The David Gribble Archive : Talks

My Apprenticeship

Leipzig , 2006
Page 7

Chapter 7: And why do we go to school?

What can I do now, that I learnt at school and has been really useful to me?

• Reading, writing and arithmetic – but I learnt much more maths at school than I have ever used.
• German and French – but as I have said, after I had done my school-leaving exams, I still didn’t dare speak a word.
• How to play the piano – but I also learnt that I couldn’t play the piano, which was not actually true.
• History? What I learnt was that I was not interested in history.
• Geography? At Eton there was no geography on the timetable, so as to leave more time for Greek and Latin.
• Science? I understand the expression “reverse peristalsis.” Apart from that, a little physics, for example about magnets, light and leverage, which I could have learnt in an hour.

And what have I learnt, that has been really useful to me, that I didn’t learn at school?

• To be a father to my children
• Cooking
• How to drive a car
• How to write music
• How to play the saxophone
• How to write songs
• Various card games
• How to build a rickety cupboard and then paint it
• Teaching – I was never trained as a teacher
• Making up crosswords

And at school I had learnt that I was only a clever clown, not worth much, and when I was eighteen years old I had little self-confidence, didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life, seldom read a book and in terms of clothes, interests and way of life just imitated my friends. I thought I was being adventurous when I wore a bow tie, or ventured into a jazz club. No-one left Dartington Hall School so ignorant and naïve.

My apprenticeship is not yet over. You learn your whole life, and in the last few years I have got to know about two completely new educational projects, one in Brazil and the other in Scotland. In Brazil there is a businessman called Ricardo Semmler. If you work in one of his businesses, you decide for yourself what work you will do, when and how long you will work and how much you will get paid for it. It is wonderfully successful. But what particularly interests me is that they have now founded a school. At this school of course the children decide what work the want to do, and when and how long they want to work, as in many other alternative schools. The school is called Lumiar, and what is new about it is clearly stated on their web site.

After a lot of fine ideas, that we already know about from other democratic schools, there is this sentence: “Holidays, rules, buildings and classrooms are out of date.” They want to throw everything out and start again from the beginning.

I have not seen Lumiar, but I have twice visited Room 13 in Scotland. My first visit lasted only three days, and I could not properly understand what was going on; I had to go there again, for a week. Room 13 is a studio in a normal state primary school; what is extraordinary is that it belongs to the children who use it. As soon as they have finished their class work, they are allowed to go to Room 13, to paint, to read, to talk, to play chess or whatever else they want to do. When they are eleven that can leave their class when they get bored, when they have something more important to do – in short, whenever they want to. But I had often seen freedom like that in other schools. What is almost incredible is that these children, of whom the eldest are just twelve, are really responsible for everything that happens in the room. They pay the artist who they have employed to help them. They buy all the materials. They sell photographs, postcards and their own art works. They write the necessary letters, they answer emails, they keep parents informed. They look for funding, and have received extremely large grants – up to £200,000 – to help them to found Room 13s in other schools. They have their own bank account and their own cheque-book. They do the book-keeping themselves. And they enjoy it. The aspect of Room 13 that is most valued is that they don’t have to do any artificial school work, but are allowed to deal with reality.

I talked to two girls who had made a video about Room 13 which lasts half an hour and was shown on television on Channel 4. When I was at the school they spent almost all their time in Room 13, and I asked them whether they often spent so little time in their classroom. “Oh yes,” they said. “When we were making the film we didn’t go into lessons for weeks. We just went in at the end of the day and asked, ‘What have we missed today?’ and then we did it in ten minutes.”

It seems to me now that every day of normal teaching may only be worth ten minutes.

I could go on talking for hours, but I will stop now.

My apprenticeship is not over, I am still learning, and I hope I will now learn more from your questions.