An ordinary working class family in north London are going through their morning routine. Getting changed, brushing their teeth, hurrying each other out of the bathroom, and rushing, or even completely missing, their breakfasts before heading out into a familiar world of grey skies and green grass and trying to get on with their lives with minimum fuss.
But this is Britain in the seventies and this is a West Indian family. This is racist Britain in the seventies and this family is black. Steve McQueen's brilliant five part series Small Axe (BBC1/iPlayer) drew to a close on Sunday night with Education, probably the most important (if not the best - Lovers Rock was sublime) and most hard hitting chapter of the pentalogy.
It told the tale of Kingsley Smith (an excellent Kenyah Sandy) and his journey into the world of the 'educationally subnormal' school. What we would now call SEN (Special educational needs) and what we would now, we hope, treat with diligence and care was then, Education shows us, seen more like a prison or borstal. A place where problematic children could be kept away from others and fast tracked into a life of misery.
In the seventies being put into one of these schools was something of a life sentence. 'Graduates' of these establishments would rarely find jobs, certainly not interesting or well paid ones, they'd be unlikely to attract partners or marry, and they'd be labelled thickos for the rest of their, often quite short, lives.
The number of black children sent to these schools was disproportionately high and that was a result of something that all except the most disingenuous of us would now recognise as a form of institutionalised racism. We see one teacher, Miss Gill (Kate Dickie from Robert Eggers' The Witch) tell Kingsley that, should he wish, he can spend his break period swinging from the trees like he's "back in the jungle" - as long as he doesn't hurt himself and get her in trouble.
Another teacher treats the class to a doleful, and dire, acoustic guitar rendition of House of the Rising Sun and others simply leave the class unattended. Resulting in paper aeroplane fights, blackboards graffitied with "SHIT", "BUM", and "POO", and an absolute chaos beyond even organised lessons. Which are often punctuated by a young girl who communicates solely by making the sound of animal noises.
It's, quite clearly, not the best background for young Kingsley, an intelligent child with a keen interest in astronomy but who struggles with reading, or for his fellow pupil Nina (Aiyana Goodfellow) who rolls her eyes with disdain at being asked to read words as simple as 'ambulance' and 'exit'.
Kingsley's struggles with the written word are shown in a 'normal' school where he stutters when asked to read a section of John Steinbeck's Of Mice And Men out loud in class and where we see nasty, and certainly racist, teachers tell him he's a "blockhead" and a "lying little bugger".
While Kingsley prays to God before bedtime to grant him his wish that he grows up to become an astronaut (and play for Tottenham - though at time of writing no Tottenham player, not even Glenn Hoddle or David Ginola, have departed Earth's orbit) his mother Agnes (Sharlene Whyte) and mostly disinterested father Esmond (Daniel Francis) have more realistic and grounded hopes for Kingsley's future and, at first, despite some very obvious disappointment, accept that's he's destined for a 'special school' in Barnet.
Even if it's a bus ride away. Agnes is sold on the idea that the "smaller classes, more focused teaching" approach will work better after she's been softened up by being told that Kingsley has registered a low score in an IQ test. An IQ test that the school are unable, or unwilling, to run for a second time.
It's only the arrival of Hazel (Naomi Ackie), a psychologist from British Guyana, and campaigner Lydia (Josette Simon) that first alert Agnes to how this system (one that was diagnosed and exposed by Grenadian autor Bernard Coard in a 1971 pamphlet How the West Indian Child is Made Educationally Sub-Normal in the British School System) was failing her son and many many others like him.
When Kingsley's sister, Stephanie (Tamara Lawrance), starts to take an interest, Agnes comes to see that Lydia's firm belief that the Inner London Educational Authority were operating a particularly racist policy is true. A group meeting with other parents of children from West Indian backgrounds brings home to her, and us, just how widespread the problem is.
Education, as with all four other Small Axe episodes, dripped with attention to period detail. From the clothes, buses, and lightswitches to the ornaments, radio broadcasts, and the huge numbers of cigarettes smoked (even in small classrooms) and on to the health and safety nightmare that was a 70s British school playground and the distant sound of the Roobarb theme tune on a small television it was something of a McQueen masterclass in mixing the prosaic with the poetic.
Lengthy shots of shoes and mirrors gave an artistic sheen to a story about very ordinary, for which read extraordinary, lives and allowed McQueen to map out a narrative of intersectionality and institutionalised racism while being neither hectoring, po-faced, nor frivolous. As with all Small Axes, McQueen skillfully weaved the humdrum elements that make up a person's life into a rich diorama of the lived black British experience of his youth and how so much of that experience was taken up with facing one seemingly insurmountable problem. That of overcoming a system that is stacked, from the word go, against anybody who stands out and, most of all, against anyone of colour.
That many of the episodes of Small Axe ended on an uncertain note was, I think, intentional. Because the story of British state racism is by no means one that has ended and in the election as Prime Minister of a man who not only uses words like "piccaninnies" and talks of "watermelon smiles" but is celebrated, and promoted, for doing so we can see that the story of the fight against racism in the United Kingdom has embarked on a very ugly new chapter. One which, with Covid-19 still raging throughout the country (a death toll of roughly five hundred per day still) and a potential no deal Brexit looming, looks likely to be juiced by our far right government in an attempt to distract the populace into endless culture wars and add to further uncertainty.
As for Kingsley, Education ends with the hope the announcement of a new Secretary of State for Education and Science may see things improve for him and those in similar situations. Not least because that person is a woman:- Margaret Thatcher. Baby milk snatcher. It's a proposition that leaves us, like young Kingsley, wanting to leave Earth's orbit.
No comments:
Post a Comment