Dear school: I can't say you gave me the happiest days of my life

THIS WEEK, I got an unexpected e-mail from the school I left more than 20 years ago. I was asked to write a few words about my schooldays for a book being published to mark the school’s centenary, next year.

It was nice to be asked, and without thinking I said yes, mostly because I reckoned this highly unlikely turn of events would have amused the 18-year-old me greatly.

Then I had second thoughts. What could I say in two or three sentences? I knew what the school wanted: a couple of pithy lines about how it had made me the man I am and how I looked back on those days as the best of my life.

There was just one small problem.

I absolutely hated the school, and to say otherwise would, I figured, have been hypocritical beyond measure and a betrayal of that 18-year-old me.

My school was run by a collection of humourless, violent and often profoundly stupid priests, and it was a place where independent thought was not encouraged.

Frivolous subjects such as music and art were cut from the weekday timetable and exiled to Saturday mornings, with their place taken by Christian doctrine. It wasn’t even called religious education, as that might have forced my teacher to talk about Muslims and Jews. And that would have been too big a cross to bear for a man who could barely mention Protestants without blessing himself.

There was an elocution teacher who pronounced the word “million” as “millin” and spent his classes talking about sheep and how they would make him a millinaire one day. They never did. And we had a stay-at-home maths teacher who, when he bothered to show up, ended all classes early so he could nip out for a fag. In the middle of our study hall.

There was violence too. I won’t overstate it: it wasn’t that bad, and it certainly wasn’t comparable with what previous generations endured, but it was always there and always mindless.

On my first day in the school, the terrible trauma of finding myself studying Latin worsened when my teacher produced a thick leather strap, slapped it down hard on his desk and explained in graphic detail what would happen if we got our declensions wrong. Over the next three years, I got my declensions wrong. A lot.

My Irish teacher fashioned his (illegal) corporal punisher out of electrical cable, and when students displeased him – as I often did – he whipped our hands. Another teacher, a small man with a big temper, once beat a boy with the boy’s own crutch because he was two minutes late for, wait for it, Confession.

If you didn’t play certain sports you were invisible – unless you had the misfortune to be small(ish) with an unusual surname and a tendency to wind up bullies and demented teachers, in which case life was never dull. Or easy.

This week’s e-mail brought these memories back.

What should I do? Should I blame this 21st-century school for the sins of its 20th-century fathers? I know now that, although it wasn’t great, it was of its time and some of the blame might rest with me. I was precocious and easily distracted and dressed like a mod in a world full of rockers. A mod? Seriously? Oh, yes, I had the parka and the (forbidden) target patches that proclaimed “We will fight them on the beaches” and everything. And, yes, those patches were lying: there was no “we” and I was a rubbish fighter.

Something else came to mind. I remembered meeting my former headmaster some years after I left, at my father’s funeral. When I was a boy, he was a towering, terrifying figure. Now he looked shrunken. We shook hands and made eye contact – for the first and only time – and I saw sympathy and humanity in his eyes.

Although my school was hard, there was no sign of the sexual abuse that occurred at other Catholic institutions and this man was, partially at least, to thank for that. Despite his terrifying presence, he cared about education and the children in his charge.

So yesterday I decided to write the words. There wasn’t a lot I could say. “I won’t lie. My schooldays were not the best days of my life – I kind of hope those days are still ahead – but I do owe the place a lot. It educated me to a higher standard than I deserved, given my bloody-mindedness and shocking study habits, and it helped me decide what I wanted and, crucially, what I didn’t want out of life. I hope the school’s future is bright.”

Who knows whether they’ll publish it? After reading this, I’m guessing they won’t.

Shane Hegarty is on leave