Growing Up Late

<p>This is an account of the realities of being a teacher in some of the most deprived cities in the UK. </p><p>This account, though, is neither romantic about young people nor pessimistic about the situation. It focuses on the teacher as a human being who experiences the difficulties of producing successful learners, leading to a range of emotions and stress.</p><p>This is a memoir which covers much more of the author’s life than his work as a teacher. Later, as a policy adviser in a well-known think tank and major teachers’ unions, it reveals anecdotes about well-known political characters such as Michael Gove, when he was Minister for Education, and his then sidekick Dominic Cummings.</p><p>The core of the book is an account of the author’s social and emotional life. Martin Johnson grew up in post-war London in a family which was increasingly affluent materially and impoverished emotionally. He describes becoming an isolated teenager, damaged sufficiently that it has taken </p><p>most of his later life to become a more rounded social being. It also describes how getting married when an immature twenty-two-year-old had repercussions, both the rough and the smooth, for the next forty years. Finally, it goes on to describe finding happiness with his second wife in his sixties.</p>