ABSTRACT
Jack Ryan is a teacher who is doing something rare and difficult-getting the resisters at a working-class comprehensive to shape up and learn-partly because he has moved outside its ambit. Jack Ryan has an equally vivid, and much more extensive, knowledge of what happens to them thereafter. But he is more ambivalent about it than most teachers. He is, and has been for the last half-dozen years, Rockwell High's specialist remedial teacher. Rockwell High is only his second Australian school, and he has been here for half his career. He does, however, respect the ordinary people he deals with: the kids, their parents, other teachers. He is critical of teachers who do not put in a full day's effort, the 'nine-to-three-ers' as he calls them. Jack Ryan is a notable example of the inventiveness classroom teachers can show when facing problems that baffle the experts.
