A lifting of the Curse

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3083996/Pupils-Wales-held-taught-Welsh-Principal-leading-private-school-attacks-narrow-minded-people-call-teaching-language.html

https://www.reddit.com/r/Wales/comments/3622i5/toby_belfield_claims_forcing_welsh_on_students

I feel like a curse has been lifted. The curse of Ruthin School. The fact that the place was mentioned in the news this month has allowed me to breath a sigh of relief. As a former pupil I have been allowed to pass judgement on the present Headmaster and his comments on Welsh language education. Whether you see the Welsh language as a help or a hindrance, this is Wales and the language carries the name of the country in which it is spoken. Welsh is a 'Guerrilla' language and it is fighting a 'Guerrilla War' against the forces of Imperialism and Capitalism. The mountain behind the cricket pavilion is Moel Fenlli and next to that is Moel Famau and we lived between the two. My father had returned to the 'Vale of Clwyd' the area of his birth and he was keen to have his son educated in the school that his own father and brother had attended.  Between the years 1977 - 1983 I attended this hell hole as a day boy in burgundy blazer and cap. We were referred to as the 'Red Caps' by the locals. There were four houses, Casson, Goodman, Kenyon and Trevor. Kenyon and Trevor were for the Boarders and Casson and Goodman for the Day attendees. Very few local children attended this school, most came from Mold or Rhyl. I had been educated up until the age of seven in the Welsh Language at Bodhyfryd in Wrexham and then we fatefully moved to a more rural setting and the education became more austere, regimented and draconian. There was a primary school called Arden in Ruthin which strangely was run from a house in a residential street. The infants in one room downstairs and the juniors in one room upstairs. I went from all Welsh to no Welsh apart from the language spoken at home. Always Welsh at home, in fact I would be admonished for speaking English. How to confuse a child. I believe now that a split in my psyche occurred as a child/teenager, one which has not fully healed. I implicate my education in my diagnosis of 'Bipolar Disorder'. The swinging of the pendulum from English to Welsh and back again. We all know which is the dominant language in Wales because Public School Headmasters are always keen to tell us. It is the language of Westminster which is meant to represent our larger neighbour to the East. In my humble opinion, it is a miracle that the Welsh Language is still spoken at all considering that it co-exists with the second most spoken language in the world next to Mandarin Chinese. The fact that it does is due to the tenacious and 'guerrilla' nature of its speakers, the ones who haven't sold out to the 'Cyfryngi Coin'. 

I was so unhappy in Ruthin School that at 13 years of age I withdrew into a cocoon and for three years I ostensibly became mute. I used no language at all. I chose not to communicate within this alien culture. I know now that my Mental Illness lies in the heart of the years that I spent here. My father meant well I'm sure but I think I have harboured resentment towards him since those days for sending me there but there was an invisible supply route from Arden here and so my fate was sealed when I moved from Welsh Medium Education to English Medium Education. What we have to bear in mind is that this happens in reverse and young children today are submerged into an education system in rural Wales that must be quite alien to them. Culture shock occurs and the effect of this on the adult has been underestimated.  I have taught in a tough inner city secondary school, I have been a supply teacher in the Welsh Medium schools that Mr Belfield  comments upon. Alienation occurs by the system, by the institution of school. No present form of education is fit for purpose but for a man in a position of privilege who runs a school for the privileged, he should think very carefully before he passes judgement. Let us hope that like the Castles of Wales his school becomes a ruin, karma for the oppression they once housed. 

Hallelujah, the curse has been lifted.