The Dunce Chapter 1

“Hey, Dunn. We’re going to the park. D’you want to come with us?”

Johnny turned and looked at the two older boys behind him. He rarely received invitations to play, so he shouted back, “Aye. I’d like that.”

The three of them walked along the footpath from the Primary School to the park. It was a path that Johnny knew well but he usually walked it alone. He liked to visit a white pony in one of the fields next to the path. He pulled up clumps of thick, dark green grass that grew by the path’s edge and held it out for the pony that stretched its neck out and yanked the grass from his hand. It then pushed its muzzle against his shoulder as if in thanks. He would have loved a pony of his own but knew that was out of the question. His dad worked as a roadman for the Council and his mum looked after Dad, Johnny and his two little brothers. They lived in a modern council house in Briery Baulk and always had enough food to eat and clean clothes to wear but there was no money for luxuries such as a pony. Holidays were spent with cousins in Edinburgh and Dad rode a bike to work. When the family travelled to Berwick or to Edinburgh it was by bus. They didn’t own a car.

When the three boys passed the field with the pony, it came over to the fence and held its head over the barbed wire. Johnny pulled a handful of grass and offered it to the pony. Just as the pony reached for it, one of the older boys pushed Johnny away and smacked the pony on the nose. It gave a short neigh, turned and trotted off into the field. Johnny turned to the older boy and shouted “What did you do that for?” The older boy shoved Johnny in the chest with his hand. Johnny felt something against the back of his legs as he fell over backwards. As his head hit the ground, his teeth clattered together and he saw a flash of light. The second boy who’d knelt down behind Johnny jumped up and the two older boys ran off shouting “Dunn the Dunce. Dunn the Dunce”.

Johnny lay looking at the sky for a minute or two then stood up stiffly. He head was throbbing and there were cinders and grit from the path in his hair and down the back of his black, school blazer. He took the blazer off and dusted it down. He felt a lump in his throat and tears in his eyes. He wondered why he was treated that way by other boys in the school. He wanted to fit in but just didn’t. He was too fat and slow. His weight wasn’t even any use on the rugby field because he was awkward and clumsy. If the ball ever came his way he was glad to get rid of it as soon as possible. He was always the last to be chosen for games of football and then was put in goal only to be blamed every time he let the ball past him. Feeling very sorry for himself he wandered along the path, climbing the stile, and then crossed the park to the steps up to Briery Baulk. He would normally have had a go on the swings or spun himself on the roundabout but today he wasn’t up to that.

When he got home Mum was in the back kitchen making the tea.

“Hello. Is that you Johnny?” she called when she heard the door open.

“Aye, Mum. It’s me.” He replied.

“You don’t sound very happy. What’s happened?” Johnny related the events of his walk home to his mum.

“Och. You should have just come straight home. There are some really rough boys at that school. Just keep away from them. Anyway get yourself a piece and jam. It’ll be over an hour ‘til we have our tea.”

Johnny still felt a bit sick from the shock and the knock on the head but felt well enough to cut himself a thick piece of bread and ladled some of his mum’s home-made raspberry jam onto it.

“Have you got any homework, the night?” Mum enquired.

“Aye. A wee bit.”

“Well get it done before your dad gets home. You know how he likes you to have your homework done before you do anything else. It’s Jimmy Clitherthoe on the wireless the night. I know you like to listen to that.”

Johnny finished his piece and then went through to the dining table in the living room and opened his school bag. As usual he had to learn the spelling of five words from Fred J Schonell’s Essential Spelling book. He was good at spelling and liked to memorise the five words each day and then get Mum to test him. Although she had left school at fourteen, she was a very good speller. She taught him to spell some fun words like Mississippi forwards (Miss-iss-ipp-i) and backwards (ipp-iss-iss-iM).

“Mum. Will you test me on my words now?” He shouted.

“You’ll need to come through to the kitchen. I busy with the tea. You’ve got some tricky ones tonight. Let’s start with ‘Distinguish’”.

“D-I-S-T-I-N-G-U-I-S-H” Johnny confidently recited.

“Well done.” His mum congratulated him. He managed the other four words first time as well, his mum then mixed the order but was unable to catch him out.

“You maybe cannae play football but you can certainly spell”. He soaked up the praise from Mum then went back to the table to do a page of sums. His sum jotter showed lists and lists of ticks with just the occasional caution from Miss Bell, his teacher, to be tidier and not to rush his work so much. He’d just finished when his dad arrived home and went upstairs to have a wash in the bathroom. Johnny tidied his books and jotters back into his schoolbag and set the table for tea.

After tea Johnny told his dad what had happened on his way home from school.

“What do you think a dunce is?” asked Dad.

“It’s a stupid person.” replied Johnny.

“Look it up in your dictionary.”

Johnny went upstairs to fetch his Pocket Oxford Dictionary. “Look”, he said when he came back down. “It says that a dunce is a ‘bad learner’ or a ‘dullard’.”

“Aye but what else does it say?”.

“Nothing. Those are the only words it gives for dunce.”

“Pass me the dictionary”.

Johnny handed the book over.

“Aye. I thought so. Just look at the words in the brackets after the definitions.” Dad passed the dictionary back to Johnny and he read out:

“Duns Scotus, person. What does that mean Dad?”

“It means the word dunce comes from the name of a person, John Duns Scotus. He was a famous philosopher who lived over 650 years ago. Tradition has it that he was born in Duns although he spent most of his life in England and on the continent. I’d be proud to be insulted with a name like that. Now let’s get the radio on and listen to The Clitheroe Kid.”

While they listened to the radio comedy, Johnny thought how clever his dad was. He might be a roadman and spend his days digging roads and laying tar, but he read a lot in the evenings and at the week-ends. Unlike many of his work colleagues, he read The Scotsman during the week and The Observer on Sundays. He could manage the cryptic crosswords, something that Johnny and even his mum couldn’t figure out at all. Dodd (George) Dunn had been top of every class at the old Berwickshire High School. He could have gone to university but Grandpa Dunn had been gassed during the First World War. Johnny could remember his Grandpa sitting by the fire coughing away and fighting for breath. Grandpa Dunn died when Johnny was nine. Johnny’s dad had to leave school when he was fourteen to earn money for the family. He’d started an apprenticeship with a firm of agricultural engineers but when the war broke out, he enlisted in the King’s Own Scottish Borderers, to fight Hitler. When he came home, he worked as a long distance lorry driver but then, after his marriage, he got a job with the council that didn’t keep him away from his young wife and family for so long. He’d been twelve years with the council and was now foreman in charge of a gang of eight men. He’d never lost his love of learning. Every Saturday, from as soon as they could read, Dodd Dunn took his sons up to the Library in Newtown Street and they got out two books each. Johnny no longer went with his Dad but he still read two books a week and his Dad did the same. Johnny often wondered how soon it would be before his dad had read all the books he wanted to in Duns library.

“Right, Johnny. Bed time.”

“Och. Just another half an hour.”

“No. You’ve got school in the morning. Off you go now.”

Johnny could see little point in arguing so up stairs he went. As he lay in bed he wondered how the name of someone who had been very clever could come to mean someone very stupid. Just before he drifted off to sleep, he thought he had the answer. He remembered someone shouting “Come on Speedy” at him on the school sports day last year. At the time he was last by a good five yards. ‘Speedy’ for someone slow; ‘stupid’ for someone clever. That is how nicknames worked sometimes.

Class Size and Disaffected Young People

Before the institutionalization of education, learning took place in a variety of settings. The first and foremost of these was the family. The second was the workplace. Sometimes family and workplace were the same. In other instances young people left the family for service as servants, apprentices, in the armed services or merchant navy. One common feature of all of these sites of learning was that the ratio of 'teachers' to learners, of adults to children, was relatively high compared with the typical school, college or university classroom.

In a family there would be maybe two adults to around 7 or 8 surviving children. Apprentices were indentured to a single master or journeyman. Even in large scale organisations like the armed services training was on a smaller scale. Compare these ratios with the typical education setting where there may be 18 to 30 youngsters being educated by one or two adults and one gets an idea of how unnatural 'industrial scale' education is. The adult/youngster ratios are cetainly nothing like the ratios that apply in the upbringing of our primate cousins.

Now of course many young people, possibly the majority, thrive or at least make acceptable progress in formal education. Why do they succeed when the adult/younster ratios are so apparently unfavourable? Well perhaps it is because they have sound home relationships where they get the care, attention and support needed to help them to learn and thrive. However, there is a significant minority of young people for whom formal education is difficult to negotiate. They do not thrive. In both the early years and higher up the school, special nurture groups have been shown to be very effective at re-engaging these young people (see, for example, the success of initiatives in Glasgow at reducing the school exclusion statistics).

Perhaps we need to be less concerned about reducing the class size for the majority of well-supported children and young people but focus instead on having much smaller groups for youngsters who do not thrive in big classes.

Two Moral Questions

The release of Mr Al Megrahi has triggered a number of thoughts and reactions by me. My reactions have been firstly a sense of pride in the Scottish Government and justice system that tempered justice with mercy and compassion. My second reaction is disappointment at the reaction of politicians both in Scotland and further afield who have condemned our Justice Secretary's decision.

On reflection I came up with two questions that seem to me to underpin a morally appropriate stance towards the decision to release Megrahi. The first question is to do with how to act personally in a situation requiring a moral judgement. It is very much a simple reframing of the Golden Rule and is as follows: If I were to find myself in similar circumstances how would I wish to be treated? Applying this rule would seem to me to favour the release of Megrahi.

The second question is to do with how to judge the reaction of others and reads; Knowing what I think I know about X how would I expect X to act in a given set of circumstances? If I apply this question to the American families of the the victims of the Lockerbie bombing; President Obama; and the Scottish Labour and Liberal Democratic parties, I find myself understanding fully the reaction of the American families of the victims but disappointed in Obama and in the Scottish Labour and Liberal Democratic parties. That is because I had expectations of the latter of taking the moral high ground rather than politically opportunistic or populist positions. They have failed to meet these expectations.