Remembering Michael Marland
Remembering Michael Marland
Remembering Michael Marland
How five years pass.
When I started writing textbooks for Longman in 1990, I was introduced to Michael Marland. These were the days when publishers would entertain prospective authors over lavish lunches.
Longman had its base in a block of chic apartments at 5, Bentinck Sreet - formerly the flat of spy Guy Burgess.
Michael wasn’t exactly a stranger to me. I knew his name. When equivocating about whether to become a teacher or not, I had read his classic manual The Craft of the Classroom. I loved it. I was reassured by it and inspired by it and, like Michael himself, I became an English teacher and, much later, a headteacher.
Through summer holidays I would work with him on publishing projects and, in an act of extraordinary generosity, when I moved in 1997 to Suffolk Michael offered his cottage on the eastern edge of the charming village of Walsham le Willows. I lived there for my first term as a deputy head and worked there, in his study, surrounded by articles and books by him and about him.
When he died, I was asked by the Times to write his obituary. I felt humbled by this and daunted. Here’s what I wrote:
Michael Marland CBE
With the death of Michael Marland, the world of education feels a darker and more insular place. In all he said and wrote, he reminded us that schools are about people, not systems, and that as teachers we have more influence than we sometimes realise powerfully to shape the lives of the young people in our care, irrespective of their background, class or faith.
He was first a teacher, then Headteacher of Woodberry Down School (1971-79) and founding headteacher of the ambitious three-site North Westminster Community School (1980-99), where his blend of bow-tied charm, erudition and irrepressible enthusiasm (for language, for the arts, for ideas) would entice famous figures to come and share ideas and performances with students and staff.
He influenced British education deeply. His best known work was The Craft of the Classroom, first published in 1975 and reissued in 2003 for a new generation of teachers. Its surface air of reassuring practicality – a supreme dissection of the conventions and routines that underpin good classroom management – hides an underlying toughness. If a would-be teacher finds the notion of “control” repugnant, wrote Marland, “he should reconsider his profession”. Good classroom management is not optional: it is central to becoming a good teacher and, in turn, we can be “more subtle, more friendly and more yourself”.
For some forty years, as the changing fads of curriculum and education policy washed over schools, Michael’s focus remained on helping us to see what good schools do. He knew educational law backwards. Indeed in his wallet he carried a tiny typed paragraph from the Education Reform Act and would brandish it at key moments in discussions about the need for a broad, interlinked curriculum.
In the mid-1970s he shaped the concept of pastoral care: the very term “pastoral” (Michael knew that words mattered very much) helped us to conceptualise the role of the tutor as someone who takes charge of pupils, shepherding them, knowing when to intervene and when to step back. “The central task of the school,” he wrote, “must be sensitive, warm, efficient, human, efficient, realistic and thorough” (Pastoral Care, 1974).
As a member of the Bullock committee in 1972-5 he began the process of reclaiming language study as an integral part of the English curriculum some years after grammar teaching appeared to have fallen out of fashion. His columns in the Guardian and Times Education Supplement reminded us that a teacher’s role was to help students to make links across subjects: good curriculum design wasn’t about narrow compartmentalization but vibrant connections. He wanted young people to know about their own culture – local architecture was a particular interest – as well as cultures beyond their own.
He was a committed internationalist who was in demand as a speaker across the globe. He was delighted also to serve as part of the Commonwealth Institute Education Committee since the 1980s and made a major positive contribution to multi-cultural life as part of Westminster Arts Council and as Vice-Chair of the City of Westminster Race Equality Council.
Michael’s writing was prolific and he influenced the nature of reading within the English curriculum. His ground-breaking anthologies of short stories - Longman Imprint Books - brought a new grittiness to our classrooms, introducing young people to the writings of such writers as Alan Sillitoe, Stan Barstow and Keith Waterhouse. These small, densely-packed volumes sustained many of us through long lessons, enabling great writers to weave their magic over our students, their language crackling, their issues relevant and motivating.
Michael was a magnificent and painstaking editor, generous with his time for contributors, fascinated by ideas that would tumble unstoppably forth (“well, that’s very interesting,” he would say, “and it reminds me of something I once read …”).
His holidays were mostly spent working on various publishing projects in the wonderful, sprawling farmhouse near Walsham le Willows that came to life each summer as Michael and an extended family descended upon this little-known corner of Suffolk. His study would always be awash with books and papers and proofs (he loved proof-reading and had a specially large table in the music room for the purpose), whilst the background voices of youngsters playing badminton or droning tractors drifted in through open windows.
His family was integral to his life and they were around him at the end. Michael’s first marriage to Eileen was cut short by her untimely death in 1968. There were four sons and one daughter, then one son from his marriage to Linda in 1989. He took great pride in the achievements of all of his children, including his son Ollie who inherited the keyboard skills of Michael’s father, the concert pianist and composer Bert Marland. (Michael was charmed by the continuing small trickle of annual royalties from Bert’s compositions).
Michael was a passionate believer that education was a major force for good, and that regardless of race, belief, social background or attitude education helps us to understand ourselves and each other. Education, he reminded us, isn’t about systems and strategies and structures.
His craft was the classroom, but his passion was people and unlocking their potential.
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Michael Marland, CBE, Headteacher and educationalist, was born on December 28 1934. He died on 3 July 2008 aged 73.
Geoff Barton
9 August 2013
Friday, 9 August 2013