Chapter Two Hundred and Four: What the Children Know

He came back on the Monday of the following week.

He came at eight — the school beginning at eight forty-five, the children arriving from eight thirty. He came at eight to have the forty-five minutes of the building before the day, the preparation silence, the attending before the attended.

He brought the notebook this time.

He had decided on the drive north — the same road, the September countryside now a week further into autumn, the light at a different angle, the fields moving from green to the first yellow. He had decided that the first two days had been the body's work and now the notebook could accompany the body without displacing it. The words alongside the attending, not instead of it.

He sat in the reception classroom at the corner and wrote: Monday. The school in its second week of term. The children have been here long enough to have found their habits. Long enough for the patterns to be visible.

He thought about the patterns. He thought about the attending as the reading of the patterns — the repeated behaviour, the thing the child returned to, the going directly. He thought about the four-year-old in the library corner with the birds. He thought about Ada at the south edge. He thought about going directly as the sign — the body moving without instruction toward the thing that had been prepared for it.

The children arrived at eight thirty.

He stayed in the corner of the reception classroom when they came — not standing, still seated on the low chair he had found, the chair at the slightly-above-floor level, the height of the child sitting rather than the adult standing. Patrick had introduced him on the first day to the reception teacher, a woman named Gail, who had agreed to his presence with the equanimity of the experienced teacher — one more adult in the room was a minor variation on a day that contained many variations.

Gail did not direct him. She did not explain what was happening or narrate the children's behaviour for his benefit. She taught and he sat in the corner and attended.

He watched what the children went toward.

There were nineteen children in the reception class. He did not know their names. He had decided not to learn their names this week — not because the names were unimportant but because the names belonged to the relationship and the relationship was not what he was here for. He was here for the patterns. He was here to go directly.

Three children, on Monday morning, went directly to the south wall.

Not the south window — the wall below the south window, the section of wall where the light came down from the high sill and landed on the floor in a bar of September morning sun. The three children, independently, without conferring, went to the sunny bar on the floor and sat in it. They did not play in it — they sat in it, the bodies receiving the warmth and the light, the attending to the sun on the floor that the window had produced accidentally.

He wrote: three children go to the sunny bar on the floor. The window too high to see out of produces a bar of sunlight on the floor at the correct height for the child's body. The children attend to what the window accidentally gives.

He thought about this for a long time. He thought about the window that did not know the child but that accidentally, through the angle of the September morning sun, produced the thing the children went toward. He thought about the accidental honest element — the honest thing produced without intention, the building giving the child what the design had not planned to give.

He thought: if the window were at the correct height the bar of sunlight would be on the wall, not the floor. The window at the correct height would give the child the view and the light at the level of the body. The window at the incorrect height gives the child the light on the floor.

He thought: the children are attending to the compensation. They have found the almost-honest thing in the room that does not know them and they have made it theirs.

He thought about attending as the finding. He thought about the child's body as the instrument that found the honest element in the dishonest room — the bar of sunlight, the corner, the coat hook at the correct height. He thought about the practice as the work of making the honest elements intentional rather than accidental. The window at the correct height so that the child did not have to find the compensation.

He watched the corridor during the morning break.

Twenty minutes of corridor at half past ten — the children released from the classrooms into the in-between space, the corridor and the small outdoor area at the north end. He stood at the corridor wall and watched. He had decided to stand, not sit — the corridor required the standing body, the body that moved through it rather than occupied it.

The corridor was alive.

Not the alarm of the busy corridor — not the shouting and the running, though there was some of both. The corridor was alive in the way that the weight-bearing room was alive when the gathering happened: the conversation was distributed, the social world working without a front, the attention not directed by an adult but finding its own organisation. He saw two children in a serious discussion at the coat hooks. He saw a group of four lying on the floor looking at a crack in the ceiling — not misbehaving, attending, the crack in the ceiling as the found object. He saw a girl standing at the window and looking at the sky above the sill.

He wrote: the corridor alive at break. The social world organizes itself in an un-decided place. The crack in the ceiling as the found object — four children attending to it. The girl at the window looking at the sky because the ground is not available to her.

He thought about the girl at the window looking at the sky. He thought about the four-year-old that Patrick had described, turning toward the window repeatedly. He thought about the children attending to the sky because the window did not give them the ground.

He thought: the school has been teaching the children to look at the sky. Not intentionally. The window height has been the instruction. Look up. The ground is not for you.

He thought about this as the most important thing the two days of attending had produced. The window that taught the child to look up rather than out. The building that had been giving the children the wrong instruction for sixty years — not cruelly, not deliberately, but through the omission of the inside view, the section not drawn from the child's body.

He thought: the correction is not the addition of a view. The correction is the restoration of the ground.

He thought about the new school — not the scheme the authority had approved, but the school that the inside view would produce. He thought about the reception classroom with the window beginning at forty centimetres — the ground visible, the playground accessible to the seated child, the bar of sunlight on the wall at the level of the attending face rather than the floor.

He thought about the corridor with the widened sill — not the wider corridor for fire egress, but the widened window sill at the child's sitting height, the sill as the place in the corridor where the attending happened, the un-decided place given its furniture.

He thought about the girl at the window looking at the sky.

He thought: she will be able to see the ground. The new school will give her back the ground.

He wrote: restore the ground. The correction of the window height as the restoration of what the building has been withholding. Not the addition of the view — the return of the ground to the children who have been looking at the sky.

He thought about the first question written on the first page of the school notebook: what does the school know about the child who does not yet know they belong there?

He thought about the answer that the week was building toward. He thought about the child who did not know they belonged — the September child, the new child, the child at the threshold. He thought about what the building needed to know in order to receive that child.

He thought: the building must give the child the ground before it gives them anything else. Before the view and the light and the corridor and the classroom — the ground. The material beneath the feet is made continuous with the material visible through the window. The child in the building knows where they are in the world.

He thought: Ada on the field path. The same colour as the bedrock. The material continues from the surface to the depth.

He thought: the school must do for the child what the field path did for Ada. Give them the ground they stand on.

He wrote: the ground first. The belonging begins in the ground.

He was glad.

He was, in the weight of the September corridor and the girl at the window and the three children in the bar of sunlight and the ground not yet restored and the section not yet drawn and the inside view still forming, glad.

He was glad.

End of Chapter Two Hundred and Four