time and public money. This country would be a sight better of if they were left to get on with their jobs.’
‘The courses they attend,’ continued the Principal before anyone with a social conscience could intervene, ‘are craft-oriented with the exception of one hour, one obligatory hour of Liberal Studies. Now the difficulty with Liberal Studies is that no one knows what it means.’
‘Liberal Studies means,’ said Mrs Chatterway, who prided herself on being an advocate of progressive education, in which role she had made a substantial contribution to the illiteracy rate in several previously good primary schools, ‘providing socially deprived adolescents with a firm grounding in liberal attitudes and culturally extending topics…’
‘It means teaching them to read and write,’ said a company director. ‘It’s no good having workers who can’t read instructions.’
‘It means whatever anyone chooses it to mean,’ said the Principal hastily. ‘Now if you are faced with the problem of having to find lecturers who are prepared to spend their lives going into classrooms filled with Gasfitters or Plasterers or Printers who see no good reason for being there, and keeping them occupied with a subject that does not, strictly speaking, exist, you cannot afford to pick and choose the sort of staff you employ. That is the crux of the problem.’
The Committee looked at him doubtfully.
‘Am I to understand that you are suggesting that Liberal Studies teachers are not devoted and truly creative individuals imbued with a strong sense of vocation?’ asked Mrs Chatterway belligerently.
‘No,’ said the Principal, ‘I am not saying that at all. I am merely trying to make the point that Liberal Studies lecturers are not as other men are. They either start out odd or they end up odd. It’s in the nature of their occupation.’
‘But they are all highly qualified,’ said Mrs Chatterway, ‘they all have degrees.’
‘Quite. As you say they all hold degrees. They are all qualified teachers but the stresses to which they are subject leave their mark. Let me put it this way. If you were to take a heart transplant surgeon and ask him to spend his working life docking dogs’ tails you would hardly expect him to emerge unscathed after ten years’ work. The analogy is exact, believe me, exact.’
‘Well, all I can say,’ protested the building contractor, ‘is that not all Liberal Studies lecturers end up burying their murdered wives at the bottom of pile shafts.’
‘And all I can say,’ said the Principal, ‘is that I am extremely surprised more don’t’
The meting broke up undecided.
Chapter 11
As dawn broke glaucously over East Anglia Wilt sat in the Interview Room at the central Police Station isolated from the natural world and in a wholly artificial environment that included a table, four chairs, a detective sergeant and a fluorescent light on the ceiling that buzzed slightly. There were no windows, just pale green walls and a door through which people came and went occasionally and Wilt went twice to relieve himself in the company of a constable. Inspector Flint had gone to bed at midnight and his place had been taken by Detective Sergeant Yates who had started again at the beginning.
‘What beginning?’ said Wilt.
