The Facts of Life by Graham Joyce

Author:Graham Joyce [Joyce, Graham]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Tags: Fiction, General, Literary, Sagas
ISBN: 9780743463430
Google: 7rrXs5uHGQwC
Amazon: 0743463439
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Published: 2004-06-02T07:00:00+00:00

Chapter 20

School at Ravenscraig was nothing like school in Coventry. In Coventry there were lots of children seated behind tiny desks while the teacher stood at the front of the class and yelled. At Ravenscraig there were only two or three other children, who were brought in by people not living at the house. And every day, and sometimes seven times a day, the teacher changed.

Frank was not party to a resolution that had been passed that every adult at Ravenscraig should take equal pedagogical responsibility for every child presented to them. This meant that Ravenscraig had somehow catapulted itself into the business of offering an "alternative" to the state-sponsored education available to all. Given Feek's contacts and the educational qualifications washing around the commune, the setup somehow acquired official approval, and one or two anarchist-minded parents were prepared to offer their tender charges up to the great experiment. On some days, however, these anarchist-minded parents liberated themselves from the responsibility of bringing their kids along, and so Frank might find himself in a class of one and at the mercy of whichever scientific method of teaching was preferred on that particular day.

His favorite teachers were Lilly, who referred to herself as a "dyke" but who wouldn't let anyone else call her that, and who taught him to write by painting huge letters on the side of a ramshackle stable block, and George, the Marxist-Leninist (Fourth International). Frank couldn't understand a word the excitable, uppercrust George said, but seeing what the day's lesson had in store was fascinating and always worth waiting for. Together George and Frank hunted the huge, neglected gardens of Ravenscraig, uncovering earthworms and tree roots and spoors and rich composts. Robin and Tara and others also took a turn, but their idea of a school lesson was to take Frank to some cafe or to a bookshop where he might be shown the coins in the till as a prelude to understanding the iniquities of the capitalist system.

Other afternoons Philip might take a lesson. Philip didn't seem to want to be there at all. "Go and look around the house," he would say. "Find something interesting. Don't come back until you have found something very interesting." Philip would then stick his nose in a book. Frank might come back with a piece of string. "Is that the best you could do? Right then, tell me what it is."

"It's a piece of string."

Philip would stare hard at the object. "No, it's not. It's a commodity. What is it? "

"It's a commodity."

"Good. And what's the value of a commodity?"

One afternoon when it was raining outside, Philip did his usual trick of sending Frank to find "something interesting." "And don't come back with your usual rubbish," he shouted before parking his nose in the same old book.

Frank wandered the house, never sure if he was allowed to go into other people's rooms. Most of the communards were out, teaching or shopping for the house or were otherwise engaged. Tara's room was always fascinating.

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