9/11/03: character-clip: a stammer.(Literature)

AGAIN ON THE PHONE to G, we bemoaned the constraining regulations that hedge the powers of schoolteachers to be able to commit their full expressive being to the job. No touchy-touchy, no referring to country of origin, no this, no that. We berated the regulate-to-eliminate ethos that governs multicultural education.

G, on the rounds of Ins sheep farm, is a fan of Geraldine Doogue's radio program. He told me of a woman who, in this context, had written a letter to GD's show describing an experience in the early fifties (sixties?). The correspondent had been a pupil in a primary school class where there had been a stutterer. The bard-pressed teacher had lacked the patience to deal with the stutterer, so sent him to languish at the back of the class. One day the awesome bogeyman of that era, a school inspector, had arrived, and stood watching as the class proceeded. After an interval he had requested, "Do you mind if I take over?" and had begun asking questions around the class. One question had been to the stutterer who, predictably, had muffed it badly. So the inspector went to the back of the class, sat down at the stutterer's desk facing him, put his hand over the boy's hand, and asked the question again. He was given a perfect answer.

"That couldn't happen under the present ...