of plagiarism, the one crime which as a “writer” I would never knowingly commit, she had also insinuated that I was personally incapable of writing something that was mildly competent. I couldn’t understand how she could pass such simplistic judgement based on good spelling and grammar. Worse, I had spoken whole-heartedly about a book that I loved and had, instead, been written off as something a publisher had slapped on the back cover. The one thing, however, that made my blood boil, was the fact that I had been underestimated.

In my world, my delicate fourteen year-old sense of honour and pride had been deeply wounded and ridiculed.

______________________


Now, I catch myself doing very the same thing to other fourteen year olds.

Where I work, the one thing that is reiterated over and over again is simplicity.

“Make your language simple. They cannot understand the way we normally talk.”

“Try not to make the message too complicated.”

It is a well-known fact that the probationers we work with are not necessarily academically-inclined and so, are not as easily drawn into pretty words, layered arguments and philosophical trains of thought. But I couldn’t understand why some people kept telling me to dumb myself down in order to speak to them. Surely they were capable of understanding the gist of what I was trying to say. Surely even if they didn’t completely comprehend, they would be pleased that I was talking to them like adults, like people as opposed to offenders. (If it was me for instance, I would rather be given the opportunity to try and fathom something than to have it made easy for me.)

Geraldine and I have long grappled with this question. Just how much could one simplify without compromising the main idea? How much could the probationers really understand? And for me, wasn’t it offensive to talk down to them? The memory of the book review is still fresh and I know what it is to feel patronised and looked down upon. I would never want to make another young person feel that way.

But until today, I didn’t know where to make the distinctions.

Then I saw Adlinah in action. It was the best group work session I had ever attended. From the start, she spoke to the boys with something I had only heard of until now. Respect. She laughed with them, talked with them and most of all, discussed issues with them in their language, without making it seem like she was being condescending.

Instead of using didactics, she explained to them that if they wanted to smoke, they should be smart about it and not break the law as long as they were not hurting anybody else. She told them that having tattoos didn’t make a person bad, rather it was the image and the connotations that the tattoos conveyed that made them seem taboo. She told them that it was really in their power to make the choices that would govern their lives and the way the law treated them. And she praised them for their maturity and intelligent suggestions without being falsely positive.

They liked her and she took to them and made them pay attention. And they really opened up and talked about the things that they wanted to ask like, “How can you be good and still keep your reputation?”, a question which was personally an eye-opener for me.

_____________________


I have one week left and I’ve finally learnt that cutting down on the bells and whistles doesn’t mean avoiding the difficult issues and tough love, that underestimating somebody is not the same as using their “lingo” and talking on their terms.

I’ve also learnt that there are wonderful, accomodating people who can be nice all the time and smile all the time to everyone despite being tired, overworked and challenged at every turn.

I have discovered that no matter how tired I am at the end of the day I can always make time for M because she always makes time for me and is one of the most supportive people I know.

And I now know that wanting to do the job and being well-read are no substitutes for really caring, although the former attributes will come in handy as complements.

So I have one week left. It’s been a helluva ride.

And now the only thing I really want to know is how I can be a better person.