Sarfraz Manzoor

.

Last week, on a cold, brilliant blue morning I returned for the first time in 20 years to my old secondary school. The invitation from the head was asking me to speak to students to help mark the school achieving specialist status as a performing arts college. Having recently published a childhood memoir that revisited my school days, the invitation was hard to resist, which was how I came to be watching a succession of students sing, rap and dance in a cold, crowded gymnasium hall. The most positive consequence of the performing arts specialist status is that it makes available additional funds; more worryingly it also arguably makes such schools complicit in encouraging students to pursue pipedreams.

According to the head, talent shows such as X Factor had already planted the idea in young peoples’ minds that they too could emulate what Leona Lewis and Girls Aloud had achieved. During my speech to the students I asked, somewhat light heartedly, who among the audience was planning to audition for X Factor in the future. It was by no means a scientifically conducted poll but the hysterical shrieks that greeted the inquiry suggested that these young people placed greater faith in talent shows than is perhaps healthy.

This suspicion was confirmed when I watched the student performances. There was a dispiritingly cold efficiency in the singing that seemed less about self-expression or enjoyment than a relentless pursuit of reality television-generated success. It was not so much about performance as auditioning and, most depressingly, it was all sanctioned and encouraged by the school. “Don’t let anyone tell you there is no talent in this school,” bellowed the deputy to wild cheering “we have X Factor going on right here on this stage!” The singers were, I will happily admit, talented, but it still felt wrong that they were being told at such tender years to put so much faith in themselves as future pop stars.

This would not have worried me so much had the head not already admitted that literacy was a real problem for many students at the school. The worst affected were white boys, many of whom began school lagging behind and never caught up, making them more vulnerable to later social problems. The causes of poor literacy were, I was told, because the parents of these young people rarely spoke to them: the old rituals of eating together had vanished in favour of young people spending time in front of computer screens, living virtual lives while their real prospects plummeted.

If extra funds are to be made available to schools would it not be more sensible to use them to encourage greater literacy for these vulnerable young people? It is not only the fault of some schools but they are complicit in a culture that claims everything is possible if you think you deserve it. It also suggests that success need not involve such mundane activities like academic study, an apprenticeship or application. “Singing, presenting, face modelling, whatever you want me to do, I’m there,” said Alisha Bennett after being voted off last weekend’s X Factor, adding with barely concealed desperation “this is not the end of the road for me”.

To the students who auditioned, sorry, sang at my old school last week, Alicia Bennett would be an icon only a few notches below Leona Lewis, Shayne Ward and Lee Mead. The final performance was from the school choir who launched into a spirited version of I Believe. Perhaps in previous times this might have been an old gospel number: today they sang what amounted to an anthem to narcissism and ambition: God is dead, long live Simon Cowell.

When I was a schoolboy 20 years ago the students were, like now, from working-class backgrounds; many came from former council estates. The suggestion that anyone from my school could have ended up working in the performing arts or the media appeared impossible; today’s students seem to think that rather than it being impossible, it is inevitable that they will be famous, rich and successful. I am not sure who was more fortunate, today’s generation or mine.