Some Kids I Taught & What They Taught Me

by Kate Clanchy

Kate Clanchy wants to change the world and thinks school is an excellent place to do it. She invites you to meet some of the kids she has taught in her thirty-year career.

Join her as she explains everything about sex to a classroom of thirteen-year-olds. As she works in the school ‘Inclusion Unit’, trying to improve the fortunes of kids excluded from regular lessons because of their terrifying power to end learning in an instant. Or as she nurtures her multicultural poetry group, full of migrants and refugees, watches them find their voice and produce work of heartbreaking brilliance.

While Clanchy doesn’t deny stinging humiliations or hide painful accidents, she celebrates this most creative, passionate and practically useful of jobs. Teaching today is all too often demeaned, diminished and drastically under-resourced. Some Kids I Taught and What They Taught Me will show you why it shouldn’t be.

Genres: Nonfiction, Education, Memoir, Biography, Teaching, Poetry, Politics

288 pages, Paperback

First published April 4, 2019

About the author

Kate Clanchy was educated in Edinburgh and Oxford University. She lived in London's East End for several years, before moving to Buckinghamshire where she now works as a teacher, journalist and freelance writer. Her poetry and seven radio plays have been broadcast by BBC Radio. She is a regular contributor to The Guardian newspaper; her work appeared in The Scotsman, the New Statesman and Poetry Review. She also writes for radio and broadcasts on the World Service and BBC Radio 3 and 4.

She is a Creative Writing Fellow of Oxford Brookes University and teaches Creative Writing at the Arvon Foundation. She is currently one of the writers-in-residence at the charity First Story. Her poetry has been included in A Book of Scottish Verse (2002) and The Edinburgh book of twentieth-century Scottish poetry (2006)

Reviews

[Petra X · Rating 2 out of 5]

Update 4 Sept This comment (see msg 212 on Mumsnet about GR seems to be entirely fictitious. I'm in the book trade and I'm an author. I get offered a lot of books to review, I choose only the ones from a multi-publisher site where a review is neither requested nor expected. I have never been asked for a negative or positive fake review, or to do anything spiteful. I know there are fan groups that do this, but this Mumsnet poster is saying the book trade do. I also think that she is trolling Ceridwen in a very unpleasant way. Thread suspended. Leaving this here because it happened even if it is suspended, for now.
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Update 8 Aug Nadia's review is very funny. It is of the new edition of Some Kids that has things like the nastiness Clanchy wrote of autistic kids as “jarring company” the 'chocolate-skin', 'Cypriot bosom' and 'Ashkenazi nose', have all disappeared apparently and what is left, according to Nadia is really bad writing, her examples are very amusing. I wonder why they weren't noticed in the initial criticism, or maybe they are new.....?
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Update 3 Feb Clanchy's tweet today makes no sense at all in relation to the '25 former pupils' support letter.
Tweet from Clanchy 26th Jan. "25 of my former students including those represented in Some Kids came together to write a letter to The Bookseller. They said,
"We thank those for their concern over our wellbeing, but can very gladly clarify to any readers concerned that we have experienced no safeguarding or consent issues, and we have never felt excluded from the process. Thoough well-meaning people want to defend us, in some ways their intervention is often disempowering and causing us distress, because it does not reflect our reality. We do not need defending: we will speak for ourselves."

Clanchy Tweeted today 3 Feb.

"Some Kids, like any memoir, is a literary representation of lived experience. The characters, again as in any memoir, are also literary figures. Some are carefully disguised composites, some are based on characters who approved the rendering but none are real people with 'data', and more than the book is a security camera accidentally left on. Writers need this well established freedom to remember. Please support it."

It is interesting to ponder how the more positive composites knew who they were and could identify each other enough to write to communicate with each other and write a letter. It just doesn't seem possible to me.

I want to note, just as with the last update, all the information was supplied to me by a friend, another critical reviewer of the book who may or may not add it their own review.

The composite people who were definitely not among the 25. I bet the white girls who had lost their looks through being fat because unlike Clanchy, she says, they have no self-discipline because they are poor and working class and it is a feature of the middleclasses to have self discipline. (note, being working class does not denote poverty!) Similarly the children with autism whom she says no one liked and she couldn't take them for more than an hour a week herself, I bet they didn't write in. Nor The boy with the 'fine Ashkenazi nose' who she didn't believe when he said he wasn't Jewish and the Jewish girls she used a slur to illustrate how materialistic they were 'Becks' short for Beckies, similar to JAP in the US but not quite so 'nice' and just like the N word, not used outside the particular group I hate to think who/what had inspired those particular 'composites'
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Jan 2022 They say when life gives you lemons.... Remember Kim Kardashian's leaked self-tape? She turned that into $billions, a great deal of it by airbrushing photographs, PR releases, major spin campaigns, saturation of the media etc. Well it worked for her and now it's working for Clanchy. But Clanchy is not airbrushing her physcal image... still airbrushing though.

A new edition of this book published. Therefore publicity is needed to drive up sales. Clanchy is in/on dozens of media promoting the new edition of her book. No changes were made although in her "apologies" she said there would be, presumably removing the racist, anti-Semitic, ableist and fat-shaming comments. The main thrust of her argument is that she was cancelled and it made her suicidal. Really? Her best-selling book before this one sold 284 copies, now since the furore she is selling thousands, perhaps 100s of thousands. That doesn't sound cancelled does it? That sounds like a publicity tour!

Having parted company from her publisher by mutual agreement - no reason given, but I surmise that she didn't want to make any changes - a publicity company is now organising publicity 'I was cancelled by the bullies of Twitter and 'woke' reviewers'. It isn't possible for a single person not a PR professional to have organised a campaign like this to all occur within a few days of publication of a new book.

There is a new afterword. It does not mention the actual details of the racism, ableism, fat-shaming, anti-Semitism etc that she was accused of. It does not mention the sock puppets (removed by GR) she made up to big up her book and make nasty comments on the reviews she objected to. It does not mention the bullying, the threats to report a reviewer to their employer, the lies she told, the Twitter campaign of harassment she tried to recruit people to. It does mention that some of her pupils had written in support of her. And so, it is worthless.

It does make you understand the concept of 'white fragility' though - Clanchy is not overtly racist and I do not believe she would ever support overt racism therefore she becomes more than normally extreme in defence of herself. But the majority of the publishing agency which is behind her is whit, middleclass and overwhelmingly female too. Circling the wagons, lol. And this afterword is just more of the same.
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DARVO - Denial, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender. the author to a T, "the gaslighting response people give when they’re called out for bad behaviour" Read the Metro.co.uk article https://bit.ly/2UKPLGn so you know how it works. That was Picador's tactics. Clever, but morally-bankrupt. Denial, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender. So now the Clanchy, the bully and liar who called out a Twitter mob on reviewers, is now the victim and those who 'continue to call that person out' are ‘cruel, hateful and want to cause division'. That includes all the Black authors protesting her racist language, as well as us more minor players. It's worth reading the article so you know how it's done, especially if you are a bit of an a*hole, have no morals and care more about image and money than having standards :-D
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Very funny piece How to Build your Career out of being Wrong" based on this Clanchy drama.
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Readers Rush to Defend Kate Clanchy’s Racist Book at the Expense of People of Color -White tears coming through TheMarySue . On Tuesday Clanchy's PR team but out a rather evasive and anodyne press release which was widely published with hardly any changes by the media. TheMarySue took a different stance and told it like it is, calling her out for 'White fragility', apt, but I would call it Clanchy playing the victim card.

Seeing that she has lost the battle to get the reviews removed, despite her lies and bullying, and that all the racist etc. quotes were in the book (screenshots on TheMarySue site) she writes she was recently bereaved (about 8 months ago afaik) and 'grief takes people different ways', so poor me, feel sorry for me, I'm the victim here, it's sympathy you should feel for me. Gah!

However, two media didn't simply republish the widely-distributed puff piece, one is TheMarySue, not a well-known site. And the other was The Spectator which seems to think that it is all part of the new woke cancel culture. It actually isn't. Racism, anti-Semitism and denigrating people, children, with mental/neurological issues has never been acceptable. It has never been acceptable to defend liars and bullies either! This article says a lot more about the journalist who wrote it and the Spectator's biases than it does about the drama that ought to be like three-day old bread now. Stale.
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The drama - a teacher lies! You don't expect this kind of behaviour from anyone, let alone an educator who sets herself up as the standard she measures her pupils against. I was informed that Clanchy has flagged my review 'many times' and apparently urged others on Twitter to flag all such reviews to get them removed. If you write a book, you have to suck up the criticism as well as bask in the praise. This is just part of her attack on Twitter on reviewers for (among other things) the 'made up quotes'. She just lied to get public support to make sure only positive reviews of her book were on GR.

I wrote a fair review but fair isn't enough for Kate, it's got to be really, really positive! Clanchy attacked another reviewer, Ceridwen, threatening in the first comment to tell her employers! She wrote some really remarkably nasty and untrue remarks to both of us. But now she has removed all her comments. She should stand by what she has written.

When I finished this book and was writing this review I was watching the top reviews get 'likes' added every minute or two from profiles that were just being added, loads and loads of them, although some were older and had liked both Kate's books.All those reviews are gone now. Now what to make of that..... lol

The author, using an account she set up just to make critical remarks on this and other reviews of this book and, of course, to 'like' all the positive ones, commented that she never wrote 'Jewish nose' that it "was the invention of another reviewer". The author actually wrote 'Ashkenazi nose' since Ashkenazi refers only to Jews of East European origin, who the fuck does she think she is going to fool?
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The reviewThe author did seem to me to have an unconscious pecking order with minority children first -Muslim immigrant children (Pakistani or Bangladeshi AFAIR), black children, then local white ones, fat and ASD ones at the bottom of the pile. In a BBC interview she said that the curriculum needed to change to teach more about the partition of India and less about WW2. Why pick on India/Pakistan and why is that more important than a world war which defined Europe and in which 3% of the world's population 75-85 million died?

She did publish a poetry book from the children, as poetry is her main subject and that together with other aspects of her teaching and encouragement made me think that she was probably a very good teacher, at least if you liked writing deeply meaningful poetry illustrating your hard life and background. No daffodils please!

The author placed extreme importance on appearances and was forever describing how the children looked even when it added nothing to the book, so I could see how she could be accused of fat-shaming, but it was unconscious. As was the anti-Semitism. Unconscious because to her both were perfectly acceptable, nothing for her to think about or question in herself.

There were a couple of anti-Semitic remarks - she called Jewish girls, 'Becks', which is North London slang for Becky, meaning entitled and materialistic, and this is a school in a poor, deprived area of London so the Jewish girls were no doubt East End locals of working class parents like all the other children in the school (except the teacher's own) and far from being Beckies.

The other was repeating a Nazi trope spread by Hitler and Coco Chanel and her anti-Semitic newspaper - the 'Jewish nose'or as Clanchy called it, 'Ashkenazi nose'. Some Jews do have them, as do loads of Arabs, Greeks, etc. Would she have made such generalised and unpleasant remarks about other people's appearances? Some of the reviewers who called her out on homophobia, fat-shaming and racism didn't bother with the anti-Semitism because it is the last acceptable 'ism' both to her and to them, if they even noticed such slurs. There were many more insensitive descriptions that came across as discriminatory as the author compared the children to her thin white superior middleclass life - that was her standard.

The main problem I had with the book was that I found the author preachy and patronising. A typical Guardian reader who is comfortable in their nice middle-class existence and watches the BBC news because it's left-wing bias fits nicely in with their world view (which should be funded and expanded, she said in an interview). It's really propaganda for the British way of thinking which is the right way, or rather the left way, lol. The BBC has a political attitude towards everything. Some of this class, including the teacher and her husband, think that to live up to their Socialist principles they should really send their children to a State school, which would horrify their equally well-off and equally Socialist friends who send theirs to fee-paying ones. Afer much agonising they did. And it did.

It is always difficult if an author is writing mainly about themselves and you don't warm to them, as I didn't, nor did my friend I buddy-read it with. However, liking or not liking the author is beside the point, this book was specifically read and the review written to examine the accusations in the negative reviews. Everyone is entitled to interpret a book in any way that the words they've read strike them. This is how the book struck me.

There were weak apologies from the publishers, Picador, a good one from Poetry Wales and none that apologised for calling people liars, harassing, threatening and getting up campaigns against reviewers. Clanchy herself carefully worded her 'apologies' so they were not apologies at all, but that she was the victim, grief from a death in the family earlier this year, was what caused her to it.

Her publishers went into full-on damage control, make lemonade out of the sour and rotten fruit handed to them by the author, and today in all the media is Clanchy in a hat with pheasant feathers and motheaten stole around her shoulders and a huge smile on her face. The PR release has scarcely been modified from one site to the next. They really earned their money, did that PR team!

It's kind of sad isn't it when someone can lie and bully and through the efforts of those who don't want to lose a money-maker get the last laugh at least financially, despite her reputation on GR being damaged forever. Is that the kind of world we want our children to grow up in?

Rewritten 10 Aug 2021 to exclude the endless 'apologies' and crap, all that can be found on the net.

[Ceridwen · Rating 1 out of 5]

Edits (August 2021):

I would recommend reading Chimene Suleyman (@chimenesuleyman), Monisha Rajesh (monisha_rajesh) and Professor Sunny Singh (@ProfSunnySingh)’s Twitter threads on this. I also oppose the violence that they, and other authors of colour have received in response to speaking out. Clanchy and Picador’s apologies don’t go far enough, and Clanchy rewriting the book and continuing to profit off her bigotry is unacceptable.
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Over a series of months since I posted this review, the author has threatened to contact my employer, and she has orchestrated her followers on Twitter to comment on it, report it, and contact Goodreads, etc. She has accused me of defamation and abuse (although now all her comments have gone). The quotes I have given are (obviously) from the book and some are available online as previews, so it is baffling to me why Kate denies all of them. The public accusation from Kate that I have organised a pile-on with friends is untrue; this was my honest review and was completely unrelated to any other reviews the book has received. Rather, I would hope that Kate (and people who read this book without criticism) can take some time to reflect on the racism, xenophobia, anti-semitism, fatphobia, transphobia, and classism which run through the book. We are all continuously learning, but we must address our behaviours and be willing to do the work, rather than deny them. Lastly, despite the threats I will not take down my review. I felt (and feel) it was important to speak up for the young people that I believe this book lets down.

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Original review (November 2020):

I'm a teacher myself and I had so many issues with this book. The narrative is centred on this white middle class woman's harmful, judgemental and bigoted views on race, class and body image. The young people she describes are narrowly fitted into these preconceived categories and Clanchy doesn't seem to view them through any other lens.

Firstly, Kate Clanchy describes young people of colour as racist stereotypes. She describes students as 'so Afghan', Black young people with 'chocolate skin', others with 'slanted eyes', 'almond-shaped eyes', an 'African voice' or a Jewish nose. She calls one young person 'African Jonathon'. Clanchy's viewpoints on young people of colour are bigoted, and I find it uncomfortable that she is profiting from their life stories as a middle class white woman. These young people have interesting stories and write wonderful poems, yet it's Clanchy who controls the narrative and makes the money from them.

Clanchy has a weird obsession with 'foreignness'. She discusses searching for unassimilated, 'very quiet foreign girls' for the Foyle Prize. She sees young people of colour as foreign objects, referring to 'my quiet foreign girls'. She describes some young people of colour as having 'that special, foreign ability'. (What does that mean?!) She writes, 'my assumption, when I sent out the Foreign Girl poems, was that they would be especially welcome because of their foreignness.' Rather than describing young people as talented writers, she talks about their foreigness. Clanchy also talks about wanting to cover up girls who she sees as being too risqué (and probably too disgustingly working class): 'If I could put a burqa on Susie and Kristell tomorrow, I would.'

There is a reoccurring theme disgust of working class people throughout the book. Clanchy has a snobbish and classist view of lower sets, which she acknowledges are primarily working class young people. She says 'no one likes set three [the lower set]', they are 'drearily mediocre', 'running feral', 'destroying lessons' and 'disrupting the whole school'. She states that there is fear between social classes, seemingly fearful of working class young people herself. Working classness is something that Clanchy keeps coming back to - once she has stamped the young people as working class, that is the only lens she will describe them through. She describes young people horrifically, with absolute disgust of their status; for example, 'Poverty is stamped through Cheyenne like letters in a stick of rock, manifesting itself in her rotting, nineteenth-century mouth.' (Cheyenne has dental issues, which Clanchy is disgusted by and places a lot of judgement on her mum for.) Clanchy says she is glad when Cheyenne leaves school early.

Unsurprisingly, Clanchy also has an outdated view on transgender young people, using a slur to describe one trans student she knew of. She comments on the young person's experiences, clearly without understanding gender herself.

This book is the epitome of middle class ignorance. I wasn't interested in Clancy's woes of middle class intelligent children 'missing out' on prizes to non-middle class children who've shown progress. She talks about her 'blonde and angelic' (read: white) son, and how it isn't his fault that he's middle class, but how he is a clever and dazzling pioneer who made school a better place. She talks about long-term ambition as being middle-class. Her views reek of middle class children being 'naturally intelligent', and ignorance of the fact that intelligence is also about a child's access to resources.

Lastly, Clanchy's fatphobic views run throughout the book. As a teacher myself, I found Clanchy's commentary on young people's bodies bizarre, harmful and inappropriate. She describes one young person as having a 'bosomy, curvy figure with a tiny waist'. Clancy says 'she has put on a great deal of weight, so that the pretty figure is blurred, and so that she looks like her mum.' She goes onto describe another as, 'not very pretty…she was fat', as if her body image determines her value as a person. Another girl has been 'brought down from beauty' because she put on weight and became fat. There's a horrible chunk at the end of the book where Clanchy is judging the fat girls for eating the biscuits that she puts out, and then judging the skinny girl for pandering to the male gaze. She says the girls 'can't refuse biscuits any more than they can study' or 'believe in university any more than they can believe in thinness' (!!!). Clanchy herself says that she can 'manage' to not 'stuff fig rolls into her fat face' because she's middle class as opposed to her working class students. I find the idea to a teacher commenting on the fatness and thinness of young people inappropriate and harmful. Clanchy herself admits in the book that she has a snobbish, commodifying and patriarchal gaze, and furthermore these are clearly issues that she is dealing with herself - but I wonder why she thought it was ok to publish these judgements in a book.

Wildly, Clanchy describes herself as a 'nice, liberal person', which seems to place herself as a white, educated middle-class woman above these raced and classed objects she describes. Clanchy doesn't see these young people as humans; she sees them as 'foreign', or 'feral' working class, or ugly and fat. The book as a whole is one, long passage of judgements, prejudices and bigotry. I only hope that these views weren't conveyed to the young people she has taught over the years - they deserve better.

[Cecily · Rating 2 out of 5]

A mix of memoir, tract, tribute, othering, outright offense, & online drama.
Chronology of controversy in final section of this review.
Review is of Picador's original 2019 text

Clanchy built quiet fame as an inspirational English teacher, specialising in nurturing & publishing her pupils' poems. Most come from disadvantaged backgrounds, including recent refugees.

I was unaware of her until March 2021, when I read a startling & critical review on GR, posted in November 2020. I noticed comments, claiming to be by the author, complaining that quotes she herself described as “racist”, were “made up” & threatening to report the reviewer (a teacher) to her employer! I was intrigued, got a copy, read a couple of chapters, & skimmed the rest. I found plenty of problematic phrasing, but other more positive aspects. It left a sour taste & I cast it aside.

A few months later, she took her fight to Twitter & the story was picked up by the BBC & broadsheet media. Big names joined in. I followed in real time. It got nasty. When it had died down a little, I decided to read & review the book thoughtfully, completely, & objectively.

Note about quotes
I copied directly from my 2020 paperback, with page numbers for most. I’ve included a lot, to indicate the distinctive tone of the book, especially the obsession with describing children's bodies. It is just over 250 pages of large, generously-spaced text, & I’ve included only a few. Some start out innocuous & then turn unquestionably mean; others are more debatable. Different people will wince at different ones, but I'm amazed anyone can read the whole book & think it's all fine - that it went through writing, editing, & publishing in 2019 & emerged as it has.
I can't imagine it being published if a man wrote it.

THE GOOD

Clanchy “wanted to change the world” & chose teaching in state schools, knowing it’s an undeservedly undervalued profession.

Teaching English
The sections describing how she teaches, how she inspires her pupils to frame their poems, & when she quotes some of them at length, are wonderful. She stresses the importance of creative reading & creative writing, which are being squeezed out of the curriculum in favour of abstruse grammar, which is easier to test & measure. She shares lightbulb moments, such as a couple of Bengali girls who wrote a teen novel set in a US-style summer camp. When she asks why all the characters are white, one says, “We are not in books”. She realises representation matters.

Advocacy
She advocates for the marginalised & excluded, in general & by writing letters to authorities. She notes that the “Inclusion Unit” for difficult pupils is really the opposite. She agonises about how & when the state should intervene to help or rescue children in & from dysfunctional families. She rails against the effects of years of government austerity.
“Poverty is stamped though Cheyenne like letters in a stick of rock, manifesting itself in her rotting, nineteenth-century mouth.” p160

School selection
Clanchy makes passionate & strong arguments against state-funded religious schools & against academically selective schools, especially when the two are indirectly combined. It becomes personal when she is deciding where to send “Oldest One”: whether to apply her principles by sending him to the nearest school - the one middle class parents strive to avoid. She says she is more concerned about the societal damage of separation by social class than by race. She’s also against setting by ability within schools:
“The mathematical law of setting: that the good done to the selected minority is always smaller than the bad done to the rejected majority.” p182

Sex
She’s socially liberal, aware of the importance of sex education & gender equality, & actively supportive of gay students.

Aware of her privilege?
She learns from her pupils “how white I am… I am a super-empowered, incredibly lucky member of the world’s ruling class” p87. When she discovered that her English teaching qualifications will never qualify her for a permanent post in Scotland, she reluctantly came south for good. She wonders if it gives her “some small insight into what institutional racism might feel like” p92. Is that the bridge she thinks it is, or another pedestal?

THE ODD

Colour & culture
I think Clanchy is genuinely fascinated by the cultural diversity she encounters, & wants to celebrate it. Some of the descriptions she has been criticised for were clearly intended as compliments, & the girl with “almond-shaped eyes” has explicitly defended the phrase & uses it herself. But the physical descriptions of children’s bodies are numerous, relentless, & unsettling.

Clanchy likes to get “an instant cultural history of the child” by asking where their names come from & what they mean. That’s not necessarily a bad idea, but needs to be handled sensitively, not using eugenic tropes & persisting in the face of denial:
“I was baffled when a boy with jet-black hair & eyes & a fine Ashkenazi nose named David Marks refused any Jewish heritage.” p19

When she wanted to start “an artsy version of the Bullingdon Club”, she asked fellow staff to suggest “Very Quiet Foreign Girls” (her capitalisation).

Snappy descriptions
Clanchy knows poetry thrives on concision. Some of her descriptions are kinder or more relevant than others: “Gentle Tom”, “Gigantic Dave”, “Anorexic Clarice”, “spooky, platinum Angel”, & “a vigorous Kurdish widow with a marvellous nose”. There’s a lot of implied phrenology, colourism, & worse:
• Imani of the “strong skull shape.” p117
• “Like all the Syrian kids, she is very pretty: pale skinned & dark eyed with a sensitive mouth & a tiny, high-pitched voice.” p263
• “Izzat so small & square & Afghan with his big nose & premature moustache.” p139
• “Aadil always seems so grand: a tall Somali boy with a deep, African voice, & the almost aristocratically calm manner that sometimes goes with being extremely good-looking.” p85
• “Cumar is long & slender as many of the Somali kids are, with a thin nose, narrow skull, & very dark, almost black skin. Aadil is more muscular & square-set, with chocolate-coloured skin, a broad-based nose, & rounded head.” p85
• “Jonathon, six-foot five inches tall with a slow, resonant African accent.” p78 & “Tall, strong, African Jonathon.” p243
• “She would call out to me for words, urgently, her black, almond-shaped eyes snapping, slim fingers blossoming.” p108
All so different from “my Nordic height & Celtic colouring”.

Weight
All the critical comments about weight are applied to girls, & most are in a section about health. Clanchy tries to include a compensatory compliment, but there are weird sexualising & classist undercurrents:
“When Kristell arrived in Year 9, she had a bosomy, curvy figure, with a tiny waist & pretty ankles… She had a soft, breathy voice to match the Bambi lashes & fresh mouth.” p237
Later
“She has put on a great deal of weight, so that the pretty figure is blurred… The dark eyes gazing out of the fat pink cheeks are still so very lovely.” p238-9
This “self-sabotage” was after being raped.

“Danielle really was special: she was exquisitely pretty in the dark & elfin, Audrey Hepburn mode. She knew it too; she was always finding occasion to take off her clothes & expose her pale, beautifully turned limbs.” p233
Later
“As if refusing middle-class food along with middle-class ambition, Danielle put on weight… her new bosom protruding ever more bulbously… I was surprised how hurt I was to see it. It wasn’t the flesh so much as the loss of grace.” p234

I know what she means with this next one, & there is a valid point. It’s probably intended to be self-deprecating & tongue-in-cheek, but...
“Lianne is stuffing fig rolls, my favourite, into her pretty fat face, & it is very hard indeed not to have one. I can manage it, I think, in the same way that I can manage to finish a poem, because I am middle class. Because, since I was a tiny child, I have been taught to wait for long-term goals.” p235

Love
There’s a long section describing, second-hand, a friend who was reported, by a “student intern” for a possibly inappropriate relationship with a pupil who brought her flowers, & who was then excluded for telling the intern he loved her, while he had a visible erection. The telling felt as inappropriate as the incident.
Clanchy then riffs on love.
“Of course, love happens in schools. Schools run on love.” p45
She contrasts the pure parental agape love with the playful experimentation of ludus love:
“Part of a school’s job is to supply a safe setting for this kind of love.”
She properly points out that schools try to exclude physical eros love.

LGBTQI+
Clanchy is supportive of gay pupils, although she’s hampered by stereotypes & sees camp as a “statement of otherness”. She takes an 18-year old to his first gay club, which she admits wouldn’t be acceptable now, sending him in with the words:
“‘Liam,’ I said, ‘I love you. You have to promise me to always use a condom & never get AIDS.’” p33

But she’s more dismissive of trans pupils. Like much of what she writes, I understand the concern she's raising, but the tone is trivialising:
“Are we all ‘fluid’ now? Perhaps. It is commonplace to proclaim oneself transsexual. & to actually be gay, especially if you are as pretty as Kristen Stewart is positively fashionable. A couple of kids have even changed gender, a decision so deliciously of the moment, so furiously defended by righteous students against non-existent opposition from staff that I worry only that they won’t feel the freedom to change back if they feel the need.” p34

Self-awareness?
Much of the criticism accused Clanchy of ignorance, rather than malice: a “white saviour” who relishes the exotic as something other. There are also safeguarding questions about whether children might identify themselves or be identified by others, to what extent they can have consented, & whether they should share in the profits. Apparently, the school where most of this happened knew nothing about it until she published after she left. Yet Clanchy mentions many of these points:

• “One of my self-doubts: whether I am a posh do-gooder, a Victorian lady on a mission who has not noticed that her message is obscured by her person, & the injustices of class which she embodies.” p158
• “Children have a right to privacy just as adults do.” p5
• “No named individual here should be identified as any particular living person.” p5
• “I have included nobody, teacher or pupil, about whom I could not write with love.” p5
• “I became aware of my greedy, writerly curiosity.” p54
• One of the reasons she likes volunteering in the local asylum centre is that “it offers me a world of stories”. p60
• “I am in each story, clearly delineated, so that you will know what sort of person is doing the listening & filtering.” p4
• “My commodifying, snobbish, patriarchal gaze.” p244”

THE UGLY

Dodgy descriptions
Page 8 stopped me in my tracks:
“My eye was tuned in to the multi-racial London pupils I’d taught the year before, who had, by the same age, Somali height or Cypriot bosoms or styled stiff Japanese hair.” p8
Who talks about the breasts of a twelve-year old child like that, & why?!

Anyway, Clanchy's new Scottish pupils, “winter-coloured, mouse-haired children”, were disconcertingly alike:
“I was having difficulty, as Prince Philip said he had with Chinese people, in telling them apart.”

“Saira is very butch-looking altogether, with square shoulders & a distinct moustache.” p122

“She wasn’t a pretty girl, even by the standards of the IU, even if she wasn’t making a terrible face. She was fat, a swathe of freckly flesh bulging out from her collar, blurring her jaw line, giving her premature double chins.” p239

Hijabs
Clanchy thinks about hijabs - a lot.

“I wonder again what Shakila does to her hijab, & why it seems to sit fuller & higher than the other girls’ - a Mother Superior hijab, or one from Vermeer. It can’t be starched. Maybe it’s draped over twisted horns of hair like Carrie Fisher’s in Star Wars. That would go with her furry eyebrows, her slanting, sparkling black eyes, her general, Mongolian ferocity.” p78

“Her high-set, starched hijab - did she have extra ears under there?” p109

“It is possible to wear a flirty hijab, like Samira’s leopard-patterned one. & that Farida’s dress may be loose & floor-length, but it still manages to show the beautiful lines of her figure when she hitches it tight around her as she sits by the basketball courts.” p117

“If I could put a burqa on Susie & Kristell tomorrow, I would. A year or two of being invisible to the male gaze, of going home quietly to study, could only be liberating, & enabling too, of the rest of their lives… It’s important to say that nothing that Susie or Kristell ever wear, however brief, entitles them to any abuse, ever.” p165

Autism & “other” gender
“Janie & Chris are eleven & have Autism Spectrum Disorder. They know this: they are fully certified & statemented; they will tell you all about it freely. They are cheerful, frank children in general: shouty, active, unselfconsciously odd. When we fill in the form for a poetry competition, they both seek out & tick ‘other’ for their gender. This seems spot on; though they both wear skirts & have long, thick hair, it is somehow very hard to identify them as girls… They flick through the lists of ‘country of origin’, I feel there should be an ‘other’ for that too: ASD Land.” p225

Her own feelings:
“The undeniable fact that no one else wants to be friends with them… Probably, more than an hour a week would irritate me, too, but for that hour, I like them very much.” p226

Almond eyes & food analogies

I didn't think “chocolate-coloured skin” & “almond-shaped eyes” problematic, but they’re the most cited in articles, & I now know some POC find them offensive, partly because of the association of some foods with slavery. I was surprised to read “a caramel woman”, a “pecan-colored” woman, & “his skin caramelized into deep brown” in a 2020 novel about colourism in African-American communities. But it’s by a black writer, Brit Bennett. See my review of The Vanishing Half, HERE.

THE FUROR

You can find plenty on Twitter & via Google, including screenshots of posts & comments Clanchy later deleted, & pages of the book. This is what I saw, written as it happened:

1. March 2021, Clanchy noticed negative reviews here on GR (posted months earlier), started complaining in comments on some of those reviews about "made up" quotes (which were not made up), flagging the reviews for GR to remove, & threatening to complain about libel to the employer of a teacher who'd posted one.
2. That didn't work, despite her commenting & complaining over several months. The reviews remained, & GR commenters mostly defended the reviews.
3. 30 July 2021, Clanchy used Twitter to ask her poetry fans to pile on to negative GR reviews & flag them for GR to delete. She included a screenshot of the teacher’s one. Her Twitter mob duly did as she asked.
4. Lots of new GR accounts sprang up, posting angry comments on negative reviews, & praising Clanchy. There was support on Twitter too, mainly from poetry fans who didn't seem to have read this book, so assumed any allegations of racist, anti-Semitic, & other demeaning language couldn't be true. They believed Clanchy's lies that the quotes were made up.
5. People started tweeting screenshots of the book, & the Twitter tide turned against her. Unable to continue saying the quotes were made up, she said they were "out of context", which didn't work with photos of double-page spreads.
6. Several writers of colour tweeted detailed, polite, & educational explanations of why certain terms are inappropriate. They mostly gave her the benefit of the doubt, assuming her intentions were good, but she needed to understand the weight of her words. They were largely ignored by Clanchy & targets of racist abuse by others.
7. Clanchy & Picador posted non-apologies focusing on her victimhood. She deleted her GR comments & many tweets. Meanwhile, some high-profile authors continued to defend her, creating more push-back, & another apology that said she would rewrite the book.
8. The tide turned back in her favour with articles & opinion pieces in traditional media. Most of them omit (or massively downplay) the fact that Clanchy herself triggered this cancel culture war on free speech by using lies to ask her fans to attack fair comment reviews by ordinary readers. The articles mostly focus on racial terminology, some of which is clearly well-intentioned if ignorant, not the inexcusable “Ashkenazi nose” or the sexualised, fat-shaming, & ASD-demeaning descriptions. Much was made of the fact that 25 former pupils (out of a whole career) wrote an open letter supporting her. She’s probably won. Carefully orchestrated DARVO (Denial, Attack, Reverse Victim & Offender = gaslighting) works.
9a. Will there be the promised rewrite? It seems improbable. If you take out just a quarter of the problematic phrases, that's a lot of content. How would she rewrite & sound like the same person? I suspect it will be postponed indefinitely.
9b. If it does happen, prepare for lots of free publicity, fuelled by recycling inaccurate claims that Clanchy was the victim of a censorious woke mob.
10. 20 Jan 2022, Clanchy & Picador separate.
11. After ten days of 20+ high-profile articles & two interviews, outraged at Clanchy's "cancellation", she announced a new publisher with an afterword & some of the controversial race & ASD-related phrasing removed or changed. The book was always available, though it's currently digital or second-hand. She has a louder & wider platform than ever.

[Matt Harriott · Rating 1 out of 5]

A good effort at a popular depiction of the magic of teaching, but full of Kate Clanchy's own saviour complex and incredibly frustrating, patronising ideas of students lives. This is a clear example of something well meaning, but ruined by uninterrogated biases. Every description of students lives was done in direct comparison to the authors own middle class existence, which lends everything a
tone of the author describing 'how the other half live'. I got half way through before this nagging feeling meant I had to put the book down.

[Su Yadanar · Rating 1 out of 5]

got halfway and i HAD to stop and it was so problematic i called a friend at midnight to rant.

you, as a white teacher, teach young non-white students and depict them in EXTREMELY racist stereotypes (what does “an African voice” mean? and really, did the editor of this book ALLOW “chocolate skin” to be published wtf)

kinda baffles my mind that a teacher can have as bigoted, classist, fatphobic views and still somehow manages to paint herself as this savior. if i could rate this lower, i would.

[Paromjit · Rating 2 out of 5]

I hear author and publisher have parted company!

Those of you that are aware of the disturbing controversy surrounding this book will not be surprised by my rating…..there are aspects in Kate Clanchy’s educational account that are deeply unsettling. I understand that there will be revisions after the problems with it began to receive some much deserved publicity.

[Beth G · Rating 1 out of 5]

It appears the author complained to Goodreads to get my comment about this problematic book deleted?!

(Earlier review redacted) but 1 star rating stands. Other reviews discuss the same concerns I have. Read those to judge for yourself.

[Amy · Rating 1 out of 5]

Patronising, condescending, judgemental. Found myself cringing most of the way through it at her rose tinted view of herself, her son (“Oldest One”, cringe!) and especially her class. How she is SO much better than the poor working class children she so generously spends her time educating, bringing the best out of, and generally milking to make a few extra £££ in book sales.

[Alwynne]

Kate Clancy’s prize-winning memoir’s recently become a topic of heated debate raising important questions around white privilege, bias in publishing and reviewing, as well as wider issues around race and representation in writing by white authors. It’s a loose assemblage of anecdotes and opinions drawn from Clanchy’s teaching career: although it’s unclear from the book, her stint in formal teaching seems to have ended some years ago replaced by running poetry workshops as a supplement to the standard school curriculum. From what she writes it’s evident Clanchy’s passionately committed to her work but I found the expression and nature of that commitment highly problematic. And I was disappointed by how often the more insightful, considered aspects of her memoir - and they do exist - were undercut by her tendency to trade in crass generalisations or make sweeping value judgements. Clanchy positions herself as left-thinking and liberal, and in many ways she is, but her observations about her students too often rely on unthinking stereotypes, sometimes coming across as disconcertingly voyeuristic, culturally conservative and sometimes just plain prejudiced.

Throughout the book there was a sense of individuals being reduced to the status of projects or curiosities, reinforced by a surprisingly poor attention to detail or specificity. What, for example, is an “African accent”? Or “Mongolian ferocity”? What makes someone “so Afghan”? And how is it okay to refer to someone as “slack-jawed” or “dyslexic Sofia” or “anorexic Clarice”? What is the possible justification for sorting students into dubious, dismissive, and highly subjective categories like bright or not bright, pretty or not pretty or, disturbingly, by skull shape? A disproportionate emphasis on outward appearance, body composition and other aspects of children’s physical characteristics surfaces throughout, although it’s especially blatant in the sections discussing her work with refugees and Muslim girls – her comments on the hijab are particularly hard to fathom, an uncomfortable mix of the well-meaning but ill thought-out and horribly naïve.

Clanchy’s aware that, like all teachers, she’s operating within a complex network of power relations, she makes numerous references to her own privilege as well as her attempts to interrogate her own motivation but her efforts rarely appear more than superficial. This isn’t helped by a tendency to undermine and contradict her own assertions. One glaring example is in the later sections of the book where she briefly discusses the rise of ‘writing as therapy’ as an approach to creative writing teaching. It’s a method of working with traumatised subjects who are encouraged to process painful events through their writing. It’s a challenging area that requires considerable expertise and careful boundary-setting because of the powerful emotions it can arouse for the students involved. Clanchy’s careful to distance herself from this method, acknowledging her lack of training in this field yet she goes on to relentlessly pursue a pupil who’s dealing with massive loss, forcing them to write about things they’re clearly not ready to confront.

There’s a recurring swing between the positive and negative: a potentially useful, pertinent discussion about class segregation in British education is outweighed by constant, condescending comments about her encounters with actual working-class children. A discussion of the potential for empowerment writing poetry might offer child refugees is tainted by her emphasis on their 'foreignness'. And the projects these students are assigned seem slanted towards the kinds of narratives of loss and victimhood that cater for the expectations and tastes of a certain type of white audience.

It’s a way of seeing I associate with misplaced, poorly directed benevolence, conjuring up images of neo-Victorian, 'white' philanthropy and suggesting an inability to deal with complexity that can have damaging consequences for those on the receiving end. This lack of sustained self-reflection allows the continual – sometimes subtle, sometimes not – positioning of many of the children she works with as 'other' to go unchallenged, not helped by the way in which writing poetry is represented as somehow outside of broader intersecting networks of power, politics and culture.

[Lexi · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a genuinely stunning book.

Having been an English Teacher myself, walking into this book having some preconceived notions about what experiences might be laid out on the pages. I was both absolutely correct and inexplicably wrong in one great jumble of emotions that I'm still trying to sort out.

This book is uplifting. It is heartbreaking. And, most importantly, it is framed entirely on the young people whose lives are being shaped - through the lens of a teacher that loves them, fears for them, and respects them in equal measure. I found particularly moving the tales from the inclusion unit - working in residential childcare now, these are the young people whose experiences touched me the most deeply as they are the kids I look after day in, day out. Too easily they are thrown under the bus as the 'naughty' kids, the 'thick' kids; but they are also the kids that have seen more trauma than most adults will ever experience in their entire lives. In fact, that they even manage to rock up to the building on some days is an outstanding achievement in itself, let alone actively engaging in their lessons. In this book, they were given a voice and encouraged to find their own (often through poetry), and for that I thank Kate Clanchy from the bottom of my heart.

[Andrew H · Rating 1 out of 5]

One of the first things I was taught during teacher training was to look beyond the physical – not to judge how children spoke – how they looked – how they dressed. This forgotten principle is the cause of many problems in Clanchy’s book. The writer takes over from the teacher and the result is unnerving: ideas are mixed up too often with personal judgements. There is a point, for example, where Clanchy writes emotionally and insightfully about translation and poetry. A young Syrian boy comes with his poem. He is characterised for the reader, yet what results in novelistic gush: “He is very short and exceptionally beautiful, with tawny hair and skin, and huge, fringed, smoky blue eyes.” Does a reader need to know any of this to empathise with his poem, his inner life? It is this sort of physicality that has lit the bonfire under Some Kids I Taught and What they Taught Me. Readers have objected (rightly) to David with a “fine Ashkenazi nose”, the girls with “Cypriot bosoms”, Jonathon with an "African accent” (as if Africa is a country, not a continent) and a pair of students who wear skirts but do not behave “as girls” because their place of origin is “ASD Land.” For good measure, critics of this book should also add the author’s belief that gay men fall between “Stonewall” and “Spartacus” – between with-it political activism or six-pack sex tourism. Clanchy continually employs stereotypes unaware that they offend readers and (worse still) diminish “kids.”

A lot of confusion has been created by social media. A said this of B and B replied to A. Then B re-tweeted C and A attacked C consequently. Rather like a rowdy classroom with little control the main issue has been drowned out by shouting and unjust accusations. Fundamentally, this is a book about teaching. The title draws upon a libertarian view of education, a belief that teaching is transactional, a process through which all participants become learners: ideas and emotions pass between the teacher and students – both are enriched. A model that bell hooks has rightly seen as transgressive, but essential. Students learn from teachers and teachers learn from students. When Pullman, a former Children’s Laureate endorsed the book with a trumpet fanfare, it was this humanitarian, liberal perspective he had in mind: “I want to see this book become a bestseller. I want to see it in every staffroom. I want to see it read by every student teacher.” And to be fair to Clanchy, her teaching of poetry is based on dialogue rather than monologue: on a shared understanding that breaks silence and passivity; and the student poems enabled by her teaching are accomplished works. But something is wrong in the educational tone of the book. And the problem starts with too many voices.

According to book reviewers, Some Kids I taught and What they Taught Me shows the fruits of thirty years of teaching. But “teaching” in the book is made to cover: teaching English as a subject, working in an Inclusion Unit, serving as a writing assistant in an asylum centre, being a parent with personal views on education, and writing poetry with pupils as an artist-in-residence. These are very different roles. Teaching English fits within the traditional view of teaching. Working in an IU shifts to the therapeutic side of teaching. Rather than explain the heated debate between subject teaching and holistic teaching and give her writing practices background, Clanchy is content to write about class backgrounds and stereotypes – the females who are happy to become pregnant because they receive state-support and independence. Her prejudicial rant against religious schools, as a parent caring about her “Oldest One,” has no place in a supposedly rational memoir about teaching. And there is a world of difference between being a writer-in-residence, a specialised facilitator, at Oxford Spires Academy, and operating as a mainstream teacher.

Because the changing contexts are not clear a reader is left with a jumble of stories and opinionated viewpoints. In some cases (“Javel, a tall handsome Jamaican boy” and “Emmanuel … the sweetest, swottiest boy imaginable” from an “African [home]”) second hand stories (completely removed from Clanchy’s theme of “Some Kids I Taught”) are included manipulatively to allow words of prophetic wisdom. The chapter “About Love, Sex, and the Limits of Embarassment” concludes with the author’s philosophy of love and her pedagogy of the oppressed. Teaching blooms from agape, a word forgotten by “teaching training manuals” that have lost their connection to Greek philosophy (unlike Clanchy, of course). Schools – in her view – must exclude eros. All of this is disconcerting and ill-informed. Why is it that two Black males become the base for a discussion of sex? There is a worrying sleight of hand. Though the tenor of Clanchy’s argument is that Black male bodies should not be sexualised in the classroom she implicitly does exactly that – for Javal and Emmanuel only exist in relation to their sexuality. A real teacher, states Clanchy, should not be looking at the erection, the “tiny tent” in “very small” Emmanuel’s trousers – or even writing about it in this way replies the reader. And she is simply wrong about eros. As Neville points out in his splendid teacher manual, Educating Psyche, which remembers Greek mythology: “When we turn the Eros-perspective on to education we find both knowledge and personal growth created in the encounter of two minds.” Something that is essential to teaching and writing poetry.

The core of Clanchy’s book is the chapter titled “About Teaching English”. It is this chapter that illustrates why this book should not be in every classroom as recommended by Pullman. And why hostility now surrounds a book that gained the Orwell Prize for Political Writing – an accolade that brands it with authority. (My copy even bears an Orwell stamp that resembles a school reward sticker). In this section, Clanchy writes with contempt for WALT and the tyranny of target setting. W(e) A(re) L(earning) T(oday) refers to the setting of objectives for learning. As a method, it is reductive, especially when it comes to the Arts. Ofsted, however, favours WALTs because they are obvious to the observer. WALTs do not touch what Ofsted fears – the unconscious, hidden, gestalt aspect of learning – the deep aspects that do not agree with ticking boxes. Clanchy is absolutely right to dissent, and all credit to her for doing so. But she is incorrect when she uses WALT as a way of dismissing formative assessment with an imperious hand gesture. Used correctly, formative assessment, providing verbal and written feedback to students, becomes literary criticism. And it is formative criticism that links writing to reading and reading to writing, and develops self-awareness.

And the lack of this, regrettably, is the horror behind Some Kids I Taught and What they Taught Me. In Clanchy’s own words, she wants a banner that says, “We are learning to write by reading and to read by writing.” (So as we are certain that this quotation truly exists, see p.211, SKITAWTTM, Picador, London, 2019). Yet this book suffers because its author has not read what has been written and applied self-awareness. And blurbing reviewers from The Times to Townswoman magazine have done the same. Even the publishers are guilty. Picador saw a book on trend. Now, it is writing apologies for not reading the book with full attention. It is why Poetry Wales has issued a humiliating apology because it published a conversation with Clanchy, as a poet and writer, based on the fact that others approved of the book. But wait, that means the journal took the book on trust and did not bother to read what had been written – it presumed! A book that started off as a valuable memoir about creative writing has exposed how we live in a culture that does not read carefully – a dangerous state of affairs in a world of post-truth. A valuable educational lesson indeed.

[Sal Amanda · Rating 1 out of 5]

Got halfway but could not finish. It was exciting to begin with - a teacher sharing wonderfully inspiring, eye opening anecdotes. But...the whole undertone is one of middle class judgement - like come and see what I’ve seen in the land of the other half of society. I was so happy to read more about young girls that could’ve been me, from my ethnicity, religious practices to writing poetry as a teenager. But I couldn’t continue with it when I’m reading judgmental snipes presented as cute observations, statements feeding into and borne from stereotypes and instead of shattering prejudice, the passages read like “oh look at poor foreigners & their foreign ways”. I know this wasn’t the intent of the writer, I am sure of this. I don’t however think they realise how these quips will be taken by readers. The best thing in this book was the poetry shared from students. I’d buy an anthology of that stellar material.

[Ema · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book is so problematic, on so many levels, I don’t even know where to begin.
It radiates middle-class superiority, saviour complex, and extremely ill-judged commentary on race, gender, body-image, and socio-economic status.
I did finish reading it, hoping it would improve, as the tittle suggests the author learned something, but each chapter was worse than the previous, and the book made me extremely uncomfortable.

[Minnie · Rating 1 out of 5]

I confess I forgot about this book until recent Twitter posts from the author. I worked in education and really felt I learned a lot from the students I worked with and so the concept of this book really spoke to me.

Unfortunately, I found the author's approach to describing her students often deeply problematic. There were some touching moments but this became increasingly unsettling and uncomfortable. At the time I just put the book down as 'not for me' and hoped the author would learn to work on her unconscious biases. Unfortunately, she is now calling valid criticism from minorities a pile on and suggesting she is under threat. This is exactly the kind of violence often done to minorities to silence them and it's hurtful and shocking coming from an author who I at least hoped had good intentions. She claims the criticisms are made up but I have found multiple extracts in the book containing the language she claims she hasn't used.

I have seen her posting to and deleting comments under negative reviews. It's all a bit bizarre.

She also calls this a recent pile on, but many of the reviews with these same criticisms are over a year old. I don't really know what to say. Had she listened to the two or three critical reviews and done some more reflecting on her privilege and biases she wasn't aware of, that would have been great. Instead, she's trying to leverage her privilege to silence voices, and that makes me deeply sad.

[Poppy Flaxman · Rating 2 out of 5]

I follow Kate Clanchy on social media and she does some incredible work with helping her students work on their craft and highlighting the amazing creative ability of children who are often overlooked. I think her strength comes through being a teacher who uplifts her students work and unfortunately not from writing about her experience teaching. I was disappointed reading this having had a different image of her through her work online.

I think this book suffers from Clanchy projecting her own ideas of race and class onto her students and their experiences. Some of the comments she makes regarding race are uncomfortable and feel weirdly like she is making a concerted effort to point out the 'otherness' that she sees in her students. In one of the final chapters they were a series of fatphobic comments and general discussion about student's bodies which felt both horrid and innappropriate.

[Eleanor]

Edited 5/8/21 to add:
I'm aware that there's now a conversation about the racism and ableism of Clanchy's descriptions of some of her students. Alarmed, I went back and reread some of the offending passages, which were appended to discussions on Twitter. Yeah--there are problems here. I didn't see them the first time I read this book, and that's on me, but I can see them now. I don't want to delete my original review, because that reflects my original assessment of the book and I no longer have my own copy to go back and reread the whole thing, but I've cleared my rating (I haven't given it fewer stars, it's just now an unrated book in my records.) Be aware that red flags have been raised about the text, and if you choose to read it, you can make up your own mind.

Original mini-review:
A memoir of teaching at Oxford Spires Academy, where Clanchy runs a phenomenally successful Poetry Group (they’ve won numerous Foyle’s Young Poet awards). She also writes about her time at schools in post-industrial Essex and Scotland, and multicultural London. Clanchy demonstrates how infuriating and patronizing are government decisions re. teaching, a profession of which most of our legislators know nothing, and she’s magnificent on how creative response to literature can ignite a student’s mind–but is tragically ignored now in most schools because it cannot be quantified in a WALT (We Are Learning To…)

[Jo · Rating 1 out of 5]

Congratulations Kate Clanchy, this is a book so riddled with stereotypes and racial generalisations that I couldn’t even get past the first chapter. Every single student not from the author’s middle class white background is treated as other, mocked mercilessly and used as cannon fodder to prove some kind of point. Ironically, the Kindle edition has a glowing review by Pullman on the front - the other book I gave one star to this year, only at least I could finish that.

[Ali Bird · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful. Moving, funny and so real. A world away from educational theory. This is what teaching really should be about.

[Bookish Bethany · Rating 3 out of 5]

Despite it's faults - Clanchy's obsession with being middle class, her questionable and potentially damaging views on fat and her tendency to group people by background - this is a profoundly interesting and heartfelt book.

Going into teaching, I wanted to read something that would encourage me to feel inspired and open and kind. This book did exactly that. Perhaps not solely through Clanchy's narration, but through her pupil's poetry. It is the poetry in this book that really stood out to me: the strange, melancholic and beautiful words written by the children in her class struck me. How can a child write so feelingly?

This book celebrates the joys of language and togetherness, despite Clanchy's sometimes backwards views - it is the children that make the difference here.

[emmy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Sadly not a huge fan of this. To be honest, I couldn’t stand the tone of this. Ridiculously biased, the middle class lens of the book is wildly obvious. There are some descriptions of POC students which lean into racial stereotypes. There’s one point where she refers to a special GCSE board (which she is praising for its flexibility and allowance of easier texts) as ‘Essex-friendly’. She says that a student getting a job at M&S is a shame. She criticises female students for all manner of things, culminating in the horrific “Poverty is stamped through Cheyenne like a stick of rock, manifesting itself in her rotting, nineteenth-century mouth”. It’s all just a little bit down-the-nose.

I enjoyed some of the stories. But it all felt very preachy, with not much punch. It made me look back and think, ‘Did my teachers judge me like this? For what I wore and how I spoke?’ which makes me sad because, you know, I love teachers, I respect teachers enormously.

TL;DR: I felt this book carried the wrong tone.

[Becky · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book has been on my tbr shelf since before it actually came out. I meant to get to it, but never did. I was happy to take the various reviews in the media at face value, and to recommend it as being to teaching what 'This is Going to Hurt' is to the NHS.
Following the twitter spat, however, I decided it was about time I saw for myself. While it wouldn't excuse anything, I wanted to see if the screenshots represented a tiny portion of the whole, or the entire basis of the book.
I must admit that I was quite shocked. The, much shared quote, about 'Cypriot bosoms' etc. Is in paragraph three, and there are so many instances of pretty open contempt for students throughout the rest of the book that I have no clue how this made it past the editors.
In fairness the contempt is broad enough to suggest that racism isn't the main problem. The working class, sen, Scottish, lgbtq, Essex, those the author considers to be overweight; pretty much everyone comes in for a hefty smattering of contempt and mockery, she is liberal in her attacks on 'otherness '.
I appreciate fully, that some of these descriptions are coming from the start of her 30 years in teaching, and that she is trying to show that she has grown. I also don't actually think the intention was to upset or cause offence. I really don't. I think a lot of it is down to an unconscious feeling of superiority, a lack of personal filter (apparently no self awareness), and VERY poor editorial skills on the part of the publishing team.
No, this does not mean I think any of it is excusable, the majority of us get past the 'voicing every inappropriate and unpleasant thought that ever flits through our brain' stage at primary school. That this teacher thought speaking about those in her care in this way was in any sense OK, is deeply, deeply troubling and raises questions about her whole career.
No, I don't think the role of the editorial team is to censor, or catch the racism, classism etc that an author has written- although I am very surprised if noone thought to question it at least (maybe a great argument for a more diverse editorial team?).
No, I don't think the flat denials and attempts at silencing those who have pointed out the problems with this text are in any way right. I don't think that the pile on from BIG authors (all white) to attack any criticism is something that should stand. I don't think the author's attempts at silencing criticism on this platform should go unremarked.
Certainly I don't think the current twitter argument drawing in works of fiction that have characters who express similar views makes any sense. A CHARACTER in a work of FICTION expressing a vile and/or outdated view is one thing; a TEACHER in an apparent work of NON-FICTION exposing her students to some of these descriptions is something entirely different.
If this work had appeared in the 1930s- 60s then I think some of the language used and attitudes expressed would have been less shocking and upsetting; showing a teacher who had relatively normal attitudes, no concept of the feelings of others, and a willingness to offer students 'admirable middle-class' aspirations; if Winifred Holtby had written some of these paragraphs in South Riding, then the text would not have shocked. Coming from a work published in 2019, however this argument in regards to context does not stand.
While this is a book, that I am glad to have read, this is only so that I can know that it is not one I shall ever be recommending to anyone again.

[Jack Greenwood · Rating 4 out of 5]

A lot of people have said this book truly captures the art of teaching. I think they’re right.

The bureaucractic teaching elements are in full force; there aren’t enough hours in the day to complete the to-do list; the weight of expectation is unbearable.

But teachers are also incredibly lucky.

Being in class is a privilege for the student; who has access to a passionate and knowledgeable adult mind. But it’s also a privilege for the teacher. Teaching is a meeting of minds; an exchange of ideas, running from leader to pupil, and vice-versa. It's a magical process.

And in many modern British schools, the mind exchange is reminiscent of the markets of diversity and variety that once flourished on the great Silk Roads.

I look around the room. It contains Muslims from five countries, one Hindu, a Filipino fundamentalist Christian, one transgender kid, two mixed race girls of no faith, two white kids, a Pole, and the full range of human skin colour. Fabulous.

30+ students of such wide-ranging background & belief provokes great debate. Each lesson a miniature United Nations summit. In History, we share Eastern European history when we study Franz Ferdinand’s assassination in Sarajevo; North African Muslim history when we look at diversity in Tudor London; Bengali speakers can investigate the British Empire in India with the class; and the students of Caribbean heritage can assess Columbus’ arrival in the Americas and the development of the slave trade.

You can craft them a handmade key that will help them access their identities. Not push them to believe certain ideologies, just present them with raw, powerful knowledge that facilitates intrigue. And in return, you get so much back to develop and grow your own practice, beliefs and character.

That’s a patrimony, a gift, as Emily’s fiddle is a gift to the school – as Emily is in general, and the brainy twins too: asking the penetrating questions in every lesson, never failing in good manners and intelligent, tempered enthusiasm, always getting the teacher’s joke, hauling up the grade point average, constantly raising the bloody tone.

The Romanian EAL student who is constantly removed from lessons and finally expelled; the diminutive, yet determined girl who only misses one day of school per year (non-uniform day); the brazen, class-conscious student who doesn’t have the vocabulary to express herself. All these characters and more make an appearance; and Clanchy is so good at imagining their perspectives.

It’s impossible to escape Clanchy’s obsession with class. But the conversation in education inevitably links back to it. There is more criticism to be had on the way in which she seems to constantly imply that life is a game to try and access middle class life; the ‘rich’ and ‘poor’ present analysis of Cheyenne is a good example of this.

That said, I recommend this book as the most accurate representation of modern teaching that I havecome across. For that reason, it’s a must read. Think It’s Going to Hurt by Adam Kay, but for teaching.

Also, if you don’t come away from this thinking poetry is a glorious thing, you’ve read it wrong.

[Hannah Jones-Bedward · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5 stars I didn’t hate this book but I didn’t love it, I genuinely think Kate Clanchy was well meaning with this book but it missed the mark. However, even though there were parts which were touching and overall the book was well written - as was expected from an English teacher and poet, I can’t get over the patronising undertone of this book. Every story of her students lives are written in comparison to her middle class life, her upbringing in private education and her own beautiful intelligent children. It comes across as a story of how the other half live, her taste of what life can be below the bread line and how she can save them. With some stories showing how totally out of touch she is, I found I was more embarrassed and uncomfortable than I was endeared and inspired, hence why I’ve rounded down to 2 stars

[Lydia · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is the only book this year that I couldn’t finish. The author seems to look down on those she taught rather than embrace and celebrate them. I wanted to know much more about her students and less about her and her opinions.
Not for me.

[Marwa · Rating 1 out of 5]

I could just quote: “all great literature is subversive” from page 27 of Kate’s book. That’d be the end of the review...

The book is ironic though. Despite attempting to be cosmopolitan and showing the good side of many marginalised groups in British society, what Kate does is reinforce some of her own prejudices which I am sure many share.

Utilising the “Very Quiet Foreign Girls”, and only whites winning poetry competition... it symbolises how her own book won the Orwell prize in 2020 for political writing...

I know this for a fact because I am originally “foreign” and have worked in the schools in the UK. If I were to write: “Some kids I taught and what they taught me”, it’d look quite different from Clanchy’s version and it certainly won’t win any prizes in this seemingly ‘open’ ‘welcoming’ ‘cosmopolitan’ intellectual world community we live in!

It’s ironic when she speaks of prejudice.

It’s ironic.

(I wrote all of the above after half-way through the book).

From the chapter on church schools, I actually find some it offensive! Outright ‘religiousist’! Yes that’s right, there should be a word for it. That is not cosmopolitan Kate. You should respect that others have a different set of moral values. She absolutely bashes religiosity throughout the book in favour for her own beliefs.

The chapter on prayers is proper messed up!

And the last chapter I started reading I could not even finish as I felt her language became so much more aggressive and her prejudices even more pronounced...

Urgh!

It’s a shame overall really I’ve had such a bad experience reading this book, and had to put it down. It was on one of my master’s course module’s reading list and I’ve been wanting to read it before it even won The Orwell Prize in 2020...

Oh well, onwards and upwards I guess.

[Carmen · Rating 1 out of 5]

I started this book thinking it'd be a nice recollection of school stories and I was gobsmacked to discover the author only harps on about how miserable her life as a teacher has been and how snotty she's when talking about her students. I couldn't finish it.

[Amber-Leigh · Rating 1 out of 5]

DNF

I've been pretending to myself for weeks now that I'm eventually going to finish this book. But on consideration, I'm forced to admit that I probably won't. These days, I typically read anywhere between 3 and 5 books at any one time - some of these I read infrequently (like a handful of chapters every month), some I read semi-regularly (at least a chapter or more a week), and some I absorb at a rate of several chapters a day. I have been avoiding this book so fervently that I can't in good conscience even put it in the infrequent pile. I just don't want to.

For one thing, the tone of the writing is unbearably condescending. I know it was written by a school teacher, but I don't think that means I should feel like I'm back in the classroom myself. For another, right from the start the book went off in a... weird direction. Don't get me wrong, sex education is important. I'd be the first person to advocate a more comprehensive and accurate education for youngsters that includes sexualities other than just hetero but... I mean why are we opening the book with this particular topic? Seems like a weird choice to me. But okay, we're opening with sex education anecdotes - fine. And hey, the bit about 'gay' being used as a synonym for stupid, boring and any other number of negative adjectives? I can confirm. That was still the case when I was attending Scottish schools myself in the 90's and early 00's. But if you are trying to convince me that any classroom of Scottish 13 year olds were these open-minded, hungry for knowledge, misunderstood little darlings, I, madam, am calling you a liar. I attended high school about a decade after these events supposedly took place, and I remember my sex education lessons very well. They quickly devolved into giggling and posturing and general chaos. And even then, when homosexuality/bisexuality were becoming more accepted (or at least, less grounds for immediate ostracization and/or a beating) it was rarely talked about, and certainly not with the frank openness suggested here.

Also, the name change to 'Blastmuir High School'. I cannot with this. Change the name - fine. But 'Blastmuir'? I don't know why, but this fake name really annoys me. It's such a small thing, but it grinds my gears like you wouldn't believe.

I originally picked this book up because it was 99p on kindle, and because I'm a pupil support assistant so I thought there might be some value in reading about a teacher's experiences in the classroom. But even leaving aside the fact that I work with primary aged children, I don't think there's much here that I could gain anything from. And even if there is, I can't get past the tone of the book long enough to find out.

[Monica · Rating 1 out of 5]

Not usually one for leaving reviews, and if I have, usually it's for a book that I've loved dearly.

As I'm starting my NQT year this September, I chose a few titles on Audible to listen to this summer that I felt would be fun reads relating to teachers and their experiences with their students. Naturally, Clanchy's book title stood out to me so I added it to my basket. It just so happened I was listening to the book at the same time as the awful twitter shit storm surrounding the book kicked off.

Initially, I think listening to this book rather than reading it, made me almost brush past some of the heinous descriptions she had used to describe her students. Seeing the stream of screenshots from the book and reading them in print made Clanchy's words all the more difficult to read.

I agree with other reviewers that racism, albeit a huuuuugely problematic issue in her book, is not the only issue expressed in her book. I almost found her comments around students with autism and fatphobia the most challenging to read, as the chapters were just littered with judgemental statements, all in very quick succession.

However, if Clanchy had spoken out about the completely fair criticism about her book in a way that really acknowledged that she recognised she was wrong (and was truly apologetic about it), realised the immediate need to read/listen to others about on how to educate herself better on speaking about POC, LGBTQ+, autism and body image and therefore take some time out to do that work, I think a lot of her readers would at least be able to make peace with this horrible piece of writing. Alas, that has not happened. And instead, the whole twitter situation appears to have only reinforced the inherent racism and prejudice that is still rife in publishing and many other industries.

Reading this, and all of the media around this has left me feeling pretty deflated. So much more work needs to be done.

[Nadia · Rating 2 out of 5]

You guys, I think I've figured out why there has been so much controversy around this book. It's the bad writing. I don't want to minimise other concerns people had about it, but the bad writing was definitely the no 1 thing that stood out to me.

I've never read any of Kate Clanchy's poetry, maybe she's good at poetry? She's definitely good at spotting good poetry (the poems written by children quoted in this book are brilliant). But her prose is terrible, so bad that it's funny in places, in other places so bad that you can't tell if the writer is saying something kind of prejudiced, or if she means to satirise her own prejudices, or if she is just very clumsy with words.

For example: in the first chapter, the word 'camp' is used to describe a gay pupil (and his boots) at least 5-6 times or so? In just a couple of pages? Is that prejudice or poor vocabulary? Who knows!

Page 96: "Shakila brings us cherries and strawberries, shining like the roses in her cheeks". English is not my first language and I don't think I could've written a sentence this cheesy in my high school English class without being laughed out of the class.

Page 127: "Her high-set, starched hijab- did she have extra ears under there? -would rustle earnestly as she wrote it down". EXTRA EARS. Extra ears.

Page 257: "As if refusing middle-class food along with middle-class ambition, Danielle put on weight. At first, she didn't seem to notice, and continued to strip off at every opportunity, continuing to pose on gateposts and desks, ignoring the soft pads adhering to her sculptural limbs like clay. At first, she still wore the little denim jacket, her new bosom protruding ever more bulbously beneath it".

BULBOUSLY.

Bulbously.

Bulbously.

I rest my case.

By the way, I've read the revised second edition republished by Swift.

[Thomas Baker · Rating 2 out of 5]

Some interesting stories of young people’s times through school but told through the narrow lens of a white middle class individual who does not appear to have a full grasp on children, especially those of non-British and/or working-class backgrounds, despite the long time spent in a teaching position.

More a collection of anecdotes and ranting opinions on the British schooling system. Mostly what they taught children and very little about what they taught her.

Would perhaps be better as a series of opinion pieces in The Guardian.