kids

Children's thirst for knowledge is positively unquenchable, especially when it is knowledge of no particular educational benefit.

Knowledge like when snacktime is. Or exactly what the snack consists of. Or whether we're going swimming, and why not, because it said in the brochure we were definitely going swimming! Or whether they can use the green paint as well as the blue paint. Or why I have red shoes, and whether I deliberately bought a red rucksack to match them. The questions simply never end, and they are lucky I have the proverbial patience of a proverbial saint in answering or ignoring them, depending on my mood.

Sadly, they are never as insistent about knowing the difference between 'some' and 'any', or when exactly we use the Present Perfect over the Past Simple, which is dreadfully unfortunate, as those are the only answers that are forthcoming. (If you want to know, 'some' is used in positive sentences and when making offers, 'any' in negative sentences and questions; Present Perfect is used for actions that started in the past but are still relevant in the present, whereas Past Simple is only used for actions that are completed). I fear I may have lost half of my readership with that interlude - I promise not to lecture on grammar any more. Much.

Anyway, as I am bombarded with irrelevant questions, I generally do my best to avoid answering them. Are we going to play football today? Maybe. Can I throw this out the window? I'd prefer if you didn't. What's in the box? You'll see in a minute. Can I have another snack? It depends.

One kid actually ticked me off today for being so secretive and unwilling to answer, and it was then that I realised that all authority figures are the same, from directors of small English camps in Berlin, to Prime Ministers and Presidents the world over. We're in a position where divulging more information than strictly necessary can come back and bite you very firmly in the arse - what if I promise swimming tomorrow, and some unforeseen event beyond my control cancels it? I have a bunch of disappointed kids who are guaranteed not to be happy with whatever alternative I come up with. But if I avoid answering the question and then suddenly announce that we're all going swimming, they are all overjoyed and think I am the best camp director ever. I come out of it smelling of roses, they come out smelling of chlorine and stale urine, and everyone is happy.

Messers Cameron, Cowan, Obama, et al, while having slightly better paid and (arguably) marginally more stressful positions than I, are no different. They're going to determinedly dodge any questions they don't want to answer, and triumphantly bring out the good news when a popularity boost is needed. Their tax cuts are my mid-afternoon muesli bars, and the unavailability of swimming on my camp is pretty much exactly the same as their rising unemployment.

And to think that I was foolish enough to believe that English camp was an escape from reality - actually, it's a perfect microcosm of real life. Rampage for PM!

"bokbokbokbokBOKBOKBOKBOKKAAAAWK", cackled the chicken.

"ogg-ogg-ogg-oggle-ogg-ogg-ogg-oggle", hooted the turkeys, but only after I whistled at them.

"arf arf arf arf mmmmhmhmm arf arf", yapped the tiny, tiny nine-week-old puppy, snuggling deeper into my jumper and curling up to sleep.

"OMG-OMG-OMG-OMG-OMG-OMG-OMG-OMG", shrieked the little girls, on seeing the aforementioned ludicrously cute little puppy.

"wak-wak-wak-wak-wak-WAK-WAK-WAAAAK", hooted the ducks, trying to escape from the crowd of little girls frustrated at the fact that there was only one ludicrously cute little puppy to cuddle.

"onk-onk-onk-onk-onk-onk-ONK-ONK-ONKONKONK", blared the geese, menacing in a way that only a gaggle of geese can be.

"STOMP-STOMP-STOMP-STOMP-STOMP", demanded the room of hideously overweight line dancers in the ranch next to the farm.

"eeeeiiiiggghhhhh", muttered the horses patiently, tolerating the little girls clambering all over them.

"eeeeeeeeeeee-awwwwwwwww", protested the donkeys, jealous at being ignored.

"squeak-squeak-squeak-squeak-squeak", piped the squirrels and rabbits, safe in a cage from the vice-like grip of cuteness-obsessed little girls.

"This was a pretty darn good week", concluded I, emitting an odour of farmyard and contentment.

I am back from an extremely difficult week on camp, and the beard, even though it looked pretty great, is gone - I needed to purge myself clean after spending all my time dealing with conflicts between horrible, aggressive, racist pre-teens.

Yes, racist. These kids did not throw around normal, classic childish insults like 'silly billy', 'poop brains' or 'smelly head', followed by a light slap and a run to tell the nearest authority figure of the terrible incident that had just occurred.

No, these ones hurled around words like 'Jew', 'Turk' and 'Arab', thinking they were insults, being insulted by them, before launching into a massive brawl - ninja kicks to the chest, bottles being flailed wildly in the direction of eleven-year-old heads despite the director, me, standing in between the two, frankly petrified at the amount of brutality and hatred they could muster up, their youthful faces contorted by rage and desire to injure.

Of course, eleven-year-old boys being eleven-year-old boys, a couple of hours later, they were all playing together again as if nothing had happened. The scars inflicted on me from the incident, however, lasted much, much longer. And when the racial slurs just didn't stop, I felt like I had no choice but to sit the entire group down and explain to them just how fucking disgusting, utterly revolting and completely unacceptable their behaviour was.

I explained that I am, for want of a better word, a 'foreigner'. I explained how I live in Germany, how I love living in Germany and how I feel more at home here than I ever have anywhere else. I explained that when I hear someone using 'Turk', or 'Arab', or 'Jew' as an insult, it makes me wonder how welcome I really am in my adopted homeland. It makes me wonder if there's someone, somewhere saying 'fucking Irish' as an insult. These days, there probably isn't, but as recently as fifty years ago, there certainly was. I spoke of my boss, a lady from England, married to a gentleman from Ivory Coast who have the most beautiful baby I have ever seen (who, incidentally, is now about ten thousand times cuter than in that photo), a child who is already well on the road to being trilingual. I spoke of how understanding and acceptance is the missing link, that if you think a nationality can be an insult, then you just need to sit down and read a history book - just about any one will do.

And I think it got through to them. One, the one who called a Kosovar Albanian kid a shitty Arab, was almost in tears from shame. Which, if I am honest, is exactly what I wanted to happen. Another, who had earlier claimed that 'Turks are like pigs', condemned his local Nazi party for their anti-foreigners policies.

Usually I take joy in thinking about what the kids I work with are capable of achieving once they've added a few years to their collection. The potential for that group simply scares me. They were a stark reminder that it's not really the awesome, cool, talented, smart kids that need help.

When I was a kid, my mother was never opposed to a spot of corporal punishment to teach me some manners. On the very rare occasions when the threats of a smack actually materialised into a smack, I was generally shocked at the brutality of the punishment being meted out to me. Now, though, I can see that they were never aggressive, never handed out impulsively, and most importantly, always open-handed and on my squidgy, puppy-fat-insulated bottom. It was always a last resort, and never failed to communicate the gravity of the situation I had gotten myself into without actually inflicting any pain on me.

The other day, there was a woman and her child sitting across from me on the train. As an enormously neurotic individual, I am usually quick to move away from children on public transport, as they are little arseholes. This kid, however, was very quiet and sweet and not much of an annoyance at all. Relatively speaking, of course.

Anyway, as she was quietly swinging out of the arm of the seat, registering about a three on the Rampage Annoyance Scale (ten's the maximum, and is regularly achieved by slow-walking pedestrians, motorist who like their horns a little too much, and slow-moving supermarket queues), her mother leaned over and punched, yes, punched her square on the forehead. Later, as the kid climbed up on the seat, the mother aimed another vicious punch at her, but mercifully missed.

Now, I quite strongly disagree with EU directives and such attempts to outlaw the smacking of children - I am the living, breathing example of why smacking a child can be a good thing, when it is executed in a measured and sensible fashion. A smack should never be able the infliction of pain on a child. It should, when all other attempts have failed, shock the child into realising that what they are doing is absolutely not acceptable.

Having seen that woman mistreat her child like that, I still don't think there should be a smacking ban. I don't believe for a second that a ban would make that woman change her abusive behaviour. A ban would do nothing more than add another level of illegality to her aggressive tendencies, and only a fool would imagine that it would encourage to treat her offspring with respect. In hindsight, I realise that I should have at least intervened, but my desire for conflict avoidance is much too high for that.

What do you think? Did your parents smack you? If you're a parent, would you ever smack your child? Why/why not?

It's 1830 on a normal Wednesday evening. I'm sitting on a swivel chair at the head of a classroom of fifteen eight-year-olds. I'm surveying the scene.

There's a very colourful and very, very childlike drawing on the blackboard called 'My Dream Garden'. There's a big yellow sun, with 'the sun is yellow' written beside it. There's a big tree with 'the tree is green and brown' written beside it. There's a lame-looking red bird flapping forlornly through the sky, with 'the bird is red' and 'the sky is blue' written in close proximity. The drawing was made by me in an effort to coax even the tiniest speck of English from the dull-witted, yelping, barely cognisant beings in front of me.

My request that they draw their dream garden is met with enthusiasm by a grand total of two children - without doubt the two that will someday manage to do something that is far, far beyond the capacity of the majority of inhabitants of this town and realise the importance of speaking another language.

The others?

Well, one's chewing his book, and trying to teach the girl beside him how to chew hers. Two more are lying on the floor. Another is staring into space with a look so vacant that the cobwebs in his head have long since been vacated by the spiders who really just wanted something a little more from their lives. Two more are cackling hysterically at the fact that another farted, and the farter is vociferously protesting his innocence. There's another who is furtively glancing up at me every few moments, because he is hiding Vacant Corpse's pens. The joke's on him though, because the punchline will never come. He'll exasperatedly replace them when the only reaction he gets from Vacant Corpse is a stare that has a minutely shorter reach into the distance than usual. There are two more individuals in the corner having a loud argument - one is shouting 'GOAT!', and the other is responding with 'COW' - all ad nauseam, and all in Italian.

I sigh and look at the time.

It's 1835 on a normal Wednesday evening.

In exactly two hours, I will be alone in a classroom with twenty eight-year-olds. The mere typing of that sentence sends a shiver down my spine, which happily salutes the dread that is filling me from my toes on the way past.

My five years of teaching experience has shown me quite definitively that I should never, ever enter a classroom with any beings under twelve years of age. I mean, they are not even human until at least fourteen! Abortion should be legal until then at the very least!

Provided I am not in a classroom with kids, there are very few variables that can affect my lesson plan. Very soon, there will be twenty of them, all capable of acts of unpredictability outrageous enough to make chaos theorists pack it in and become accountants. Walls will be scaled, crayons will be eaten, brawls will erupt, limbs will be severed, a previously (arguably) sound mind will teeter on the edge of sanity, wondering whether diving into the abyss would provide any solace.

My Italian is coming on in leaps and bounds, but is clearly not yet capable of grabbing a classroom by the scruff of the neck, shaking it around a bit, re-imposing order and resuming the lesson the way my German could. They will just briefly look up from devouring the juicy red stuff within my ribcage, and cackle evilly at my attempts at authority before returning to gobbling down my lower intestine. They won't find much more than old pizza in there (three in three days now), but I doubt that that will dissuade them.

Shudder.

Wish me luck.