KANGA AND ROO

I WENT TO DE LA SALLE SCHOOL in Liverpool, the same school as Wayne Rooney, now apparently the darling of all English football after remaining in the spotlight in his argument with Sir Alex Ferguson for the last week. By a strange coincidence, just before this “spat” between the two (as the press call it) I was visited here in Lisbon by a former schoolteacher of mine, a gentleman who had been Wayne’s teacher besides mine, who came here along with his two charming daughters. Adding to the coincidence is the fact that he is also called Rooney. But "Mr" Rooney.

IN MY DAY, AS I POINTED OUT to this pedagogue, despite my being the Captain of the School Football First XI and Head of House for Sports, Games and Entertainment Events, I was always told by my headmaster, and by anyone else who could get my ear for a while, that these frivolous and flippant activities would amount to nothing, and thus I was dissuaded from spending time playing football. If I wished to “become someone” in life, and find “true happiness”, I would, so they told me, have to knuckle down and learn my Latin, apply myself to studies and not be distracted.

BEING A ROMAN CATHOLIC SCHOOL, in Croxteth, an extremely underprivileged area of Liverpool (although I was not from that area), we were constantly aware of the pressure from the De La Salle brothers to make sure that first and foremost in our outlook on life was moral propriety, goodness and charity.

THE MOTTO OF THE SCHOOL WAS, and still is, “SEMPER FIDELIS” – “always faithful”, or “ever loyal” as was preferred by our headmaster, Brother Alban. I, out of a mixture of fear and blind obedience, kept within the lines drawn out by the school most of the time; I learnt my Latin, studied hard and turned out to be perhaps one of the most successful academics De La Salle Liverpool had or has ever seen.

AND TODAY I LEARN THAT WAYNE ROONEY, who was only not expelled from school because there was nowhere to send him, who learned absolutely no Latin whatsoever, and by no stretch of the imagination can be called “faithful” or “loyal” neither to wife Colleen nor to Everton nor to Manchester United, who pay his wages, has signed a contract that will pay him more money in six weeks than I will ever have earned in my entire life. What has happened to our education system?