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Teacher in a Different Class 

By Gillian Bowen

    Colorful and charismatic, Philip Lawrence encouraged us to make something of our lives.

    The first sight of him was not auspicious. A tall, red-haired man with smiling eyes behind owlish glasses, he favored brightly colored bow ties that were invariably askew and red socks that clashed with his beige trousers. While other teachers dragged around battered leather briefcases as safe and sedate as themselves. Philip Lawrence sported briefcases in bright pink or yellow plastic. It was an outfit that could so easily have invited ridicule from myself and the other pupils at St. Mark's Roman Catholic School in west London. But with Mr. Lawrence it simply reinforced an impression of someone who was totally his own man.

    He was never predictable. In assembly he suddenly announced that he and his wife Frances had chosen a name for their third daughter. It was Unity combining all three Christian values of faith, hope and charity. We were totally disarmed by his directness and depth of love for his family.

    But behind his unconventionality was the most conscientious teacher I ever met, someone on whom I try still to model myself today. When I sat down with him, as a 15-year-old, to consider my options for courses, I discovered that he had read through a stack of my old essays and school reports and had made pages of notes.

    My school career until then had hardly been one of academic triumph, but my head buzzed with my mother working as nurse and my father as a mechanic, and then civil servant. But none of my four brothers and sisters, or close relatives, had been to university. However, when Mr. Lawrence took my work more seriously than I did myself, university began to seem a possibility. "If you set your heart on it, Gillian, I'm sure this is something that you could do."

    I felt torn between a love of literature and a growing interest in theology. Mr. Lawrence pointed out that university theology courses actually included some literature, and therefore it was worth taking both English and religious education now.

    Typically, he then produced a reading list-works by Jean Paul Sartre, William Golding's The Spire—could prove valuable in any later theology course.

    When I joined his English lessons, I found myself on a roller coaster of discovery. There was an uneasy hush when Mr. Lawrence contorted his face and we first heard his oily, boastful tones as The Pardoner in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. Then a roar of delight, and we were transported back into medieval England. His strangulated falsetto as Chaucer's Wife of Bath always brought the house down.

    A brilliant mimic, he did the piping tones of the children in Dylan Thomas's Under Milk Wood to perfection. His other passions ranged widely—Shakespeare, the metaphysical poets such as John Donne, D.H. Lawrence's Sons and Lovers, Laurie Lee's Cider with Rosie.

    Some passages we would read over and over again so that we learned not just to love the words, but how to think. He never let his judgments become our orthodoxies, but invited us to question his views and our own.

    My love of theater began on the night that he took a group of us to Shakespeare's Coriolanus at the Young Vic theater. We trooped into the empty auditorium and he scouted around for the best seats from which to see the open stage.

    It was only on the train home that he opened up about the advantages of a theater in the round compared with one with the traditional proscenium arch. He spoke about the effects of the staging and lighting. Until then, he wanted our impressions to be very much our own.

    He would startle, stimulate, but never dictate. In one lesson I heard of, flowers had featured as a metaphor for love in all its complexity. Toward the end, he brandished a few fresh daffodils. Then he grimaced and crushed them. "Now write about what that puts into your head."

    An early essay of mine took his fancy. It was on perfection. He declaimed its opening words: "Nobody is perfect."A pause. "That's good. It's brief, to the point, arresting. It gives a hint—encapsulates—what is to follow/ never use too many words, if just a few will do." For several days, my self-esteem cruised at a new stratospheric level.

    He had a way of building up our confidence during discussions that sprawled on after class-on literature, university, jobs, teen-age concerns, How to keep up with one's studies and still have a social life, The difficulty of practicing one's religion in a largely secular world.

    "Why be ashamed or embarrassed about admitting that you go to church?" he mused." One ought really to feel proud. You have made your own decision. Certainly, some people are going to laugh. But not the ones who are your real friends."

    It was only years later that I realized how much of his techniques, attitudes and philosophy I was subconsciously following in my own work as a youth worker in south London. How he could listen and make young people feel they were worth listening to. How he could boost the teen-ager's fragile self-confidence. Without being preachy, he showed us how to resist peer pressure.

    But while still at school, there was one mystery that puzzled us. What was Mr. Lawrence doing in a state school like ours when he could easily have had a far better-paid job in a private school?

    The son of a British army officer he had gone to a top Catholic school then studied English at Cambridge University. He had actually started teaching in the private sector.

    When we asked him how he came to be at St. Mark's, his response was elliptical. "If you really like teaching it's something that you want to do for any child in any school."

    His answer left us with several questions to ponder ourselves. Why did we think that good teaching would be wasted on pupils in the stated sector? Wasn't St. Mark's a school to be proud of?

    Certainly, as deputy headmaster he always made it clear that he would accept nothing but the highest standards. On gate duty at the entrance to the school, there was a gentle reproof for a shirt-tail left hanging out or shoelaces untied. For those going home without any books, there was a note of puzzlement. "Aren't you doing any homework tonight?"

    But he was also there to keep an eye out for trouble from less salubrious elements from other schools. As he ambled across the road toward a group of youths one afternoon, my heart tightened. Oh, no, why doesn't he just leave them alone?

    Mr. Lawrence's technique, however, was always superb. Hands clasped behind his back, he asked "Is there anyone in particular you are waiting for?" It was a question put in a spirit of genuine curiosity. He smiled genially at the hard faces turned toward him and at the mumbled replies. "Well, if you're on your way home, the stop is down in that direction, you know." The youths melted away.

    In some of our talks after class, we picked up a glimmer of restlessness, a need for ever tougher challenges. In December 1988 he left to become head of Dick Sheppard Comprehensive school in south London. When I next met him at a St. Mark's reunion, I was studying theology at university; he was eager to hear how I was getting along.

    Things were going well for him, he told me, but clearly it would be a long haul. By then, I knew of his view that so much of what was happening in rest of society—the break-up of family, the declining influence of the church—was simply dumping more and more problems on schools.

    After three years at Dick Shepard, he was appointed head of St. George's, a Catholic school in northwest London. Notorious for falling attendance, poor discipline and low exam results, it was on the point of being closed. A group of pupils seemed intent on disrupting classes. Mr. Lawrence warned them they would have to abide by the rules or leave.

    In his first three years at St. George's, Mr. Lawrence expelled a record 60 pupils. Gradually, vandalism declined and behavior improved. Younger teachers were recruited. He cracked down on truancy and instituted a strict homework regime.

    Slowly, the school began to turn around. In March 1994 the Office for Standards in Education reported: "This head teacher provides strong leadership. There is a clear vision and sense of purpose." By that September, for the first time in many years, the school was full, with 500 pupils. Test scores improved. Soon, for the first time, the school had a waiting list.

    A continuing preoccupation, however, was the violence that prevailed outside the school gates. On December 8, 1995, Mr. Lawrence gave an interview to a local journalist. " We try to make sure the undesirables do " the most serious offense, for which there is usually no second chance, is bringing in a knife."

   A few hours later, he was standing at the main school entrance, seeing his pupils off for the weekend. He noticed one of his boys being confronted by a gang of about a dozen youths, one armed with an iron bar.

    Mr. Lawrence ran out to intervene. Most of the gang fled as he approached. But one youth confronted him and, after slapping and kicking him, lashed out with a knife.

    Deathly pale, Mr. Lawrence at first walked briskly, then staggered, back toward the school, clutching his chest. When he lifted his jacket, there was blood soaking through his shirt. Teachers sat him down on a chair. Instinctively, pupils put their arms around him to comfort him before he collapsed, unconscious.

    At St. Mary's Hospital, staff fought for over seven hours to save him. His wife Frances was at his bedside when, soon after midnight, he died. Aged 48, he left three daughters—Maroushka, Myfanwy and Unity—and a son, Lucien.

   In January, 1996, some 2000 people attended a memorial Mass for Philip Lawrence at Westminster Cathedral in London—and I offered up my own prayers for a man who had made so much difference to me and to others whose lives he had touched.

   My thoughts went to a young man I had come across through my work in a youth club. He was one of a group of teen-agers who left a trail of graffiti, smashed windows and splintered billiard cues. Repeated talks with him about the need to sort out his real friends appeared to make little impression. Finally, the whole group was banned. Several drifted into crime.

    Some months later, the young man reappeared at the club-alone.

    Surprised, I asked where his friends were. "I've decided that they ought to be doing what they want to do," he explained, "and that I ought to do what I think best."

    But then that was something I had learned long before from Mr. Lawrence.

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