ABSTRACT
In this chapter I shall examine in depth one of the most important criteria among the school factors promoting conflict. We have looked at the strain towards tolerance, making the best of it, and in the existential joy of companionship in the face of common afflictions, that is quite something in itself. At times, schools are, for one reason or another, very happy places. At other times, the misery they cause plumbs the depths of despondency. While teachers and pupils negotiate a modus vivendi which falls somewhere between teacher aims and pupil aspirations, the school ticks over, life is normal. Both teachers and pupils develop and operate on a ‘school’ plane of thought and life with its own rules, values and customs, reserving a ‘personal’ plane for off-duty moments and private areas. They do not do this consciously and it is often very much regretted by both sides, as when pupils complain of teachers not being persons — friendly, understanding, etc. (see chapter 4) — and teachers complain, for example, of ‘not being able to get through to’ such and such a pupil. But roles provide protection. If at times they are inhibiting, they are also, at others, insulatory. Thus a teacher can withstand some ‘bad’ forms by becoming the teacher for those moments, separating out his person for its own protection and leaving it behind in the staff room, or even at home. The pupil does likewise. And by so doing they leave behind those attributes of the person that are most vulnerable, acute sensitivity, conscience, emotion. Much school life is an elaborate charade performed by apparitions. The price paid for ‘playing safe’ in any game is a kind of monotonous conformity, like hanging on to the ball for the purpose of playing out time for a draw in a match played away from home.
