Grammar school did NOT make me a bigot

Like many other former students at Adams’ Grammar School, I was flabbergasted by an article written by Matt Broomfield on Friday, when said that the school made him a bigot.

He said the staff and students at Adam’s made him intolerant of anyone who was not a heterosexual white man.

This is quite simply untrue.

Adams’ Grammar School in Newport

I’m not about to suggest that there were never incidents of racism, sexism or homophobia at Adams’. But I can honestly say that I never witnessed this racism. Andrew Markos, a student in the same year as Broomfield and myself agrees: “Nowhere made me feel more accepting of my culture and background than Adams’.”

This is a far cry from the disgusting racist views which Matt claims are commonplace. As for the sexism and homophobia, I can’t deny that flippant remarks about things being “gay”, comments about girls’ appearances and objectification of girls occurred on a frequent basis. Nor that a boy seen to be friends with girls would be mocked by a small group of students (whose views were disliked by the majority of other students).

But these are issues that affect the whole of society, nowhere more so than among young males – but it was by no means encouraged by the school.

I can’t think of a single occasion when a person used the word “gay” as an insult within earshot of a member of staff and was not sternly rebuked. In fact, I recall one teacher discussing why homosexuality was perfectly acceptable with a class of Year Nine boys for nearly forty-five minutes after hearing “gay”, at great detriment to our understanding of the French Revolution.

On my first day of Sixth Form, when girls arrived in our year for the first time, we had a talk and discussion which lasted at least an hour about the correct way to behave around girls. The reason that these lessons were necessary was not, as Broomfield’s article implies, because the school was any more steeped in misogyny than society as a whole. It was simply because the vast majority of boys at the school had not spent a significant amount of time in the presence of the opposite sex for five years.

Broomfield could have written an attack on grammar schools, or all-boys’ schools, or schools as a whole.

But he didn’t: he chose to write about Adams’ Grammar School.

That was his big mistake.

“Nowhere made me feel more accepting of my culture and background than Adams'”

He also claimed in his article that the school helped to foster a sense of extreme arrogance by repeatedly telling us “You are Adams’ boys.” He was wrong.

The school helped to foster a sense of pride and ambition among its students by reminding us that we were fortunate to be at one of the best schools in the area and we should make the most of the opportunities which accompanied that.

Matt claims that at Adams’, “we were encouraged to power through life without caring about the less privileged.” But Adams’ took the opposite attitude. I have never heard of a school which had a greater array of events for various different charities as Adams’ did and these were almost always accompanied by an assembly explaining why their work was so important.

But the worst is his final line “Adams’ taught me to hate.”

In my penultimate year at the school, some very tasteless jokes were made during the inter-house drama competition. The boys responsible were punished, the whole school was given an assembly the next day on why such views were unacceptable. The rules of the competition were changed so that no such incidents could occur in the future. That is not the response of a school which supports bigotry.

I won’t speculate on Broomfield’s reasons for writing the original article, although it is interesting to note that, at the time of writing, his secondary education is listed on Facebook as “LADams’ Grammar,” a phrase he denounces in his article.

If Matt Broomfield left Adams’ as a bigot, which he claims he did, it was entirely of his own doing. I did not. Most people I knew at the school did not.

That is because Adams’ Grammar School did not teach me to be racist, sexist or homophobic. Adams’ taught me a great many things, including ambition, self-confidence, determination and humility.

One thing it most certainly did not teach me is to hate.