Honorary Graduates
Orations and responses
Response by Leila Berg
Thank you for this great honour that is being paid me.
All my life I have sought to empower children. There are many strange words
and phrases around now, some of them I think aiming to block communication
rather than to ease it, but this is a straightforward and honest phrase “to
empower children.”
In the twenties two biologists began to set up the Peckham Health Centre in
London. A health centre to them was about health which is what they intended to
study, not about sickness, as it is for us. So when, for instance, they made the
cots for the crèche that would be part of the centre, they made them not with
high sides to deliberately imprison the babies and stop them getting out and
crawling off, they made them with sides as low as possible so that when the
babies felt strong enough, vital enough, to want of their own accord to get out
and crawl off, they got out and crawled off. This was empowering babies.
In the sixties I worked out a series of first story books for children who
are just beginning to want to read. It was about the life they knew and not
manipulative. Here is one (you must envisage pictures on every page with just a
few words).
“Nan, my nan, Can sit And knit And knit And knit. Look at it. Who will it
fit? Crocodiles? Nan smiles. Giraffes? Nan laughs. Gorillas going out? Nan falls
about.
Who’s it for Nan Who?
It’s for you love, You!*
Ooo!”**
That is empowering four to six year olds.
* (spoken aloud with surprise) * (spoken aloud with horror)
In the sixties, Risinghill Comprehensive school opened in a crumbling,
decrepit, falling down part of London. Many of the kids’ fathers were in jail,
many of their mothers on the streets. “Comprehensive school” then was a totally
new phrase.
One day two of the Risinghill boys were wandering in the local market and
snatched a basket from an elderly lady out shopping and ran off with it. Because
it was a true community school, and she was angry and upset, she went to Michael
Duane, the headmaster. He instantly called a meeting of the whole school and
told everyone what had happened. “Her money has all gone, she had spent it on
food for the whole family for the whole week and now she has no food, no money
either. The family has nothing to eat. You understand what that means. We
must put it right. If the boys come around to my study right away, we can
sort it out quickly.”
The boys came, quite cheerfully. He said “What did you do with everything
that was in the basket?” “Ate it” they said, as if it was obvious. “Well
everything you could eat, some things you couldn’t - flour, cleaning stuff and
that - so we chucked it in the road.” He said “Look, try and remember everything
that was in the basket, absolutely everything, then go to the market and buy the
whole lot again. Here’s some money. Take all the stuff round to her and then,
when you’ve made it right with her, and she is happy, come back to me and we’ll
work out how you can pay me back.”
They did all that with gusto, brought him the change, and they paid him back
in quite a short time, the two of them doing odd jobs. The police were never
called in, nor psychologists, nor social workers, nor governors, not even
parents. They sorted it out themselves. Everyone was competent, cheerful,
satisfied. That was empowering twelve year olds.
Here is a final happening. I wrote the book on Risinghill school. It became
famous overnight and many things happened as a result, continue to happen to
this day. One of the things that happened was, a drop-in centre was opened in
one of the local streets to give the kids information they needed. Information
for instance, on who the people were in these courtrooms they knew so well - the
magistrates, the judge, the clerk, the jury. Even eight year olds needed
information like this. They appeared as witnesses for older brothers and sisters
and friends. To have their own legal centre that told them things empowered
them.
Eventually I left London and came to live in Wivenhoe, a little riverside
place. I chose it because I’d read so often, about so many people, who had moved
out of a place where they’d been living for years (and I’d been in different
parts of London for fifty years) and within a month or so, they were dead. I
decided I would organise things better than that. So I drew up a list of
criteria - what I would need in a place to be happy - and ended up with a short
list, and finally, Wivenhoe.
After a little while, I needed to get in touch with the Children’s Legal
Centre again. I phoned the old number. No one there. Eventually I managed to get
their new phone number. Somehow the area code seemed strangely familiar. “Where
are you?” “Wivenhoe.” Imagine ! I was incredulous, amazed. They had followed me.
“Where in Wivenhoe ?” “The University of Essex.”
I went round, and have been around again quite recently. Of course I found,
not a drop-in centre, not a place for kids to use of their own accord for their
gritty survival. It has become an important national organisation run by
dedicated people to empower adults; parents, teachers, social workers,
whoever, to help children. Which is fine. And there are many reasons for
this to have happened: changing place, changing time, changing possibilities.
But to empower children is, above all, to equip them to move things for
themselves, when they wish. Perhaps, since that astonishing coincidence at
Wivenhoe seems to lay something on me, perhaps, coming to Wivenhoe was not only
for the fish shop, for the book shop, for the river and the fields, for the
nearness to Ipswich film centre, and all the other things that were on that list
of criteria. Perhaps it was because the Children’s Legal Centre was going to
follow me and we would join up again, so that perhaps it could empower children
again, as well as the caring adults.
Thank you again for bestowing on me the honour of Doctor of the
University, and for giving me a chance to say something that has been niggling
at me.