Source A: The badge on the wrong coat

An original contemporary non-fiction-style practice text, written for this question.

The invitation described me as a former pupil who had turned his life around. I read it twice while onions softened in a pan. Turned around suggested that I had been travelling in the wrong direction and had eventually found the sense to face the school again. The kitchen where I now worked was not on that particular map. It served affordable lunches, trained volunteers and paid my wages. I had been asked to speak at the school’s careers evening because people liked the food.

At sixteen, my reports used the word disruptive so often that I began treating it as a subject I had passed. Sometimes I had disrupted lessons. Sometimes I had asked a question badly, lost patience or failed to hide the fact that I was lost. The label joined all those occasions together and made them look like one permanent intention. Once people expected trouble, even silence could be read as the beginning of it.

The person who first taught me useful kitchen work did not ask me to become a different personality before touching a saucepan. She gave me a job which mattered, showed me how to do it and corrected the part I got wrong. If I cut portions unevenly, she explained the cost. If I rushed, she made me begin again. The standard was demanding, but it had edges I could see. Attitude was a fog in which every mistake could hide; an uneven portion could be measured.

I agreed to the careers evening, then asked the organiser to change the introduction. I did not want to be evidence that being repeatedly sent out of class had done me good. Nor did I want to pretend that I had always behaved reasonably. I wanted to describe what had helped: clear instruction, a task with consequences and an adult who expected improvement without first requiring a confession about my entire character.

On the evening, a pupil asked whether I had hated school. I said that some days I had, and that hatred had not taught me the things I needed. Another asked what happened when I still lost patience. I told her that I apologised, corrected what I could and tried to notice the point before the next argument became too large. Being employed had not replaced my personality with a spotless new one.

Afterwards, the organiser said I had given them a good success story. I was glad if the talk had helped. I also hoped that somebody had heard a more practical question inside it: what conditions make it possible for a person to do better before we decide who that person is?

Source B: Young and dyslexic? You’ve got it going on — Benjamin Zephaniah

Read Source B in the official Pearson anthology (printed pages 12–13).

Compare how the writers present their ideas and perspectives about how people respond to labels imposed on them by institutions.

Support your answer with detailed examples from both texts, including brief quotations.