Learning from Aprons


Helena James Helena James spent 8 years teaching basic skills on work-­‐based learning and family learning programmes for Rhondda Cynon Taff County Borough Council. She currently works for ITEC Skills and Employment as an Adult Provision Delivery Manager.


It’s me to support the daughters of the Miners generaon. The 60 and 70 somethings that know very well they should’ve studied more in school. Other things tempted them rather than school work... It was not their fault. The brothers must come first.


Mothers uered to daughters that they had very lile right to educaon. And even if they enjoyed it, the young daughters of the day coveted what they saw, wondering what they would call their babies. Washing boards and mangles. Wash day on Wednesdays and children running from apron to apron.


Boys dirty faced and empty stomached. Boot scuffed and bold as brass. Where would educaon get a daughter of that day? Why? What was the point?


Living in houses packed with bodies. Men, lads, boys needed their kele-­‐hot baths, their bellies filled with broth. Girls know wash, clean, cook and wash and clean.


The book ‘Women in Love’ sits on the Apron’s shelf viewed with eager fear. Full of flighty words that stare out, WE ARE THE FLOWERS OF DISSOLUTION, that fetch a blink to the eye, and nerves that make the hands snap it shut.


It’s easier to learn praccal things, but sll they ponder, wonder, who in their world might be brave enough to explain the world within the words?


The service was to the bread winners, the blue black scarred brothers and fathers that endured for the sake of some or lile educaon.


Where did the sisters and daughters place themselves on the perch when the men went to read the books so lovingly stacked in the windows of the workingmen’s clubs, on display and away from their reach?


What did women retrieve from the morsels of that day? Peering through glazed windows and gripping night lights under the covers with dog eared unconsented pages. A de of change and self-­‐efficacy, they only know… I do not dare to speak on behalf of all women of that me, just the ones I have spent trying to apologise to: that life, the system, schooling had not done its job; that those days were unfortunate – the cycle should have been broken. But back of the class is where they started and stayed.


Careers advisors advised them of cleaning jobs and caring for others. Where were dreams in books and careers of the world ever discussed with the women whose voices couldn’t talk their thoughts or type the word ‘secretary’?


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