The Making of a Maverick [Paperback]

 

 

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The comments Eric makes about some of the staff at his school are not at all unfair. Anyone there at the time will be able to recognise them and will know that they were not away at the war and returning with scarred personalities. Those who had been away on war service were uniformly pleasant and with a keen interest in their pupils and the progress they were making.
I know Eric as a fair minded person and his descriptions of some of the things experienced at school are not at all over the top. Despite that I enjoyed my time at the school. Eric obviously didn't, although that was not readily apparent to me at the time.

The Making of a Maverick

It is now over a quarter of a century since I left Queen Mary's College (QMC). Many of my memories were buried in the back of my mind until I started to read the chapters in Eric's book. Suddenly I was back there again and things that I had forgotten such as college hour, tutor groups and tutor group lunches seemed like only yesterday. So, apart from a trip down memory lane, what did I get out of this book? I suppose my overwhelming feeling was `at last I get it'.
Whilst I was there I had no idea what a departure from the norm QMC was. Twenty five years later my own children go to a school where the only concessions for sixth formers are that the girls wear a different style of skirt and they wear a different tie. Being allowed to wear our own choice of clothes was a real privilege. Of course, as any ex-QMC student will tell you, all we did was moan about not being able to wear jeans and the guys all hated having to wear a tie. In his book Eric explains his reasoning that having to dress to a certain standard would encourage the students to respect the property and facilities. As there was little overt vandalism he was probably right. Also having got a feel for his burning desire to give us a good educational experience, many of us may feel that wearing a tie was actually a small price to pay and those who habitually flouted the dress code, might feel a tiny pang of guilt.
In a sense the earlier part of the book leads to his major achievement -the establishment of QMC. The things he had experienced as a pupil, a student and a teacher had inspired him to develop a different model for post 16 education. You really get a feel that he wanted it to be a positive experience for us and he wanted to avoid many of the more negative aspects of school life. It even gave me a new perspective on tutor group lunches. Eric wanted tutor group lunches to be an opportunity for students to talk to adults who would value their opinion. I imagine that for many students this was a novel experience. He wanted QMC to be different from school and it was.
I enjoyed this book much more than I was expecting. Eric writes well so the book is a good read. It is also a very personal book and I felt that I understood what motivated him. His overwhelming passion for education comes through at every stage. As you might expect, I enjoyed the bits about QMC the most especially some of the anecdotes such as the legendary College hour with the man from the AA - never to be forgotten. I wish I had known at the time what a ground breaking place QMC was and the thinking behind things such as College Hour and tutor group lunches.
In the last part of the book Eric shares his vision for post 16 education. His frustrations with the Thatcher government for not implementing the Higginson proposals are clear and his true passion for education really shines through at this point. After leaving QMC Eric continued to contribute to education and rather self-deprecatingly describes himself as a `travelling proselytiser'. He still clearly has strong views about the future of education in the UK.
Anyone with a genuine interest in education should read this book. In a time when education is obsessed with league tables, targets and tests it is refreshing to read about a real free thinker who cares about education as an end it itself not merely as a means to an end. The book is well titled as Big Eric really was and I guess still is a bit of a maverick.

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