The Queen Elizabeth's School Faversham in the very early 1970s. Now and again two tiny events from those unhappy unrequited-love days at this place return to me. Nowadays I can see a connection between them. Before taking a completed paper called an Ucca form (application for further education) to this school's headmaster, probably for his beady perusal and signature, somewhere on that form I'd had to identify my primary 'place of schooling' and had blithely inked in the 'The Queen Elizabeth's Grammar School Faversham'. Only it wasn't.
As he read my little application form, this kindly headmaster wore a slight and inexplicable smile. He took my schoolboy elbow and led me two steps down from his office and into the school foyer. We both of us stood before a plaque and stared. I still hadn't 'got it'. Finally he had to underline, with a cologned index-finger, the school's name boldly presented there. Oh dear. To be honest I was somewhat ashamed and still am. For five years I was staring at exercise books with glued-on labels bearing the logo 'Queen Elizabeth's School', and consulting the small but similarly logo'd fixtures-card (for 'running very fast') and - still - I - did - not - see. Lots of looking, certainly, but no seeing. There had been no Grammar at all!
(Apparently it may have been in the 'grammar' family at the time, but it's more likely that it wasn't, being a very recent amalgamation of schools and it's likely that Andrew Reed, headmaster, was steering it through some history before the grammar association would 'let it in'. It has since acquired the word 'grammar' in its title.)
Then there is that other event from those times. It is 'O' Levels examination fortnight. All thirty odd in that class were gathered noisily at 9:00 am in anticipation of the first examination of the fortnight. Then, unexpectedly, one of the masters walked in and offered us a 'shot' at something called the Spoken English 'O' Level qualification. No-one had devoted a single second's study for this qualification in English As She Is Spoke. (I have no idea whether this qualification was examining something that the smarty-pants at the nearby fee-paying schools would have been studying for - oratory, logic, relevance, conversation instigation, and the rest - or whether it was designed more for the non-native speaker.)
No one had studied one jot for this qualification and yet here was someone offering a shot at upping the qualification count from the usual 8, and climbing into the thin air surrounding the 9. In other words - a free 'O' Level.
My blood simmered. There were probably about thirty in that room. Two refused that shot. I was one of the two. At 16 yrs old (?) I knew, or thought I knew, that there was something ugly about this free award. (Did the other kid who refused it 'know' this also? Probably not.) What I knew was that this event went to the heart of what examinations were supposed to do - to test a body of knowledge and skills that had been given some time and some focus? (That smart people could do it quick wasn't the point: they had done the work, that was the point.) And what was about to happen on this sordid little afternoon was precisely this - debasement. The qualifications in the system were being debased. I knew - but was I right?
The episode back then does raise a good question: 'Should you really be given a qualification when you've done absolutely no work for it?' Is it debasing? Back then I was schoolboy angry with its cheaply earned power. I roomed it with other cheaply earned powers that angered me then and seemingly anger me now - vagina power (the lust for someone simply because it happens to possess a vagina), patriarchy, the privilege of caste (family, tribe, culture). This quick qualification got tumbled into that same box.
In hindsight though, perhaps the position doesn't stand on any rock-hard foundation. These qualifications measure a skill sometimes. Do I bar you entrance into the profession, the sport, the art gallery, because you didn't have to study to get the qualification? It is an interesting question left there on the floor.
What I hadn't seen at the time was the connection between these two events. I hadn't seen the missing 'grammar' because I wasn't very aware. Those stick-on exercise book labels just did not register. In the same way, that proffered shot at the Spoken English 'O' Level was also, had I gone for it, going to measure 'awareness'. Two (I think) out of those who took that examination, passed it. No doubt what they had was awareness (subconscious probably) of how some people deliver speech better than others, of how some people 'move a conversation on' while others do not - and they had copied it. They were 'aware' people. I was right to refuse that shot at a 'free' 'O' Level. I would have failed it.
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