From Fishtown to
Gimmerton, Education as a Social Mobility
or The Tale of Boreas,
a case study.
Boreas is a young man, sensitive, quietly spoken and shy.
One of our Non-Traditional students from a white working class broken home in
coastal Fishtown, a depressed post-industrial area of the Northern coast line.
There is high unemployment and few opportunities in Fishtown and so after an
uneventful and unheroic schooling with few aspirations Boreas moved to
Gimmerton. He is a softly spoken gentle soul that life ‘happens to’ rather than
having any agency of his own, or that was the case at the beginning of the
Access course. Boreas’ issues run deep, abandoned by his Dad, left in the care
of a step parent, he drifted and turned to drink and recreational drugs.
The cat’s eye glimmer in the road to change was community
education and night classes in Gimmerton. Being in a new town away from
detrimental influences he was able to switch paths. Without inspiration and
encouragement from the community classes he may have gone farther down the road
of dissolution. He may have drifted into homelessness and harder drugs and
joined the hundreds of street people that line the shop doorways in sleeping bags
and live in tents on the ring road embankments. Education can offer stability
and structure, achievable life goals, increased job opportunities, and a readymade
community of like-minded people to study with.
The community classes led him to the Access course, and
going from strength to strength, he has increased in confidence in himself,
seeing the success he is capable of in the course work. He is a participant in
my Thinking Diary Project and comes to Art Discussion Group. He has surprised
us all by speaking at length and fluently about the texts we have been studying.
The texts are artist diaries and memoirs from Grayson Perry, Virginia Woolf, Tracey
Emin, Marjane Satrapi and Charlotte Salomon. Excerpt are chosen in various
formats, not just written, but graphic novels, and video documentaries to see
what engaged students most.
Boreas could so easily have been a students who drifts in
and slips away again without completing or gaining a qualification. I strongly
believe this community of enquiry we have built together over the year has
given participants an added reason to keep attending, to follow through on their
original intention to complete the course, as well as to develop their critical
thinking and by extension strongly informed writing. Boreas has recently been
accepted on a BA hons course at Gimmerton University of the Arts and although
he will always have issues, it is hoped now he has completed two years at
college he will continue towards his goal of studying at HE level and graduating.
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