I have mixed feelings about this book also. On the plus side, I was interested to read about the life the farmers in Cumbria lead. Also, some of Rebanks' descriptions of the natural world are lovely:
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Traditional upland hay meadows are a thing of beauty. Rich multicoloured waves of grasses dance in the light summer winds. Mosaics of brown, green, and purple grasses and flowers are home to a multitude of insects, birds, and occasional roe deer calves.
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I also enjoyed the sense of a way of life being handed on through the generations:
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The past and the present live alongside each other in our working lives, overlapping and intertwining, until it is sometimes hard to know where one ends and the other starts. Each annual task is also a memory of the many times we have done it before and the people we did it with. As long as the work goes on, the men and women that once did it with us live on as well, part of what we are doing, part of our stories and memories, part of how and why we do those things.
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As for his behaviour as a boy at what sounds to be a pretty horrendous school, I find more fault with a system that labels children as non-achievers, and apparently turns a blind eye to violent bullying, than with the rebellion of those children to being so labelled. Tell people they are stupid and worthless and should "aim to be more than just farmworkers", and they believe it and behave accordingly.
While I don't condone his bad behaviour, I can understand it.