I had lunch with an old friend the other day. He retired from a distinguished career in academic and literary circles, and he gives a lot of the credit for his success to two of his teachers in secondary school, who he describes as ‘absolutely inspirational’.
I went to what was basically a public school – at the time it was termed a ’direct grant’ school, as it received government funding for taking in pupils on scholarships or through the 11-plus, which was how I get there. It prided itself on its academic record, and measured success in terms of the numbers of pupils it got into Oxbridge each year, but I can honestly say that I wouldn’t describe any of my teachers there as higher than ‘adequate’, and some were pretty poor. You had to wonder why some of them became teachers at all – I guess they couldn’t think of anything else!
My love of Shakespeare and literature, history, geography and generally trying to understand the world is despite, not because of, my school. I think I’ve learned more about the history of this country since I retired than I ever learned at school!
I have never understood why the teaching profession is so undervalued in the UK – not just by successive governments, but seemingly by the public at large. I can often read comments such as ‘long holidays’, ‘short hours’ and ‘gold-plated pension’, so I guess some people really believe them.
It seems so obvious that good teachers and a good education are so important, not just to the individual, but to society as a whole.
Sorry – rant over! But it made me feel better!
Another ‘direct grant’ boy here. My teachers were a mixed bag from the barely adequate to the exceptional, with most of them firmly to the better end of that spectrum. Maybe I was lucky. My choice of degree was massively influenced by my 6th form director of studies, who was also head of the biology department.
After graduation, I taught in secondary schools for about three years after doing a PGCE, then left the profession because it was too damn fraught at a time when the relevant secretary of state was a co-author of Thatcherism and a borderline eugenicist.
Long holidays (periods of partial mental health recovery), short hours (a myth promoted by those who don’t have to do marking, planning, after-work meetings, parent’s evenings etc. etc. etc.) and gold-plated pensions (some material comfort during the inevitable stress-induced long years of reduced physical and mental capacity) have never tempted me back. Can’t imagine why.
Same here. Looking back, my 1970s school (a London comprehensive with around 1,500 pupils) was absolutely crap. I particularly think of the PE teachers who did nothing whatsoever to encourage kids into sport beyond getting us to play football or rugby or run cross country. I only discovered a love of physical exercise many years after leaving. And don’t get me started on language teachers back then. “Open your books at page 47 and translate the first paragraph”. Useless wankers.
It’s not just the UK though. Here in Italy too teaching is undervalued and it’s very, very rare I meet a teacher who impresses me. 82.7% of teachers here are female (I just looked that up – I’ve never actually met a male teacher here) and I often get the impression they enter the profession just for want of something to do more than anything else.
But on a more positive note, I don’t know if this was staged or not, but even if it was, it’s lovely:
Lovely clip.
There’s a similar one of ex-Arsenal and England striker Ian Wright meeting a teacher from his childhood. Very emotional.
I fear that the UK is not the only country where the teaching profession is undervalued by the general public.
Here in Sweden, I get the impression that teachers have to spend far too much of their time doing paperwork. Ironically, all this admin is for the purpose of maintaining quality. There would be better quality if they could concentrate more on planning lessons and preparing material.
And the course plans seem very inflexible. There’s little scope to be spontaneous and off the cuff talk about something that the kids are interested in.
I’ve met some wonderfully committed and dedicated teachers during our kids’ schoolyears. The teaching profession certainly deserves to be even better paid.
My teachers were OK generally, but things seemed to get much worse in the teenage years. I can fully understand why, but many teachers seemed tired and cynical. The Mr Gilbert character in The Inbetweeners is so very funny because there’s a kernel of truth in it.
School didn’t ignite any passions as such but I enjoyed English Lit thanks to a good run of inspirational teachers. As an adult, I find History to be fascinating – but it always seemed to be extremely boring at school.
Where and when I was growing up there were three schools in the catchment area: a high school, a technical school and a secondary modern. Where you went depended on your 11 plus results, except that the local authority scrapped it the year before I was due to take the exam. They rebranded all three as high schools and you went to the nearest one. In my case it was the old secondary modern.
None of the teachers were motivational or interested in how you got on, a lot of them seemed to actively dislike children.
It occurred to me when I was bit older that we probably had the teachers who couldn’t get a job in either the tech or high school.
Luckily in those days we still had colleges of further education where you studied on day or block release. They were much better.
I also went to a direct grant school. Most of the teachers were diabolical, used outdated and discredited teaching methods backed up with corporal punishment and had zero ability to engage or inspire. Rugby, cricket, CCF and churning out pupils into further education was the entire ethos, with absolutely no focus on pastoral care. I left with no idea of what I wanted to do, and 44 years later I still haven’t, despite taking early retirement from a job I hated. Despite that I do think the seeds of the interest I have developed in literature, history, art and music were probably fostered by my school. I don’t consider myself to be particularly clever, but I do despair at the general ignorance of the Great British Public, and blame / thank my school for a tendency to snobbishness at the thickness of others.
My old school is now private and by all accounts a thousand times more enlightened than it was when I was there. It’s also now co-educational, something which I firmly believe all schools should be. Single sex education is an unhealthy anachronism that I wouldn’t wish on anyone. It certainly did me no favours.
This is so familiar to my experience!
“blame / thank my school for a tendency to snobbishness at the thickness of others.”
I’ve thought a lot about this concept over the years. The thickness of others. If you look on Twitter (ugh!) you’ll see no end of people calling other people “thick”. and lamenting their stupidity. But the reality is, most people aren’t thick. Of course, some people genuinely are, but the vast majority of people are just average, intelligence-wise. Every one of us is capable of being thick, depending on circumstances, mood, etc etc, and to complicate matters further, people are capable of being thick in some areas and clever in others. Is my mechanic thick? I doubt he’s ever read a book or taken an interest in history, but he can repair my car. Is my. neighbour thick? Trying to teach her any English is a complete waste of time, but she can cook an amazing meal with just a few ingredients.
I’ve come to the conclusion that “thick” most often means “doesn’t think the way I want them to”. It’s an easy, simplistic way to disparage someone else’s opinion or behaviour and in all honesty I’ve generally found that the more obviously intelligent people are, the less likely they are to resort to it.
Too simple, Gaz. Are the politicians who have been tormenting us recently intelligent? Yes. Are they stupid? Also yes.
I think, Gary, you are comparing two different things – academic ability and non-academic ability.
I remember my first holiday job as a sixteen year-old in a factory. A grammar school boy , I was initially astounded at the “stupidity” of the people sitting around me in the works canteen. It took snobbish me several weeks to realise that 90% of my fellow-workers, most of whom read either the Daily Mirror or battered copies of Playboy, were basically honest and compassionate people. Also they could fix cars and mend things. I had six O-levels and the life skills of a hamster.
You’re right, my examples above are of academic ability vs non-academic ability, but that’s not really what I mean. So not good examples. What I’m really going on about is how the attitude of “why are other people so goddarn thick?” is rarely if ever useful or valid (and yet so very, very common).
Mike called me “Gaz”. That hurt.
Soz, Gareth.
Do you prefer Ga? Bristolians strip it right down.
I prefer “Your highness”. As I’m quite tall for my age. And I like people to curtsey when addressing me. (Or when doing anything, really. Makes me feel even taller.)
I suppose ‘thickness’ wasn’t really what I meant, so it was just clumsy shorthand on my part. What I really meant was lack of knowledge on a wide range of subjects. The desire for knowledge may start in school, but develops through life as a result of wanting to be better informed.
Intellectual curiosity in general is certainly a very positive thing and I suppose that a lack of curiosity can be considered stupidity or ignorance. Trying to prove someone wrong is never as interesting as trying to understand why they think they’re right.
You have nailed it there.
A lack of curiosity is the definition of thickness/stupidity/ignorance despite what academic qualifications you have.
Thanks Gazza! This discussion on “thickness” and intelligence has been very worthwhile. Your point about the importance of curiosity was right on the money.
As was mikethep’s comment on how our politicians can be very intelligent and yet stupid.
And when it comes to “stupidity”, there is no area of life where it is more apparent than how we vote in elections.
Maybe it’s not stupidity or intelligence that guide people’s decisions, but rather the lack of a functioning moral compass?
I am on thin ice here.
But I am pondering how millions of Americans can possibly see Donald Trump as an appropriate choice as their country’s president. It’s too easy to just write them off as stupid. I really would like to understand how quite a few intelligent people can come to this decision.
Or for that matter how the Republican Party has allowed this snake oil salesman to achieve such power. Especially, when there are definitely some principled, intelligent Republicans. For example, hats off to Speaker Mike Johnson for getting the foreign aid package approved.
I suspect Mike J and I would agree on very little. (Maybe he’s a Johnny Cash fan?) But I find it easier to make sense of a conservative Christian than a narcisstic egomaniac,
I’d better stop ranting.
Gazza? GAZZA??? Do I call you Kaisfatdazza? No, I don’t. Out of pure respect for your mother’s wishes.
Kaisfatdazza? Well it has a ring to it.
But Kaisfatdazzler! Now there’s a stylish, sparkly moniker oozing with glamour and glitter. I could enter Eurovision with a name like that!
Malmö here I come!
The curiosity point is well made. My father in law left school at 16 and wasn’t in the least bit academic. But he was endlessly curious about anything and everything. He had a wonder about so much from the natural landscape to Victorian engineering to the cricketing prowess of Shane Warne and it made him one of the smartest and most positive people I knew.
Sounds very much like mine Bony.
Don’t think I could call any of my teachers inspirational, including my own father, although my maths teacher got me an O-level B after 4 years of abject failure. His predecessor, Chalky White, was more of a numerologist than a maths teacher, and used to blather on about the magical qualities of the numbers 29 and 232. They’ve never won me any lotto jackpots, so they aren’t that magical.
My 6th-form English teacher inspired me though. He was lending Kafka’s The Trial to his favourite pupil, and I picked it up and said, what’s this? He snatched it out of my hands and told me I wasn’t ready for it. That one action may very well have set me on the road to a career in publishing.
Another direct grant boy here. My school was pretty useless unless you were naturally bright or a rugger bugger, used to be private, is again now. I hated it and was overjoyed to leave. The staff were not especially well qualified and after I graduated I found an old year book and was delighted to discover the people who regularly told me I was useless generally had poorer degrees than I did. Corporal punishment was a regular thing and now most of them would be up on a charge. I was certainly part of the problem, but in mitigation my disenchantment with education started and ended there – keen and bright at primary school, keen and hard working at the poly.
I honestly think education is a critical reason for the country’s malaise – it’s been steadily weakened by this terrible government where in fact I’m sure every penny invested pays back 100 fold.
Twang and I went to the same school, a few years apart.
I’m fairly indifferent in my memories of the school; I certainly didn’t hate it, but equally I was never one for Old Boys’ Associations or the like. What I do remember was that the text books that we dutifully covered in brown paper in September were all very old; we certainly weren’t getting a contemporary education in either content or methods.
The school always aspired to be treated like a public school, and like Twang, I remember the extreme focus on proper public school activities like rugby, cricket and proper posh music, all of which I pushed back against. I am quite sure the approach of the school discouraged participation, just as it believed it was providing a nurturing environment. Like Twang with his degree, I bet that my physical activity in middle age was far greater than most of those team sport players. As for music, it interests me that I only really blossomed once I was rid of the formal structures of sight-reading and formal choir arrangements.
BUT, one thing that sticks in my mind is a teaching student coming to us in sixth form and pretty much telling us that we didn’t know we were born, compared to other schools. Most of that was down, she said to a lack of disruption in class. No matter what holes I can pick in my education, I know full well that having a grammar school education in a Cheshire market town could only be a good thing. Kes, it wasn’t.
I agree on your last point (well, all of them really) but it’s cold comfort in retrospect. I redid my A levels at a tech college in Manchester and the difference in their (and my) attitude was spectacular.
I didn’t even do music or French O level (as I was useless) – quite funny for a lifelong passionate musician, fluent in French.
Yes, the teaching of languages was archaic. A language lab with interactive cassettes appeared just about while I was still there, but in essence it was all about learning verb tables by rote. 9 months after I left, I was working in Brittany and suddenly I was really learning.
I remember the hang ups my poor mother had; she wouldn’t speak anything unless she knew it was going to be a fully formed sentence, grammatically correct, declined, enunciated and all the rest of it. As a result, she had far fewer conversations than she might, had she been more relaxed.
But again, I bet foreign languages didn’t get a lot of attention in Felling-on-Tyne in the 1920s. So she did well.
I think some of my teachers were dreadful. This was at a comprehensive, we all joined it in 4th form after our Grammar school was abolished. Both schools now long demolished.
Worst teacher was in maths, not only was he very poor, he was in the IRA! Bomb making equipment was found in his locker and he went to prison for, I think, 5 years. His replacement was an attractive 30 something female teacher who was much better. Her husband was my optician. She had an affair with someone in my class which was widely known about. Nothing was done about it and I got a B in my A Level.
Those were the days!
Actually one or two were excellent teachers, but I had the feeling that a comprehensive in a Welsh valleys town didn’t necessarily attract the best talent
There’s a whole film in that superb comment! I’d have Sean Bean play the optician.
Ha! Cillian Murphy as the (Irish) maths teacher? Forgot to mention “Twiggy”, a geography teacher who was good mates with “Gerry” (which was his name), he was a Welsh nationalist and was arrested at some show or something for tearing down and burning a British flag. He was also a pretty shit teacher. Happy days!
Darn right, Gary! A film with Oscar-winning potential.
I’m nominating Dua Lipa for the role of the optician’s wife. Time for her Hollywood breakthrough!
Timothée Chalamet as the bomb-making maths teacher? Or perhaps Chris Hemsworth? That would sell a few tickets.
I outright refuse to cast Timotei in anything after the mischievous young scamp ungratefully sided with Mia against Woody.
My wife and I both went to the same inner London comprehensive school, where education was the last thing on anyone’s mind, it was more like crowd control. We had a mix of good and bad teachers (maybe not bad, but certainly jaded), but the curriculum they had to work with was possibly pre-war (first or second, take your pick) . I scraped through school with no idea of what I wanted to do (40 years later, I still don’t). The careers advisor asked us what we were interested in and said ‘do that’. I didn’t say I wanted to move to Australia, but I did, and ended up safely ensconced in the public (civil) service.
My wife is now a teacher, and that idea some people have of short hours and long holidays really annoys me. It’s not unusual for her to work seven days a week during ‘reports season’, on top of marking, planning, pointless admin, dealing with parents, more pointless admin. An average day is 7.30am-5.00pm, and if she’s lucky she’ll get 20 minutes for lunch. Oh and the pay’s decidedly average. Could be worse, she could be a Principal. Rant over.
My parents paid for me to go to school from the age of about 7 or 8 onwards.
One of the advantages of the two schools I went to from the age of 10 upwards was the quality of the teachers. Even the ones in the subjects I hated were good teachers and engaging. The reasons I disliked one school in particular were not about the teachers and more about the prevailing ethos.
But my degree choice, and my lifelong interest in history are very definitely down to a few teachers – Mr Schofield, Dr Gaunson, and Mr Saxton. I’m forever grateful to them.
I was so well educated I read your post twice and still couldn’t understand why your parents paid you to go to school.
Maybe a third read would have revealed the word “for” between “paid” and “me”…
Mr Schofield is a polymath. He taught Physics in my school.
And he presented This Morning with Holly Wallaby
I probably got where I got courtesy my expensive education. Where others in the street had nice holidays and cars, I had school, a moderate minor public school. Like voting Tory, my parents thought it was the expected thing, despite not really being able to afford it. To a degree it worked, as the discipline ensured I revised sufficient to get my necessary grades; that rather than the quality of the distinctly hit or miss nature of the teaching.(Ironically, the comprehensive in the town I lived, Lewes, performed regularly as one of the best in the land.) Apart from 3 A levels I got very little from those 11 years from 7. At least I didn’t get buggered. And I am not being flippant.
My son teaches Science at a school in one of Norwich’s most deprived areas. He spends all his time, including evenings and weekends marking, preparing lessons and waiting for another Ofsted visit. He looks exhausted most of the time.
The most common complaint he gets from his pupils is “Why are we learning this? What good will it do me in the future when all I want to be is a Computer Games Designer?” He firmly believes that the overall syllabus is outdated and irrelevant and that the UK Education System needs a complete rethink, a complete change of direction.
And, yes, most of the time his job is crowd control. “Try taking a mobile phone away from a fifteen year-old girl. Go on, try.”
“If the back four rows are not vaping, or taking drugs or having sex and are relatively quiet, I’m doing my job.
Compared to those that taught me, my daughters teachers astonish. Their level of engagement with her, and my wife and I, their commitment and expertise. Bewilderingly good
The motley set of disinterested herberts and arseholes that I had make me wonder how I got on at all. From my sarky and sullen History teacher, Miss Rutherford, to my venomous witch of a Maths teacher, Miss Wilkinson. With a speech impediment amplified by adolescence I said virtually nothing in classes for about 2 or 3 years. As such I was ignored and invisible. No help or even acknowledgement of how I might be feeling about any of it.
A school reunion was arranged when our year turned 30, over 30 years ago. A few of the old teachers showed up. Everyone was very polite to everyone. I should have told them all to fuck off. They wouldn’t have had a clue who I was anyway.
Brilliant Beez. I wouldn’t have dreamt of going to a school reunion though. My happiest moment was burning my school tie outside the gates with a few pals the day we left.
I did go to a reunion for my year – just out of curiosity to see what people had done over the previous 33 years. I didn’t regret it, but it made me realise that there was a good reason why I hadn’t stayed in touch with them!
I went again 3 years later, but that was purely because the school was offering a guided tour of all the developments since we had left. Now fully independent, and with a seemingly endless supply of donations, fundraising and legacies, there were new theatres, all-weather pitches, language and computer facilities etc etc. All very impressive, but not a chance that the vast majority of state schools can ever match that – and they should be able to!
I went to a school reunion aged 50 and got off with a girl I went out with when I was 16. Still got it eh! 🙂
I went to mine when I was in my mid 30’s and recently divorced. Got off with a girl that was there who didn’t even go to my school. Is that better or worse?
I met a couple of old teachers at my reunion. They were nice but also they were always the nice ones. One of them even remembered me which I was astonished by. The horrid ones, I suspect, were frightened to come face to face with kids they bullied now that they had grown up.
The one that always gets me is algebra … you learn it for years and “never use it in real life”. 30 or 40 years later and most people still don’t get it. That’s not down to lack of curiosity it’s down to a failure in teaching the subject. If these people don’t see the connection between academia and “real life” then you’re immediately in a losing battle. Maybe it’s taught differently now, I would hope so.
My 11 plus results were marginal so I was dispatched to a Technical High school, where instead of Latin, Spanish and English Literature, I was tutored in metalwork, woodwork, technical drawing and agricultural science. All of which I was utterly useless at, although I suppose if push came to shove I could castrate a pig – I’m never going to be able to erase the memory of the teacher showing us how to do that. Life skills eh?
It was a boys only school which enabled us to enjoy advanced levels of violence and develop a complete inability to relate to members of the opposite sex in any meaningful way. Just after I’d started my O levels I had to move schools as my dad had lost his job, and I finally got lucky, moving to a grammar school (there were no technical schools where I moved to). It totally disrupted my choice of O levels, but for the most part I just swapped subjects I was useless at and had no interest in for different subjects but greater aptitude – art, physics, with woodwork unfortunately remaining available. But none of that mattered really as they also had …. girls. And in less than a year I was actually able to speak to one. I stayed on into 6th form mostly because I had no idea what else to to, have mustered only 4 O levels at the first attempt.
Of all the people that had the misfortune to teach me, only one stands out and that’s partly because she actually sparked an interest in literature, but also because she shagged my mate Tim, and threw parties where I finally learned the art of snogging. She was one of the few teachers to call all her students by their Christian name – boys were mostly referred to by their surname, and she generally treat us as equals, albeit Tim a bit more so than the rest of us.
I think I did enough growing up during 6th form to actually enjoy it, although it was more the social side than the learning. I managed to get into Uni (full grant of course) and compared to what that generation endure now, I consider myself lucky.
The onset of the 11 plus projected me from the bottom of the class to near the top & I went to an all-boys Grammar. I spent my days trying to avoid the extreme violence, some of which was delivered by the teachers at a time when corporal punishment was still allowed. The sports field was a particular site of pain.
Somehow, I muddled through, acquired the requisite grades and went to university on a full grant. I still have no idea how to relate to girls/women.
On balance, I, too, think I am much better off as a result of this education than the current generation.
I really disliked school, a selective Boys’ grammar, and couldn’t imagine attending a reunion.
Found the institution to be rife with a stultifying anti-intellectualism and machismo, which seeped down from the idiot Headmaster. He was a bully who, like all bullies, wilted when stood up to.
I had a handful of good teachers, by far the best of whom was my own mother, who appeared to have taken the job solely so she could argue incessantly with everyone around her about their racism, sexism and homophobia. Watching her fight those battles was illuminating both in terms of personal courage, but also with regard to the inherent limitations of such campaigns. She made a lot of people look and feel stupid, but I don’t think she won many hearts and minds. Then again, I suspect she’d be OK with that.
I was ultimately redeemed by the same tendency that got me into the institution in the first place: I never met an exam I didn’t get on with. I was a cocky little shit, and as I lost patience with the school I increasingly let my teachers – many of them pitiable inadequates by any meaningful measure – know that I would be getting the grades I wanted without their help, and occasionally in the face of their outright opposition.
The best thing about that school is that it taught me that education is a process that occurs within the individual. You can read and think and figure it all out on your own if needs be, you don’t need to wait for someone to hand hold you through it all.
The worst was that it was almost incessantly lonely; that particular and peculiar loneliness you can only experience in a crowd. I felt throughly “othered” (to use a modern term) by the experience, and although I eventually flipped that round to my advantage, it stayed with me for a few years afterwards.
The good news is that, like all bad gigs, it gave me great perspective on all the good times that followed. I was and remain overwhelmingly excited and appreciative to be out in the world and around interesting, thoughtful people, and I don’t take it for granted.
I’ve had a lucky life post-school, luckier than I ever expected. And it just reinforces to me that school was a classic case of the wrong person in the wrong place at the wrong time. The one exam I really could have done with failing.
Your mum sounds quite remarkable, Bingo. And very inspiring, and not just for you, I suspect.
I’m going to take issue with you on one thing you wrote.
“The best thing about that school is that it taught me that education is a process that occurs within the individual. You can read and think and figure it all out on your own if needs be, you don’t need to wait for someone to hand hold you through it all.”
As we’ve read from several stories on this thread, many people succeed through their own perseverance. But we’ve also learnt that committed, motivated teachers have often made an important difference.
And a school doesn’t just provide an academic education. There’s also all the social interaction that goes on. Meeting kids from different back grounds and broadening your cultural horizons.
There were a lot of interesting conversations going on in the playground. Not to mention the smoking behind the bicycle sheds.
Finding out which weeklies you should be reading to find out about the new albums being released and all the gigs that you ought to go.
Melody Maker, Oz, ZigZag, International Times, Sounds, NME, Rolling Stone..
And learning which cinemas were the most lax as regards checking your age when trying to buy a ticket to an X film. The South Harrow Odeon was famed for being magnificently laissez-faire. Good thing too as it was the Golden Age of Hammer.
Dracula has risen from the Dead. Pirates of Blood River. Witchfinder General. Masque of the Red Death….
My schooldays turned me into a cinephile. My parents rarely went to the cinema and if they did to see this big British movies like Lawrence of Arabia. (Nothing wrong with that!)
‘One of the English teachers started a film club and was showing some really remarkable movies: Fellini, Truffaut, Bunuel, Bergman..
Someone’s dad worked in the film business and arranged a screening of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis which was pretty unknown at the time. All this encouraged me to start going to see movies at the National Film Theatre at Waterloo.
All those extra-curricular activities were as important as anything I learnt in the classroom.
Incidentally, I’m another one who went to an all-boys grammar school. I was too young and inexperienced to realise the fact at 11 years old, but a single sex school is a not a good idea.
Cheers, KFD.
Ultimately, I can only speak to my own experience, which was and is precisely as I’ve written it above.
I like learning, so I’m always learning (as are most people). It’s a process that began before school and has continued long after it. It has continued without formal teachers.
That’s not to say that a good teacher can’t help; they’re stimulus in much the same way as a conversation or a book, particularly in that great teachers make being smart look incredibly appealing. But the process continues with or without them, and I certainly can’t point to one who changed my life course or opened my eyes to x subject.
I definitely did not find that school broadened my cultural horizons. Quite the opposite; it was a howling cultural wasteland and any mention of Fellini would have been received as a reference to posh pasta.
Just different experiences.
“A howling cultural wasteland”. That does sound grim. I’m sorry you had such a negative experience
I’m certainly not suggesting that all the kids at my school knew bout Fellini or would have been interested in a discussion of La Dolce Vita. I suppose I gravitated towards those few who shared my interests.
The teacher who had the film club was certainly someone we all looked up to. A snappy dresser who had impeccable taste in music and films. He managed to persuade us that we should stop sneering about Elvis Presley and actually give the early records a decent listen.
But the rugger players, the petty criminals, the swots, the guys who were in rock bands: all were part of the tapestry of school life.
Please don’t imagine me constantly going around with a copy of Cahiers de Cinema under my arm.
My cinematic interests were very broad and anything but relentlessly high-brow.
Barbarella, Across 110th Street, She, Goldfinger, Fritz the Cat, Girl on a Motorcycle, Carry on Cleo, Theatre of Blood, Seventeen…
I often went to the cinema because there wasn’t else to do before you were old enough to go to the pub.
Fellini was that thing that only the oldest and coolest boy at school had ever experienced. And even he was making it up.
Very true @Leedsboy. But I guess filtering out the fibs and identifying the porky pies was all part of the social skills that one learnt in the schoolyard.
Having said that, my school was well-known for its Modern Language teaching. In the 6th form we had social get-togethers with the nearby girls school, and there was often bragging about our cunning linguists.
Another all-boys grammar school boy here. The school secretary, who was the only woman in the school (apart from the dinner ladies, who were lovely but didn’t really present as sex objects), had no idea that during the Cuban Missile Crisis a couple of hundred yearning virgins were planning to jump her in the last 4 minutes left to us.
Fortunately the youth club gave me all the female company I could handle.
What an hilarious comment @fortuneight! It’s on a par with Dai’s myopic optician and his sexy wife.
“only one stands out and that’s partly because she actually sparked an interest in literature, but also because she shagged my mate Tim, and threw parties where I finally learned the art of snogging.”
A lot us clearly learnt a lot from our schooldays, but very little of it was from the curriculum.
I went to the shittier of the two comps in the home-counties market town. It was where the boys and girls expelled fom the single-sex ex-grammar, and the good comp, schools were sent.
My entire career is down to two teachers who spotted a light hidden under a bushel – Mr Charlton (Maths) and Mr Brownlee (Physics). We did the entire five-year-long Maths syllabus in four years, and most of the class took the O-level exam a year early. A lunchtime Electronics club was started, in retrospect I can see Mr B did this to encourage me. I’d never have thought of applying to university without his encouragement.
I did reasonably well (mostly grade B) in all my other O-level subjects despite, rather than because of, all the other teachers. I did Metalwork, not French, and taught myself from an O-level Engineering course book (another grade B).
I discovered cars, booze and girls at 17 and my A-level results were less great, but enough to scrape into university. Four of us went that year (’88), all studying one of the sciences, whereas usually none, or perhaps one, did.
I’m FB friends with two of the four. I’ve not seen either in 30+ years and one of them lives in Oz. He’s going to be in the UK during July and we three are going to meet up for lunch. I’m really not sure…
It never ceases to amaze me that my school’s old boy network on Facebook praises many of our teachers to the hilt as ‘really good blokes’. Many of them were borderline psychopaths with the charisma of nail clippings who wouldn’t get within ten miles of a school today.
These days my old school even has an active Pride week and takes part in local Pride events. Back in the 70s one of my best friends had the courage to come out as gay. It was almost grounds for expulsion back then.
Same with mine much reverence is paid to one teacher in particular that should never have been allowed near children.
I went to a comprehensive school in the early eighties and was bullied by a teacher that I had for chemistry, physics and occasionally games. Constantly yelled at in front of the other kids by him and occasionally even had stuff thrown at me. I never understood why he did it either as I was pretty quiet and shy and my exam grades were good. But every parents evening would come round and I’d get D and E from him in the science subjects despite getting Bs for my exams. He did the same to my younger brother as well, god knows why.
Most of the other teachers weren’t much better. The kids there were constantly beating the crap out of each other and spitting was still a thing back then too. Horrible place.
I came out of school with reasonable O levels but it really put me off learning anything more.
Encouraged by my wife I decided to start a Sociology degree a few years back on the Open University. I’m 4 years in and thoroughly enjoying it. My marks have been pretty good too.
And agreeing with what somebody else said – I looked on the school website a good while back just out of curiosity and there’s loads of comments about what a lovely bloke that teacher was. It baffles me still
What a great thread. The comment by @beezer regarding not being remembered if he went to a reunion struck several chords with me. A therapy client a few years ago told me that he worked out a way of ‘going under the radar’ as a day pupil at a private school, to the extent that he’d show up for registration every day, and then, maybe three days out of five, would wander around the local town and environs, whilst somehow managing to do just enough homework to avoid being noticed as absent. Quiet quitting, the early years. When I saw him he was in his early 30s, and decided to train as an airline pilot. He’s now doing really well, and hopefully not going under any radars.
I doubt I’d be remembered if I went to a reunion. After appearing on a quiz show for clever kids when I was 11, I got a scholarship to a nearby private school, a vile contrast to the down to earth Primary School I’d loved and which had a great mix of kids from the local disused pit villages and kids from the new estates that were springing up in the early 70s. Several of those Primary school teachers were ex-miners, and it’s their lessons and philosophies that come more readily to mind than the halitosis driven nonsense from the private school ‘masters’ as we had to call them.
As a day boy (rhymes with ‘gay boy’, ha ha), I didn’t belong at the private school, either financially or socially, and my links with my previous life quickly disappeared. The result was a feeling of constant dread on the bus on the way to school, ever vigilant to the threats from kids going to the local comp. Then there was dread upon arrival, with the posh boarders in their pompous cliques, though I’ve no doubt that some of them have since benefited from ‘boarding school survivors’ therapy, those abandoned upper class foster kids.
The biggest lesson I learned in my first year didn’t come from any of the masters. We were allowed to go into town after lunch and before rugby/cricket/CCF, and a few of us would sometimes do a bit of minor shoplifting. One saturday afternoon, my mother received a call from the housemaster. One of the boarders had been caught shoplifting, and he’d grassed up the other tea leafs, myself included. And here was the thing: apparently I was the ringleader. The other boarders concurred. Turns out I’d been the Fagin of the piece, the bad local lad influencing the good rugger loving boys. All bollocks, of course, but lesson learned. I’ve previously mentioned here the caning, including a run up, by the Hitler loving housemaster, a little man with a high pitched laugh, and when the Edinburgh Academy case was in the news recently, with Nicky Campbell giving evidence, I briefly considered seeking out the perpetrator of my abuse.
Being clever, or rather, knowing how to pass exams, I jumped a year, which meant I left at 17, and got as far away as I could. I bumped into one of the rugby cretins soon after, and mentioned I was at university in London. ‘London? You’re gay then?’ he said.
I went to a comp in Bracknell with around 1500 pupils. It wasn’t great but there were some teachers there were an absolute beacon. Mrs Amos for English tapped into my love of reading and I used to love those lessons. But I only had her as an English teacher for 2 years (and these were not the O level years. Hence my ungraded english lit O Level sitting next to my Grade A English language O level. Mr Parry who taught me Statistics (my other O level) was, wierdly, a wondeful teacher. Super strict and super old fashioned he wanted his pupils to understand the subject not just pass the exam. Understanding things is so much more rewarding – even to a 15 year old Morrissey lookalike.
I did just enough. Retook some O levels and went to college to get a couple of A levels and then got a job and have since done ok. I think, to be honest, I found it easier to work hard when I was at work then at school.
My kids have gone private since secondary school. We haven’t scrimped and saved to get them there but the cars and holidays have been tempered and the kids appreciate that they are fortunate.
The main reasoin we chose this wasn’t the desire to make them high achievers but a realisation that both would have found the local comp a fairly challenging place. Both are bright and funny (chips of the old block I know) but would get lost in a school with the disruptors and the super bright taking the majority of the attention. Both my wife and I went to big comps and both, to some degree, felt lost in the school system. I don’t think education has improved with its focus on exam results and OFSTED measurables. As I once heard on a Radio 4 piece on OFSTED, you don’t fatten a pig by weighing it.
We picked their school based on the pastoral care. We wanted them to learn how to be great human beings. The school has done a pretty good job and there have been several points in the last 5 years where the teachers care and attention has been invaluable in keeping them motivated and invested in the work and having a largely happy school experience. Fingers crossed they survive the impending (tomorrow) GCSEs
Hmmm, interesting. The reason my kids went their local comp was mainly down to ideology, based, in part, on fairness, and, in part, my own experiences in the private sector. I reckoned any lack of enforced discipline and rote learning, would be balanced by a more rounded experience of life and the opposite sex. Neither have sought careers dependent upon grades, but are settled and balanced. I think their ma and I made the right decision.
OK, it didn’t harm we lived in a “nice” area with good state school provision.
My ideology is balanced by the fact that my choice is my choice. I could have had a bigger pension, house, holidays or cars. But I chose to send the kids to a school that I knew they would be happier at.
I don’t think that ideology should force people to make the same choices. If everyone had to have an equal holiday, car or record collection the world would be a poorer place (and the airports would be rammed).
Your experience practically mirrors mine.
Mediocre secondary school after a good primary. Sent our kids to the local private school, largely because the local comps either had huge classes or reminded me of my own secondary school. My daughter, in particular, benefited from the pastoral care at her secondary after some crippling anxiety and my son couldn’t do the bare minimum to fly under the radar.
I sometimes wonder if I could/should have gone to university and if it would have been possible had my later school experience been different. I might have missed out on some unique experiences though so I’ll accept the way things have turned out
Pastoral care is very underrated. When your kids aren’t confident and are quiet, shy types, good pastoral care allows them to grow that confidence in their own time.
I don’t regret not going to Uni. I suspect I may have drank too much and been lazy. Work was probably the better option.
But that’s the whole point of university!
It does mean that I have a bit of capacity I haven’t used up in my youth. And I can afford better wine now.
Another non-Uni attender here. I have no regrets. I learned what became core career skills on the job, and gain some qualifications when I became a civil servant.
I also had a ‘living like a student’ experience when first moving to London and sharing houses with other brand new and skint civil servants. I’ve found many a traffic cone in the living room in my younger time.
I do regret the lack of traffic cones though….
This thread is very educational
“if push came to shove I could castrate a pig ”
“you don’t fatten a pig by weighing it”.
Mention of Lawrence of Arabia above reminded me that David Lean went to my school, as did Michael Foot and Laura Marling, though not at the same time as each other or me.
Nominally a Quaker school, I was one of very few Quakers at the school. It was where my dad, grandfather and great grandfather had gone, so I was put down at birth. Reincarnating at 12 to go there, the early years were frequently horrible, due to it being a boarding school, and other boys often being assholes. The lessons were actually some of the better parts of the experience, as the teachers were good, motivated and sometimes quite funny, and you wouldn’t get your Status Quo posters burned while you were in class (unless you held them over a Bunsen burner).
On reflection, it was a bit like being on the set of Another Country, only not so grand, and without the buggery, mutual masturbation and hanging in the school chapel. So only a very little.
I remember thinking, what will I say when people ask me what my school days were like, and deciding I would say that they were 5 years long and nothing can be completely awful for that length of time. I think if I had had the choice, I might have gone to a day school in Worcester, but that may not have been any better, and my family moved to Switzerland when I went to school, so it would have been out of the question.
I’m looking forward to hedgepig’s contribution.
Based on some of these comments, it would appear that Bruce Springsteen, Paul Simon and Roger Waters all had some valid opinions on school and education!
Another boys grammar school lad here. Teaching was certainly variable, but there were some who were great and my English teacher absolutely was the archetypal inspirational life changer for me. He saw I had an interest and he fed me any number of reading suggestions beyond the curriculum. I owe him a lot. It was the teachers who believed in their subject and wanted to convey that who were best – our Chemistry teacher, our Art teacher, a few others. Then there were the ones who were clearly bored rigid and couldn’t wait to get out of the class. Timeservers who seemed accountable to no-one. One Geography teacher’s idea of a lesson was to have us all trace a map of South America for an hour.
My daughter is an inner city English teacher now and works all the hours God sends. I am pretty sure she’s one of those inspirational teachers for many of her students (I know that I am biased but I do think she is) – you can see her passion and excitement when she talks about them. But equally I can see here getting ground down by the volume of work, the bureaucracy, the lack of recognition teachers get, and I suspect she’ll give it up eventually and find something which gives her a quieter life. She’s not alone. These people are the super heroes who we need and the government should be supporting them and valuing them to the hilt.
This thread has been a torrid read.
My Grammar School thought it was a Public School (Lord Byron did his O-levels there). We played rugby and cricket against Gordonstoun, Fettes etc. We regularly sent our stars to Oxford and Cambridge. We studied Latin, Greek and had long debates re Wordsworth v Shelley or Socrates v Plato.
Almost without exception our teachers were cruel and vicious sadists. Score less than 60% in an informal test, six of the best. Laugh in class when your mate flicked a V, six of the best. Run instead of walk, six of the best. Some teachers favoured a broad leather belt with which to administer punishment. A lot of noise but if you cupped your hand slightly not so bad. The other bastards used thin leather belts which the real experts cracked like a bullwhip often forcing young men to their knees crying with pain.
Ah, the gym teacher. “Not good enough, Thomson Minor. Drop your PT shorts and bend over whilst I slap your buttocks with my tennis shoe. This will hurt me more than it will hurt you.” Thwack and thwack and thwack.
Funny thing was, we all accepted the institutionalised violence, happened every day, did us good. Play Up School.
I’m almost embarrassed how dream-like and without any real anxiety my school life was.
I went to a brilliant Prep School (Geoff Hurst’s kid went to the one opposite) which I never really wanted to leave, and seemed to be a bit of a favourite there, being one of six put up a year, despite clearly being the sixth most capable pupil on the list. There was an audible gasp when it was announced. I think it was because I was the best footballer (seriously). We were the only six pupils to go on the fabled Norfolk Field Trip twice. Curiously, I preferred the first one with the older boys.
There was only one male teacher, all the others were female.
One thing’s always puzzled me. At 6, I was really good at Maths, far and away the best in my class, but by the next year everyone, including the teachers and even myself, seemed to have forgotten!
Minor Public School at 11, which still looks exactly like the one in ‘If…’. I have never heard of any inappropriate behaviour from teachers, though the R.I. guy was a bastard, so I wouldn’t be ‘that’ surprised. It was slightly more ‘minor’ than the other two minor Public Schools near us, but is now anything but minor because of those people the Daily Express hate… people who aren’t white. When I was there, it was 95% white and at least 30% of those (predominantly boys) were happy to scrape exams and float around aimlessly. I was one of them. Now, with a considerable Asian intake of students, my old school is near the top of all those polls in The Times and the like. Nothing to do with me, everything to do with hard-working parents from foreign lands who put huge shifts in to send their offspring to such a place.
The people I remember most fondly are the females, teachers and pupils alike, and if I was to go to an upcoming anniversary in about five years time – not totally a non-starter… apparently at the last one everyone was asking after me, what are the chances! – it will be the female experience of those times I’d be most interested in.
Favourite teachers:
The Art teacher… Helen, the Art room being a space totally alien to every other area in the school. It had a very feminine feel and seemed the most grown up room there. No wonder the only openly gay student chose, like me and just one other boy in our year, to do Art.
The Maths teacher… she had my number from the start. When streams were calculated for the O-Level, rather than be in my expected ‘D’ or ‘E’, she put me in her ‘B’ class, right up the front, and had her beady eye on me constantly for two whole years. I passed.
I can’t remember doing any homework. I can remember worrying about doing homework, but I genuinely can’t remember doing any. Most of my education at home was accrued from playing in the forest, football programmes, I had thousands, and The Beatles. I think it still is. When I wasn’t at school, I didn’t think about it for a second.
Wow a prep school and a “minor” public school. I am genuinely surprised to read how many here went to privileged
fee paying schools and/or are sending their kids to same. It’s a world I know nothing about. And, for me, it is a system that I think shows the UK in a very bad light.
Suppose it worked out ok for me, getting 2 degrees and a nearly 40 year career after being educated at a run of the mill comprehensive with some of the er “challenges” I described earlier
Here’s the thing though, and I don’t think this could apply forty years later, I was the poorest boy in our street. Not in terms of nurture, far from it, but financially.
My best mate (from a local comprehensive) had far more money, holidays, toys etc. than I did. He was (slightly) into football – truth is I don’t think he really dug it – and had a front row Arsenal season ticket in the Main Stand. Went to all the Cup Finals, never an issue – 1978, 1979, 1980 – the full works. I didn’t. His brother routinely went to the Test Matches at Lords, front row, in the stand next the MCC members. I got to go to some Arsenal home games and one Test Match because 1. I was more into it than they were, and 2. they felt sorry for me!
Outside of sport (Orient, QPR, West Ham etc. and matches at Ilford, Lords and the Oval) I never carried any cash, ever. If I needed 10p, I’d ask my mum for 10p. I wouldn’t already have the 10p in my pocket.
As for poshness, I’ve a theory that there were more oiks and ne-er-do-wells at our school than the comprehensive down the road. Many parents, if confronted with a difficult ten-year-old (which I wasn’t) reasoned, probably correctly, that Little Rory would get into less trouble at the fee-paying school than Fenn Street. I reckon that if there had been an organised fight between the two schools – I actually can’t remember any bother at any time – we’d have won hands down.
If they could afford it, maybe. What did your parents do? My father was a semi-skilled steelworker and my mother a part time dental receptionist. I had a full grant at university (my father was on strike when I first went), we lived in a small terrace house (5 of us) and had very basic family holidays, always in the UK
I realise in these days of student debt and difficulties for graduates finding decent jobs how lucky I was. Going to be much more difficult for my daughter.
Back then, I reckon every parent down our street could have sent their kid, maybe two kids, to a private school. They simply made the decision not to. The gap is much bigger now.
Dad was in advertising. There would be loads of plastic prototype models in the garage for dispensing sweets/mints in your local newsagents.
If I bought a pack of Trebor mints or Bazooka Joe bubble gum, I’d probably have to access it from something my dad had designed. He was particularly complimentary about a design Polo had introduced – curved rather than angular – and wished he had thought of it.
I can’t imagine the increasing obstacles someone aged 11 to 22 now faces. Smartphones would have crushed me… when I left those school gates at 4 p.m., aged 15, the next time I thought about school was when I walked back through them at 8.30 a.m. the following morning.
Pretty posh street I guess. Mine was a relatively nice one, house owned rather than council houses. Most took the Daily Express which was less of a tabloid then, but certainly right wing. I know this because I delivered the papers
You’d think so, but no, it wasn’t. Anything but. Our milkman, originally from a road right next to Leyton Orient – so very much an old school east-ender, liked the round so much that he moved in with his wife and two boys.
School fees forty years ago, while not an inconsiderable pull on resources, were not out of the range of milkmen, newsagents, bakers etc., as, I suspect, they are now. Sure, they might have to give up other things, but could anyone down our street have sent a kid to a private school? I’d say yes, if they wanted to.
I was a scholarship kid. Both my parents came from small mining communities in Fife, and actually did the shit jobs.
Privileged? I had access to good teachers, good sports facilities, and high standards of expectation. My parents went without for a while to enable my brother and I to go to private school.
The embarrassment for the UK isn’t that my school existed, or continues to. It’s the fact that it’s necessary.
I haven’t done the stats, so I could be proved wrong: but my impression on this thread is that good teachers and high standards of expectation may have been more of a rarity at private schools than an outsider might reasonably expect.
I suspect some of the lesser private schools are perpetrating a bit of a con on aspirational parents.
No question that the top tier of private schools keep high standards. They can afford to and their customers expect that, with the fees that are charged.
If anyone gets the chance, can I recommend seeing new-ish (2023) German film “The Teacher’s Lounge”. I’m sure everyone watching it (mostly vintage fossils like me) at the session I was at were thinking “Nothing like that in my day” and “What the blimmin’ flip would I do in that situation”?
If you like films with ethical dilemmas, this one’s got them by the truckload.
Education policy and debate is largely based on vibes. Everyone went to school, including ministers, and so everyone has an opinion, which is usually based on 30 year-old experiences which are literally, structurally impossible today. Most education research is weak and ideologically compromised; the stuff which is good and has strong evidence is often ideologically unpalatable to the soft-left end of the vibes crew, including the unions, so is hard to embed. As a result, classrooms are increasingly difficult places and teachers are still abandoning the profession in droves, which has been the case for 15+ years, but now it’s at crisis point: the best schools can’t hire.
Good times.
There’s hope.
Today as I pulled up to my staffroom in the NW suburbs of Sydney, a former student, dropping her younger sister off, said hello. “Off to Uni today?”, I asked. “Learn lots”. “Never as much as I learned from you.”
Then into my staffroom where much of the day was spent writing and rewriting tasks to find the right balance between challenge and accessibility; between ‘relevance’ and ‘abstraction’. Heated discussion, but all in advocacy of our students.
To the desk next to me, a former student of mine, 10 years into her teaching career now a colleague, drawn to teaching for the connections and opportunities she saw provided by her (and my previous) high school.
Had a win with a disengaged student and, more challenging, his enabling and anxious mother. Managed to offer guidance to his teachers across the school and he had the most engaged day he’s had in a long while. Mum felt heard as well.
Then, in the Wellbeing staffroom at the end of the day, a conversation about how best to support our community in response to a student’s suicide attempt last night.
It’s a vibrant, challenging and rewarding profession. On a bad day, we keep them engaged as best we can; on a good day, the students see the world in new ways.
For the most part, in every school I’ve taught in over the last 25 years, staff are united in their commitment, advocacy and ambition for their students. A couple of duds, sure, but it’s a good job.
That is genuinely lovely to read. Bravo sir.
Mrs. T is a TA specialising in helping Special Needs kids and non-English speakers. It’s difficult work but she regularly gets the most lovely cards from parents with comments along the lines of “thank you, you have literally changed our child’s life”.
I also am a teacher and have been struggling to find the right tone for my contribution to this thread, but DanP has nailed it. The overwhelming majority of modern teachers are decent, well-meaning, hard-working people and the job is amongst the most rewarding it is possible to imagine. Most days offer humour, reward and a variety of experiences I haven’t found in other areas of working life. The sad thing is how infrequently this view is expressed.
Now education leadership and management, that’s a whole other story. Going back to being a bog-standard classroom teacher (albeit in a Sixth Form College) is the best thing I ever did.
My supply-term spent teaching a top Biology set in the run-up to their A level exams at a good Sixth Form college was by far the best part of my teaching years. I was standing in for a deputy head of department who had to take a term off for a serious cardiac operation and recovery time.
When the A level results came though – all really good – for a moment or two I guiltily felt disappointed as he’d made a full recovery and claimed his job back. If he hadn’t, I’d have happily stayed there for an entire teaching career.
Hope that wasn’t you, Paul!
Nope not me! Strictly Economics and Business only for me. Teaching Biology looks hard. Though you do get good, ambitious young ‘uns doing it, which helps obvs.
I think, if you all try a bit harder, I could still get a hamper for this thread!
Mmmm, school dinners!!!
I loved school dinners. And hospital food, too.
I’ve spent most of my working life in education but in a support role. I tried teacher training in my early 40s but decided it wasn’t for me.
However my last full-time post was as a curriculum support officer in one of the (at least then) top performing schools ( a Grammar) in the country. Ofsted said “excellent” for what that’s worth.
Our last three MPs went to the school.
The students were great mind you they’d had to sit an entrance exam to get in, the school was over subscribed. The staff were too (well most).
It decided to become an academy and as I’d been through similar before in a college I thought it a wrong move and when I was offered redundancy again (I’d already been made redundant from the college previously) I didn’t hesitate.
The school still has high ratings.
Hamper soon, with lots of boffo tuck.
Hamper? How about a tuck box? At the stay of each school year my granny gave me a big homemade fruitcake, wrapped in tin foil, which I eked out till about half term, savouring the crumbs and currants, and the half bottle of brandy she soaked the mix in before baking*. Sometimes, if I was lucky, there would be a big bar of Toblerone in there
as well, a souvenir from good times at home in Switzerland.
*this is a lie.
Hamper, eh?
I went to a state school, albeit a good one – I gather my parents moved into the area when I was four, partly based on the reputation of the local schools. The primary school still has a good rep, although I’m not sure that the benefits of a “Scottish Education “ are quite what they used to be…
It was the final years of the “feeder” system – there were three junior secondaries: after second year, the top third from each school were sent to a senior secondary. I remember the system being heavily criticised for the effect this had on the morale of the guys that were left behind. The year after I left, all four schools went fully comprehensive.
The senior secondary was like a hothouse for further education: you work, you get on, you get a good degree – real Roger Waters territory! I mostly have good memories – I only met the headmaster once, when I wanted to do three sciences as full subjects and the timetable didn’t really allow it. I had to justify myself to this fierce guy – but he made it happen. I wasn’t a swot and I wasn’t a rebel – I mostly kept my head down and tried not to attract attention. Most of my actual friends were the hippies that hung around the art department and the hifi club – so my prog tastes were formed at school and by the time I left, I had long hair and a combat jacket. I don’t remember any dodgy teachers – and the chemistry teacher was probably responsible for my subsequent career.
My first tutor at university thought we were all weird. About half a dozen of us did pharmacy at Strathclyde: “oh god, more Eastwood kids! None of you get the full experience: you all live at home, commute in and treat university like a job!” He was right, to an extent – we’d been kinda moulded that way.
Addendum: also at Eastwood High were Ricky Gardiner, of Bowie/Iggy fame; Kelly Macdonald, of Trainspotting fame; Brian Robertson, ex of Thin Lizzy; and, contemporary with me, Alan Thompson, long time fretless bass player to the mighty John Martyn….there might have been some sporting types as well, but I wouldn’t have known any of them – and as far as I’m aware, no cabinet ministers…
Just one comment to go. Oh…..
You’re a star!
I went to a boy’s grammar school that wasn’t as good as it pretended to be; the headmaster paid more attention to creating the rituals of a minor public school than the teaching standards.
When it moved from inner London to the suburbs it grew worse as he allowed his spiteful snobbery to show. Come the sixth form I thought I would be better off elsewhere, but in a moment of weakness was talked out of it by the sixth form master who insisted there were no decent sixth form colleges in the area. I stayed on, realised a couple of months in that he had done it because I was marked as one of the university, and felt thoroughly miserable for the next 18 months.
I did OK academically and went on to uni but it wasn’t worth it for how unhappy I was in the place; sure I could have done as well and probably better somewhere I felt more comfortable. And I’ve steered well clear of the school since the day I left. Still have a handful of mates from there but wouldn’t want to go to any formal reunions.