LMA Book Group - Black Teacher by Beryl Gilroy

Beryl Gilroy was born in Guyana and came to London in the 1950s to work as a teacher and to study modern educational theories. This memoir, which was first published in 1974, recounts her experiences of teaching in London. Gilroy was the first Black headteacher in the UK when she took up a post at a primary school in Camden, and this memoir shows how such career progression was hard won.

Readers had a variety of reactions to the memoir. Several readers noted that they anticipated the racism that Gilroy describes but were still shocked by her actual experiences. Most shocking was the reaction of parents to Gilroy’s race – she is able to win round the children, who know no better, but the comments she relates from mothers in particular were deeply offensive. Gilroy presents herself as stoical and resilient, able to rise above such challenges for the benefit of the children she teachers.

The memoir opens with Gilroy’s reflections on working in an office when she first arrives in London in order to make ends meet before finding a teaching job. She finds British people and their habits unfathomable and relates the peculiarities she finds amongst her colleagues. The blatant racism is something she seems able to counteract, but the episode where a colleague dies, and no one from the office attempts to go to her funeral leaves Gilroy perplexed. We get a sense that she is confused by the stiff upper lip of her colleagues, and by their social awkwardness. She is the only one who attends the funeral and her colleagues seem cold and distant as a result.

It is her innate humanity, particularly towards children – even when they are at their worst – that is the overriding feature of her narrative. She is an emotionally intelligent and perceptive teacher, intervening to stop children bullying each other, understanding the power structures in classrooms to get children onside, and giving children the opportunities to let off steam when necessary. We had a few teachers on the call who were able to offer their own reflections to the discussion. It was noted that Gilroy’s child-centred approach to teaching was progressive for its time and one which would have been seen as radical. Indeed, photographs of London County Council schools from this period show old-fashioned Victorian classrooms, with children in rows in front of blackboards – a long way from modern teaching methods. Some of these classrooms were enormous, and we discussed the size of classes that teachers had to control.

Gilroy’s memoir focuses on the children and her teaching at the exclusion of other parts of her life and some readers found this frustrating. She briefly mentions moving to suburbia where she was isolated as a result of her race and several of us wished she had explored this experience in more detail. We wanted to understand Gilroy the woman as well as the professional, but she doesn’t let us. There are good reasons for this – Gilroy was still a teacher at the time the book was published, she had to present a particular image of herself – particularly as she was a rare Black voice in education at the time. However we wanted to know more about wider experiences, for example in her relationships with her colleagues – we learn she avoids many of them in the staff room – and more about her family life and her children.

One reader made the very good point that we could have benefitted from a more rounded picture of Gilroy’s experiences, particularly in her reactions to events. There must have been times when she went home after a frustrating day at school and vented about the children and adults she had to deal with. We were angry on her behalf on numerous occasions – it is impossible to believe that she could always take these instances in her stride. But then again, she has to portray an absolute professionalism and capability and she could not demonstrate and weakness or fallibility.

It was a pleasure to share some of the material from the Bogle L’Ouverture archives held at LMA relating to Gilroy and the republication of this work in the 1990s. Her letters to publisher Jessica Huntley reveal her very human frustrations with the publishing industry. This treasure-trove of a collection gives us a great insight into the challenges of publishing Black writers at times when the wider publishing industry could be dismissive and disinterested.

I would like to thank my colleague, archivist Rebecca Adams, for joining us to discuss Mollie Hunte, another teacher and educationalist, whose records were recently catalogued (LMA/4774). The lives of the two women have numerous similarities, but Gilroy worked in a way that was rather more imbedded in the mainstream education system, unlike Mollie, whose work encompassed community activism and supplementary education. Both approaches are essential in understanding the development of multicultural education.

Many thanks to all of those who attended, particularly those of you who were able to share your own experiences.