Edu­ca­tion

Twelve-year-old Kings­ley (Kenyah Sandy) prays before he goes to bed: ​“I’m sor­ry I was naughty today. But if I’m a good boy, can I please be an astro­naut like Neil Arm­strong, and also play for Tot­ten­ham?” His bed­room looks like a shrine to the solar sys­tem and the con­stel­la­tion of stars who rep­re­sent his beloved Spurs.

Edu­ca­tion opens with an awestruck Kings­ley watch­ing an ani­mat­ed depic­tion of Androm­e­da pro­ject­ed on the class­room ceil­ing. Cut to his next class, and it’s Kingsley’s turn to read aloud. Ner­vous­ly stut­ter­ing, he can’t read the first word. His teacher calls him ​“block­head” and asks the stu­dent beside him to take over, who reads the pas­sage effort­less­ly. Lat­er in music class, Kings­ley gets ram­bunc­tious on the drums and hollers over the rest of the class’ singing. His music teacher thinks he hears Kings­ley cuss in the com­mo­tion, grabs him by the shoul­der and sends him off to the headmaster’s office.

For no bet­ter rea­son, Kings­ley is ​“streamed” to a ​“spe­cial school,” which in truth is nei­ther spe­cial nor a school, but a mangy class­room where the teach­ers hard­ly show and the stu­dents rough it in the park­ing lot for recess. As one of the only West Indi­an stu­dents in a pre­dom­i­nate­ly white school, Kings­ley is guilty of not thriv­ing in an edu­ca­tion­al sys­tem that nev­er con­sid­ered his indi­vid­ual strengths and needs.

Many West Indi­an stu­dents were thrust into these schools as a means of unof­fi­cial seg­re­ga­tion. But it’s the eve of the Black Edu­ca­tion Move­ment, around the late 1960s or ear­ly ​’70s, and var­i­ous organ­i­sa­tions cam­paign for edu­ca­tion­al reform and estab­lish ​“Sat­ur­day Schools” with their own cur­ricu­lum to ele­vate the edu­ca­tion­al attain­ment of Black chil­dren. Lydia Thomas (Josette Simon), a mem­ber of one such group, shows up on Kingsley’s doorstep to warn his par­ents about the con­di­tions of his school, but Kingsley’s stern moth­er Agnes (Shar­lene Whyte) responds defen­sive­ly, shoo­ing Lydia away.

As with the oth­er Small Axe films, Edu­ca­tion sees Steve McQueen direct­ing with great dra­mat­ic econ­o­my. We know how quick­ly Agnes will kick Lydia out of her home because she wears a short skirt, and we’ve seen her demand her daugh­ter Stephanie (Tama­ra Lawrance) take down her hem in an ear­li­er scene. We know how fast Kings­ley will be kicked out of school, because the sound of the music teacher grab­bing his shoul­der has been aug­ment­ed with a bassy oomph that makes the con­tact feel as inva­sive as it should.

Famil­iar fam­i­ly arche­types keep the film mov­ing for­ward, too. Agnes is devout­ly Chris­t­ian and Kingsley’s father Esmond (Daniel Fran­cis) hopes his son will take up car­pen­try like he did. But dis­tinct char­ac­ter notes from the script and cast ensure the arche­types feel sin­cere. When Agnes becomes angry with her chil­dren, she doesn’t say she is or why, but sends them off to study or do chores that may or may not need to be done. On the oth­er hand, she’ll tell Kings­ley she’s cook­ing roti, or that he can watch the tele­vi­sion, if she wants to cheer him up.

With­out words, the film shows us one of the rea­sons Kings­ley wants to be an astro­naut. He lays in the bath­tub, with all but his nose and mouth below the sur­face of the water. The sound of his breath is enhanced to mim­ic the echo cham­ber of a space­suit and a whin­ing, sci-fi score is laid gen­tly under the scene. It’s clear he is imag­in­ing him­self as an astro­naut, far from his own cir­cum­stances, or sep­a­rat­ed from them by the water in the tub. But a non­de­script thud from down­stairs dis­turbs his fan­tasies of soli­tude, and he comes out from the water and back to earth.

Sat­ur­day School teach­es him the his­to­ry of his African and West Indi­an ances­try, from Ami­na, the Hausa war­rior queen of Zaria to Clau­dia Jones and encour­ages him to learn tena­cious­ly in the way he’d been pun­ished for in the main­stream school sys­tem. This inspires Kings­ley enough that being an astro­naut becomes more than just an escape to pray for in spite of being ​“naughty,” but a real­i­ty he feels he deserves.

Watch­ing Kings­ley endure a sys­tem that con­stant­ly holds him back – his age and race effec­tive­ly ren­der­ing him voice­less – is dev­as­tat­ing. But the love and strength of his fam­i­ly, an inti­mate vic­to­ry in the resis­tance against racism, per­se­veres despite us know­ing the bat­tle won’t be won in his gen­er­a­tion or ours.