Down and Out With the ForsØkers

By Namal Lokuge

Barging into a classroom, for that matter, even a new school and
introducing myself as their new "vikar" is no longer a nerve-racking
business for me, since the very profession of a vikar is bound to
experience this, if interested in finding work. Some of us believe that
it is pretty much of an ordeal, and the others reckon that it is a
great challenge. Then come our dear students who simply love it, 'cause
they push you hard to have a slack lesson. This, in fact, is the coma
of every supply-teacher or a vikar.

I smile. Reciprocatingly, they smile. I speak. They stop smiling. So, I
stop talking. Instead, I gaze at them. They smile back. I resume my
sermon at full tilt. From the act of scratching heads to making
delicate noises followed by unobservably minute sneers and jeers abound
the class. At least, I always have this hallucinatory feeling every
time I start raving on about English and then on demands of their
"pensum". (The word "syllabus" has totally been erased from my
vocabulary and as the reader you are expected to ignore such
"Bi-lingual impediments").

It was the "post-pÂske" era. Everyone was ready to peel their clothes
off and throw themselves on a ground tussled with colt hooves and
thinly scattered daffodils. This would surely compensate for their lost
hours of sun shine. Among all these oddities, I met my first ForsØkers
in an intimidatingly large classroom that had absolutely no order. The
ritual of introductory remarks spat out with a forced sense of
competence and then a few minutes on literature set us off.

The so-called "studieretningsfag engelsk, andre klasse VK 1" or the
First year at Advanced level, according to British measurements, was my
assigned group, a group much smaller than the numbers that I am used to
at Katta, the school where I have been vikaring for more than three
years.

What fascinated me most was their anarchically elegant attires, their
ultra-unconventional hair styles. Everything was somewhat bizarre. Yet,
I reminded myself what Baudelaire said, "Le Beau est toujours bizarre".
To the close observer, there was a thematic significance in what they
were clad in, either in the form of emulating the exotic East or the
outright rejection of the ordinary. To an average teacher of the old
school, the very sight of this transient-looking congregation would
have been disturbing enough (for instance, to my father).

I detected a sense of enthusiasm over-shadowed by a brooding
reluctance. Whether this was because of the hassle of getting used to a
new teacher every now and then or something chronic, I didn't know. But
I was told that I was the third vikar since New Year. When I inquired
about how much they have gone through in their prescribed texts, and
subsequently how much they actually knew, I found startling
differences. I immediately gathered what a terribly non-cohesive group
they were.

Conforming with the non-conformity, I sat on the table in the posture
of a hermit. There were more legs on the table than there were books.
No offence, just something I noticed at once. Defiantly, one reclined
on a dilapidated sofa that had been abandoned in the corner. She was a
student of this very class as well and therefore raised her head
intermittently to show her being, being there with the rest of the
group. While paying heed to my harangues, another student gorged
herself with some spaghetti, "school made". The jinglingjangling of
another student's jewellery disturbed my delivery a little, but I
continued.

In the thick of all this, excitedly, I recited the first lines,
unveiling the world of Wordsworth:

"A simple child, dear brother Jim that lightly draws its breath and
feels its life in every limb what does it know of death?"

They first stared at me and then at the poem and kept doing so. I got
fed up and demanded some feedback.

"Did the poet create an impact on you and if so why?", I started
howling, since I believed that none could be so bleedingly indifferent
to such a powerful emotion. "Surely, it's about death, what else?" was
one response. Compared to their earlier resounding silence, I was
relieved that they could sort out the subject of a poem.

The first hour passed pretty well witnessing no major disasters. I
thought the trial was over and was also quite sure that I had managed
to grill something into their heads about Romanticism. On the contrary,
there was a spasm of sheepish restlessness. The semi-sleeping student
rose from her as-snug-as-a-bug-in-a-rug position and sardonically
enquired me whether I knew what time it was. Before they learnt
anything of Wordsworth or the Romantics, they taught me to respect to
the unwritten rule - the Break or "pause" on time. I learned my first
lesson that there're no blaring bells that'll beckon the in-and-out of
classes, so I remembered this well in order to remain here.

As most of them drifted away, I filed out to the staff room expecting
coffee, as found in a usual staff room setting. In this connection,
what sprang into my mind was the stiff and stately staff room of Katta
which was inviolable and eternally barred from the students. In that
sense, there was no staff room, nor did I find any joy in looking for
coffee for teachers. Instead, I found an empty coffee jar next to an
old rattling kettle.

With self-contented smiles, the student-smokers sidled up to their
desks, the recliner to her sofa. I sat on the table again, my legs
contorted to the shape of a lotus and felt like Conrad's creation of
Marlow in Heart of Darkness, here too, uncertain of the voyage that I
had undertaken to journey on. From the very outset, everything was far
from being tensed, compared to my past experiences at new schools. So
the very feeling that permeated was a "Heart of lightness" and the
chartered Thames Marlow was surrounded by what happened to be my newly
met ForsØkers, my new students, my new friends.

For nearly over a month we went through the cannon of Romantics.
Sometimes, I went into an inexplicable trance when explaining certain
passages, especially "Preludes". Their feedback was hilarious. "There
was very little which we actually understood, but by watching you, we
felt that there is something supernatural in nature". I felt elated but
warned myself "Relax, Namal, and explain things in simpler terms".

There were no rigid tests at the end of the term. Therefore, there were
no paranoid students. Nor was there any of that "fishing" for grades
that is terribly commonplace during the "post-17 mai" period at
ordinary schools. For me, the idea of not having any tests was a little
disconcerting, so I held a mock test. The result was rewarding, but
since this was done voluntarily, only three out of ten turned in their
answers, the others promised to send them to me in England during the
summer.

By then, the inalienable right to be different at ForsØks had been well
grilled into me. For some odd reason, I had fallen in love with the
system. In my minds eye, I pictured the wholesome citizens ForsØks
would have produced in the past and would continue to produce.

May drew to an end and the few daffodils left died away with the
spirit-stirring warm days of summer. As many readers have an
electrifying feeling of nostalgia, when they hear about "...the waters
rolling from their mountain springs/with a soft inland murmur...", the
sun rays which seeped through the worn out curtains had a disturbing
effect on many of my students. A good number of them dropped out like
wasps against a tube light, some convinced me that they truly put into
practice what Wordsworth said, "Up, up my friend and quit your books".

Only two literally remained in class; still, it was a joy to have at
least two.

June, the month of merry-making dawned and to my dismay, I came to an
empty classroom and found a little note of greeting, "God sommer".

My teaching at Katta continued as regularly as ever. I stopped going to
ForsØks since all my ForsØkers had nearly "forsvunnet". The end of a
drab day attending to "standpunktkarakter" brought me to Stortinget
where I stood like a zombie not knowing whether to go east or west,
homebound to my cell-like cottage in Kringsjå. As the doors slammed so
ruthlessly and the T-bane whisked off, I realised how I longed to get
back to ForsØks, to be back with my ForsØkers.

A short span of a few months left me with an indelible impression of
ForsØks, its philosophy of love and care and havoc-like but life-giving
milieu, its staff indecipherable from its students. Its very strength
derives from its diversity, diversity derived from its love for being
different.

My stay at ForsØks as an English teacher, (more as a facilitator, since
the term teacher has not-so-healthy connotations, especially in this
sort of a healthy environment) has made me question the different
approaches to education.

Coming to think of a victory-oriented, Victorian approach to education
that I was destined to follow, I feel rather sad, as if the innocence
of my adolescence was bereaved by such a system. Only a feeling of envy
springs up to my mind when I see a student there sharing a joke with a
teacher, while one scratches the ground and the other watches the
cigarette puff swirling up in the air. Both share an invincible sense
of belongingness, something that many other schools and many other
students lack or don't feel, but something that ForsØks has a lot of.
So, to be part of the whole thing is simply a great feeling.

"My joy in learning is partly that it enables me to teach (Seneca),
teach at ForsØks".

June, 1994

Fra Forsøksgymnasets skriftserie