Tales out of School: Birth of a Nation

Content warnings: corporal punishment, violence, genital mutilation, masturbation, spanking.

I see the last time I wrote about a David Leland play, it was the hugely controversial Psy-Warriors and I only managed to get in content warnings for violence and nudity, so he obviously excelled himself with Birth of a Nation.

Birth of a Nation is set in a school, which you will see IMDb describes as 'highly problematic'. and this is obviously an understatement. It starts off with a police officer addressing the school assembly (never a good sign if this happens) and the assembly being interrupted by some sort of smoke bomb being set off, and then we're straight into one boy threatening to cut off another boy's penis in the toilets with a flick knife (actually I'm glad I made the move away from Blogger, because it could never have coped with this post).

You will read that the subject of this play is corporal punishment in the school, which is used frequently and, frankly, in desperation as far as I can see, because the teachers are continually swimming against the tide. The reason that you read this is about corporal punishment is that most of the plot involves a new teacher to the school, who challenges the school's use of corporal punishment in the press, and so it is as much about the reaction of the staff. The Rural Studies teacher (to the best of my knowledge this has never been a real subject) is also an independent soul who questions the use of corporal punishment, but does it to the headmaster, although in a rather shocking way.

So although the plot is about corporal punishment, in reality the main drives of the play are things like conformity (how discipline is maintained, whether the kids get any exams, how the staff toe the line); how dissent is dealt with (tolerated in the case of the boy who masturbates in class, less so in the case of the teacher who blows the whistle on corporal punishment); aspirations vs reality (the former pupils who didn't get any exams so hang around outside, the teachers who are so burned out they're not functioning, the way the kids watch the cookery teacher cooking because they have no money); and how behaviours which are actually beyond the pale are treated. This last of course is the genital mutilation, which is dealt with by a severe beating by the teachers.

I particularly love the way the Rural Studies teacher just does what he wants, acts on his own scholastic theories, and encourages kids without even putting grades on their books. In his classroom the curriculum is so far behind him you'd have to look back in the calendar for it. He doesn't want to rank the kids at all, and honestly I love him, although I'm not convinced there is a school in the land which could ever have coped with him.

The play specialises in the juxtaposition of bizarre things: the cookery teacher making a Royal Pudding (which the kids would have been unlikely to make or even eat at home) contrasted with the PE teacher slippering a boy for forgetting part of his kit, for example. But the main juxtaposition is the completely overt one essential to the plot, where the Rural Studies teacher buys some spanking magazines, takes them to the headmaster and points out that the corporal punishment culture of the school is exactly the culture of fetish spanking as seen in the magazines. This scene comes like a bucket of cold water, and is honestly superlative. It leaves the problem of the management of the school and alternatives untouched, but its largely polemic point is excellent. The play also excellently makes the point that it's the kids who didn't get any exams who don't get on: I can distinctly remember the teachers warning the boys (always boys) in my year who left school without setting foot in an exam room, that they would have difficulty keeping themselves in employment for the rest of their 'working' lives. Of course they're all now unemployed and moaning on Facebook that immigrants are taking the jobs they've never had. At this time you could legally leave school at 16 with no qualifications, and I would suggest we are being invited to think about how the system fails the kids.

There are also genuinely entertaining moments. I love the way the boy who masturbates in class is dealt with. Rather than beating him the teachers treat him as just one of those things that happen, which is very kind, and there's a very funny bit where the PE teacher puts boxing gloves on him to stop him doing it! Also, brilliantly, the actor they've picked for the role isn't the boy with the moustache who gives all the trouble, but a little lad who doesn't look anywhere near the age to be doing that sort of thing.

Beyond 'highly problematic' this school is actually wild, distressing, entertaining.

I have a few possible criticisms. The first is that I think it's perhaps overdone the shock motif slightly, at a time when some family friends of ours didn't allow their children to watch Grange Hill. I think possibly it's got a few too many themes going on, which can be dealt with by watching it more than once, of course, although I wonder how it came across in 1983.

But my main criticism is the scene where one boy threatens to cut off another boy's penis with a flick knife. This incident is what pushes the teacher into whistle blowing about the corporal punishment in the school, even though he himself threatens the boy that he will cut his testicles off. Subsequently, the police are mentioned so were presumably called, but what we see is the boy getting caned in an unusually violent setting: because of his resistance the teachers hold him down for this. I was in a state school at the time this play was filmed and am certain that that sort of threat in reality would have caused the teachers to heave a sigh of relief at getting rid of you, you would have been suspended and given back to your parents and the constabulary called. I feel in the play the situation is dealt with in an unrealistic way to heighten the drama and as a result lets down an otherwise believable fiction.

However, the final reason this play isn't really about corporal punishment comes in the final scene, which is what I suppose you could call a riot, although a fairly restrained one. This scene suggests what the forces of violence only contained by corporal punishment could be like if they were let loose and people stopped going along with the convention of going to school, looking for a job, and so on. This accentuates the theme of conformity and control which has run through the whole show, and is cleverly contrasted with a model pupil telling the head to shove her exam certificates where the sun doesn't shone, and with two teachers talking about leaving versus staying. Although generally non-committal the play suggests that the better move here is to walk out of the school as the symbol of conformity to society.

In common with other Leland plays Birth of a Nation also doesn't offer pat answers but raises complex ethical dilemnas in usually the most shocking way possible and leaves the viewer to get on with it. I don't have a problem with this, personally. I started off viewing this play against corporal punishment and have ended it also against corporal punishment, so it hasn't changed my view at all. I think it has reinforced my view of organisational behaviour and of much schooling. Actually I think the schooling you would get in this school would possibly be slightly better than in some places because at least if you got the right teacher you would learn how to think and see the complexities of adult decisions and stresses.

Another excellent play by David Leland, dealing with a difficult subject matter and making it even more difficult as only Leland can.

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