Whose insanity counts?

It is the school holidays. So there was none of the usual gathering of students at the bus stop across the street.

My thoughts drifted to the process of moulding the youth such that they function effectively and without causing too much trouble. Education. Enculturation. Brainwashing.


R. D. Laing (1927-1989) was a Glaswegian, Zen, psychiatrist and was associated with the anti-psychiatry movement. I read several of his books in the 1970s while I was dealing with ‘disturbed’ kids in the slum schools of Edinburgh. I was drawn to him in part from his celebrated quote -

"Insanity - a perfectly rational adjustment to an insane world."

In Edinburgh many of the ‘problem’ kids came from ‘insane’ homes – drug and alcohol abuse, domestic violence, child abuse, willful neglect etc. I was paid to teach them science but in fact I spent a lot of time just listening to their stories. Paying attention!

There was a strong anti-authority ethos among the kids and a corresponding ethos of corporal punishment among the staff. One day I went to break up a fight between two 12 year olds and they began hitting me. I therefore decided that, for the greater good, I would have to get a belt. I ordered a three pronged ‘extra-heavy’ model from the factory in Lochgelly in Fife. I only ever used it twice within a few days of its arriving. Word got round that “Clarkies got a belt” and the norms changed. They behaved ‘better’ not because Mr-nice-guy asked them to (why should they bother?) but rather so as to avoid being beaten (a perfectly normal situation!).

One day I was locking up the lab after a first year class had left when I heard a quiet voice calling my name.  I went back in and looked around but couldn’t see anybody. And then Johnnie Reid appeared outside the window – which was on the second floor. He had been standing on a very narrow ledge. I helped him get back in safely. I was relieved rather than annoyed. He had no explanation for what he was doing. He didn’t have much to say at all. I put it down to attention seeking, to a desire to be noticed. Was his behavior insane?

After Edinburgh I taught in schools in Jamaica, Zambia and the S Sudan. There were few discipline problems. In some cases I found it embarrassing to have pupils stand to attention and salute when I entered the room.

In the high school where I taught in Jamaica there was a 4th year cream stream for particularly bright kids from the local junior secondary schools. There was an element of indiscipline amongst them. For example Rodney the Rastafarian. During my Zoology lectures he insisted on leaning against the back wall knitting his Rasta bonnets. But he was paying close attention to what I was saying and would ask penetrating questions. Several other teachers felt that he was impudent and should be expelled. Whose insanity counts?