| Description | An interview with Corinne FOWLER, a single woman with no children, who is a Student, born in Birmingham and now living in Birmingham. Corinne FOWLER’s father was a Solicitor, born in England and her mother a College lecturer born in England. In the interview, she talks about …
'MS2255/2/023 FOWLER, Corinne Logged by Lorraine Blakemore
01
I was born in 1970, along with my twin sister, at Birmingham Queen Elizabeth Hospital. Middle class family, both parents professionals: lawyer and lecturer. Mother juggled work with bringing up the children. Attended a playgroup.
2.05 Discusses being a twin at school. Put into separate classes to foster individuality.
3.02 Visiting friends’ homes. We felt like strangers in a way, or outsiders because we didn’t realise that our house was a bit culturally different, perhaps because my mum is half-French…
3.44 Went to Colmore Junior School, and our mother was a teacher at that school. We were not just the twins, but Mrs Fowler’s daughters. Corinne did better than her twin at school because she says she conformed more to the system.
02
School choir was a big part of the school’s identity in the community. Anecdote about performing in ‘The Wizard of Oz’.
2.40 Not particularly involved in sports at school.
3.10 There wasn’t a child-minding culture at that time, so my mum was very attentive….we kept ourselves entertained, and the only contact with someone who wasn’t my parent in a parental role was a neighbour who still lives two doors down….she used to babysit quite often.
4.27 Describes the dining culture at home. I think the important thing was that we had discussions….around the table …whereas when we went round to our friends' houses they tended to have a television in the background and it was more of a feature in their lives. Food was more of a functional thing whereas food here …. Was something to be enjoyed together… and to be woven into our memories of the past and dishes that we liked…
03
1.16 The main difference was in the time taken to prepare the food and the food itself was very varied….stuff that was considered a bit strange at the time…we didn’t have fish day or a steak day…I have a memory of thinking, “why do you need gravy ?”. Perhaps we didn’t have any processed food….
2.51 Feels that France didn’t have much to do with the way they were brought up. Mother became less and less French. Not many opportunities to see French relatives.
3.55 Because my family are scattered all over the place, I think that may have contributed to a sense that I didn’t really belong anywhere, a sense that I have now of being a sort of migrant, that I know Birmingham, that I’m familiar with it….but I don’t really feel that I belong here.
04
I was at Colmore Junior School between 1975 and 1981. Then I went to Swanshurst Girls School. The choice of school was quite a political one for my parents because they didn’t want us to go to grammar school… (about Swanshurst) The teaching was on the whole so uninspired and so dull that, looking back as a teacher I feel so disappointed that was the way we went through the secondary system, not because it was a comprehensive school at all….
1.11 Reasons for parents sending her to a comprehensive school.
2.20 I was at Swanshurst between 1981-87. Describes the school environment.
06
Reflects on school reports and her position within the school. Monotony of some lessons. Relied more on parents for intellectual stimulation.
07
Anecdote about history teacher, Mr Smith. He brought the subject to life by acting everything out. He used to run frantically all round the classroom…The lesson I remember most was about the Fall of the Roman Empire…
1.59 Felt different from her peers with regard to leisure interests. Anecdote about friends and pop music.
4.53 We were actively encouraged by the senior members of staff not to mix with people in the lower band…we were obviously critical of that at the time because we used to tell our parents….it didn’t feel right and we also had quite a divisive prefect system aswell….
08
1.38 Racial mix of school. One girl in our class, an Asian girl, and she used to call herself a Paki, which we found really strange and disrupted al our ideas of who she was, because she was insisting on using this term which we had been taught was derogatory….
09
Interests outside school. Duke of Edinburgh Award Scheme.
10
Around 1984 I was invited to a Billy Graham meeting, slightly against my will, and I certainly didn’t feel it was something I wanted to get involved with….It was in Aston Villa Football Stadium and there were thousands of people….whatever he was saying was generating this enormous amount of emotion that I didn’t really feel part of…. (Story about experience).
11
It was around that time that I was introduced to Riverside Fellowship, which is a Christian group that operates in Birmingham….It was one of the first times I felt I belonged to a group, that I didn’t feel rootless any more…Every week we went to Moseley Youth Fellowship….I stayed with that group until I was 17
1.40 Story about religious discussions in the Sixth Form.
3.40 Involvement in religious group turned her against family to some degree. Felt less liberal, less open-minded.
12
Baptised at Moseley Road swimming baths.
1.05 Anecdote about leader’s meeting. When it came to a convenient break, I was the only girl in the room at the time. The man in charge turned to me and said, “would you make the tea?” And I burst out, before I could check myself, “why, because I’m a girl ?!” And that generated a whole discussion….
13
I didn’t feel an obsession with boys at all and that all came much, much later….any relationship I did have when I was at church was strictly monitored and the boundaries were very carefully drawn….
1.34 Contrasts her twin's relationships with her own.
14
After I left school I decided to take a year out. In 1987 I decided to go to Northern Ireland and live in a community for reconciliation between Catholics and Protestants. Partly the desire to go was fuelled by a prejudice I felt was in Riverside Fellowship against Catholics…. I stayed there for 1 year until 1988.
1.22 Learning experience of being part of this community.
2.19 I think the reason I got involved with the religion in the first place was because around this area, Kings Heath, in the 1980s, I didn’t feel we had any contact with our neighbours at all.
15
After Ireland I went to university in Scotland, in Stirling in 1989. I’d had a deferred entry…I went there to do an English Literature degree with sociology.
16
Enjoyed university life. Became Sub-Warden. First 2 years got involved with Christian Union as International Secretary. I was beginning to feel that my religion was setting boundaries beyond which I couldn’t travel…
1.33 Anecdote about talk at CU on sex before marriage.
2.30 Joined a church that was more wide-ranging and tolerant. By the time I left university I wasn’t Christian any more.
17
In 1992 I decided to train as a teacher, and went down to Lancashire to a place called Ormskirk. After that I decided to return to Birmingham, so I came full circle. The reason I came back was because I knew that there was another community that I didn’t know about, which was the Asian community, and I wanted to inform myself, and learn a different perspective….I got a job as a teacher in Small Heath where I taught for 3 years from 1994-7, and that was the revelation I expected it to be.
1.20 Discusses how the school system fails black and Asian children.
2.03 Started up a sociology department in 1996, teaching mainly Muslim girls.
18
Resigned in late 1997 after 3 years. I decided to go off to Paraguay for a year to teach English. Positive reaction from some colleagues but surprise from others who thought it wasn’t a good career move.
1.31 Reflects on time spent in Paraguay.
21
I returned in October 1998 and I was 28, and I decided that I wanted to go back to university again, but I applied too late…so I became a supply teacher and worked in a lot of schools around Birmingham….
35” In 1999, in February, I got a job in London and went down there to teach in a girls’ school in Kentish Town and I stayed there for 6 months.
1.00 In September 1999 I went to Leeds University to do an MA in Post-Colonial Literature…
1.58 Feels that she no longer has a definite plan for the future. No sense of a permanent career these days. Felt very dispensable as a teacher.
4.00 It’s the first time in my life when I haven’t had a 5 year plan and I think it’s all part of this rejecting the idea that you go to university, get a job for life and do that job, serving the community well….
22
I still feel that I’m part of this whole generation of people that don’t quite belong anywhere, and don’t really know where home is….we’re part of this great mobile population…
57” Fellow pupils at Swanshurst and their lives now.
2.49 Marking GCSE paper answers has encouraged her to believe that there is more equality between the sexes to some extent. However not the case for everyone. Story about pupil at Small Heath who was not allowed to attend university.
4.26 Thoughts about long-term relationships. Calls herself a serial monogamist. Not sure why this pattern is repeated.
23
Relationship with parents in the past and now.
2.27 I think part of the reason why Birmingham never felt like home was because my mother was half-French, and she was quite critical of Birmingham….she always used to say how ugly it was and draw our attention to it….the factories, the smoke….It gave me a sense of being a place to escape from….
24
In Leeds it seems so ghettoised….it seems like Birmingham went past that years ago…
49” Being a twin.
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