At the chalkface: The Bottom Stream

We’re in the bottom stream.

“Is it ‘cos I’s thick, sir?”

“Erm...”

“Is it ‘cos we’s thick, sir?”

“Erm...”

“Is it ‘cos you’s thick, sir?”

“Erm...”

Variations on a theme of failure. Forget the grammar, forget the self-mockery, this is a desperate, last defence. When I heard this it made me want to eat my head off. It covers a multitude of sins, not least how the pupils introject such wicked notions of “failure”. School can be one long insult for so many in the so-called “bottom stream”.

And who are they?

Let’s not mince matters – mostly the poor and working class, the lost and luckless, the traumatised and deracinated, children from war zones with little or no English, undiagnosed dyslexics and the occasional florid maniac and, yes, sometimes the plain unpleasant – all in one class, all needing different pedagogical attention.