It was more or less by accident that I first started working as a teacher. I was unemployed, recently married, having difficulty in paying the rent and unwilling to return to working as a painter and decorator, which is what I had been doing on and off since leaving University in the late 1970s. Then, as now, there was a shortage of maths and science teachers and I was able to find reasonably well paid-work as a supply teacher in Bristol.

I did not have a formal teaching qualification but two science degrees were deemed sufficient and I was kept in regular work for a few terms. At that time, I was not committed to the teaching profession and this fact was no doubt detected by head teachers when I was being interviewed for permanent posts. Eventually, I applied for, and secured, a position as a maths and science teacher in an inner city boys comprehensive school. 

For me, this was undoubtedly a life-changing experience. I had myself attended a grammar school in Cheshire, and although neither I nor any of my friends had liked school, we had viewed it as a more or less bearable evil and a necessary institution, given the nature of modern society. I had always been aware that other people had been less fortunate than myself in the sort of schools that they had been forced to attend, but the reality of the educational divide only became truly apparent when I found myself trying to impart a knowledge of maths and science to boys to whom it had no relevance and who had a truly profound antipathy to everything that they were being forced to endure each day that they attended school.

Up until then, I had considered myself to be a pretty decent sort of person and I expected to be reasonably well liked by people that I knew. It was a shock to be treated as an object of loathing by hundreds of schoolboys. Worse, when I tried to correct the false impression that they had formed, the situation deteriorated. I was perceived as being weak as well as evil. Within the boundaries of the school fence it was not possible for me as a teacher to make a civil gesture to any of the pupils. Outside of school, when we met in the street etc. we were able to talk to each other perfectly civilly.

I do not believe that individual teachers caught in this situation can do anything to remedy it: when children are being forced to attend school against their will and teachers are being paid to keep them there, then the relationship is bound to be strained. I left teaching after three years, somewhat bruised by the experience.

These experiences caused me to think carefully about what sort of schooling would be appropriate for my own children when they reached school age. I found education to be one of those areas of life that one thinks that one understands but that the more one delves into it, the more obscure it becomes.

There are fundamental questions such as what should children be taught, when should they be taught it and how should they be taught it, that never appear to have been properly addressed. Like most parents, we assumed that children who did not go to school were being deprived of a normal social life and we therefore enrolled our children in  a Rudolf Steiner school. (Rudolf Steiner was an Austrian philosopher who founded a school in Germany during the early years of the twentieth century and who talked common sense on the subject of education. There are hundreds of Steiner schools around the world but they obviously vary greatly because Rudolf Steiner himself has now been dead for many years.)

It was at a Steiner school that I was introduced to the side of teaching that I had never myself been able to experience at the comprehensive schools in which I taught. I started filling in as a maths teacher and found that when working with small groups of children and young people, it was possible to establish an atmosphere in which learning takes place and in which everyone enjoys themselves and feels fulfilled. From that time I have been hooked on the experience of being a teacher.

I have found that it is not something that can be taken for granted, everything has to come together in the right way for it to happen. If you are teaching children and young people, their parents have to support what you are doing. If you are teaching in a school, you have to be able to work in harmony with your colleagues. Any external pressures, such as exams, testing and assessment, throw the process off balance or stop it dead in its tracks. When it is working, the process is magical. Children learn things from you that you didn't even know that you knew; you learn as much as they do and you all feel enriched by the experience.

The fundamental key to success is that you treat the children that you are teaching with respect and you always remember how you would feel if you were in their shoes. After leaving the Steiner school (differences with other staff members over policy), I was able to apply this principle when working with very disturbed children who I taught one-to-one, on behalf of the local education authorities, when they were excluded from school. I never encountered a single child, or young person, who did not respond by treating me with friendship and consideration when I followed the simple principle of treating them in the way that I would like to be treated myself. One of the most touching things about this was that even children who were in prison (young offenders centre) or who were undergoing severe personal trauma would try to learn to read or write something because they thought that it would please me - such was their fixed idea of what a teacher expected of them.

All these experiences have caused me to think long and hard about what we are doing to our children and how the situation can be improved.

We started teaching our own children full-time over ten years ago and, before that, we always took an active interest in what they were doing both in and out of school. I have had to leave behind other children that I have taught, as my life has taken a different course from theirs, and I will never know of how much long term help I ever was to them. With my own children, however, I have been able to see the process through from start to finish and I believe that this is an important part of being a parent. It is a responsibility and it is also a pleasure.

In writing One-to-One we have tried to communicate some of the things that we have learnt : you do not have to rush into sending your children to school as soon as they are five years old; children do not need to learn to read and write when they are only five or six years old; for very young children, being able to play and to be at home with their mother and family is more important than mixing with children of their own age; once children go to school, parents should still stay in control of their children's education; exams and testing do not help children at all; most of life's most important lessons cannot be learnt at school and that practical activities are more important than book work. We hope that the advice in the book will be taken up by other parents who can build on our experience and, hopefully, hasten the day when a radical shift takes place in the way that all children are treated in our society.

From a personal viewpoint, I would like to see the abolition of all institutions that dehumanise children and fail to treat them with respect. I would like to see new institutions that allow teachers to teach, children to learn and parents to be proud of the choices that they are making. Maybe this will happen when enough parents take enough responsibility and become properly involved in what their children are really doing. I hope that One-to-One will be of use to parents who are trying to take that step.

Gareth Lewis

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