Yesterday, I was asked - with many others - to go to our GC's school, and answer questions on what it was like for us to be children.
It was a good craic, and we all enjoyed talking about no mains water, toys and freezing cold bedrooms etc.
One of the teachers in our three girls' fabulous little country school mentioned that when they were cleaning out the staff room, they found a cane! She asked the assembled GPs if they had ever had a session with one and all the hands shot up, including the ladies!
The other lady on my table said that she'd been beaten with a strap every day for being left-handed! She was Scottish, so that may have been the reason, but what bastards these teachers were back in the forties and fifties!
I got to thinking on how many ways we were all corporally punished back then...
Cane
Dap (plimsoll)
Piece of wood a foot long
Larger piece of wood
House shoe (prefects' weapon of choice)
Five iron
One master used to make a fist and hit you on the back of the head. It was known as 'Joe's bonks'. A chum had fallen down the stairs and had his head wrapped in bandages, so Joe just twisted his arm up behind his back! Absolute bastard. Luckily, I did get my own back when by chance, I met him again a few years after I left school. We were all sitting in the late summer sun on one of the first rugby days of the season, in the old stand at Brighton RFC. He was playing for Old Alleynians.
We had a sort of embarrassed chat, and when I took my leave, he asked me to remember him to all the others. My 'mild' response was 'Er, I don't think so...' and he showed the first remorse I'd ever seen.
Great feeling that.
14 comments:
I once got a slap on the leg in Junior school by a teacher because I retaliated when a boy hit me on the head with a little rolled-up magazine. All I did was push him away! In main school there was a geography teacher who used to throw his blackboard duster at naughty lads' heads. Being a child brings back memories of iced-up windows inside my bedroom, not being allowed to play outside with other kids unless they were chosen by my parents, exploring the mains electrical box by sticking my finger into it (???!!!), inserting said finger into the mangle whilst my mum was using it, Dolly blue sachets, oh - so many things but you never forget them.
I went to a De la sale grammar school, cane or leather tawse seemed to be the weapons of choice and I got whacked plenty....I pretty much deserved it but for children of a milder disposition it seemed rather harsh.
Yup, at that level I must confess to not exactly being a goody-two-shoes! Always up to some mischief or other. Depending on who was taking the class of misfits, our punishment was either a few whacks on the backside from a white Dunlop PE plimsoll, which lived in the teacher's cupboard, if we were in our "home" classroom (in which case usually by 4pm it had been disposed of through an open window!) or, if we were in the chemistry lab and a miscreant had been playing with the gas taps, a one metre ruler was the implement of choice - a few of which actually snapped on impact! Throwing chalk dusters was also on the menu, but less frequently as a crack on a head from the wooden side could cause serious injury to young heads.
In one of our labs there was a cut out working model of a car engine which was used to demonstrate how it all worked to 5th formers. As many of us used to cycle to school, we all had spanner sets in the saddle bags.... and you can guess the rest. At assembly the following morning, the headmaster put on his deadliest serious voice and announced the vandalism to the whole school, along with the threat that he knew who had done it and if they had not completely rebuilt it back to working condition by Friday there would be very serious repercussions. Naturally, come Friday morning it was all working beautifully again. That explains one of the reasons why I knew quite a bit about car engines by the time I left school.
One other incident I recall.. There was an electric clock on a wall with the feeder wires running down to an electric point. By making a slight virtually invisible cut between the rubber/plastic covering wires so that both the inner metal wires were slightly exposed and then quickly inserting removing a pin, simultaneously touching both wires caused the polarity of the clock to reverse - making the hands run backwards. Ho ho!! Not a lot of people know that...
Them was the days my friends!
Oh boy! I love the idea of a clock running backwards!! Chemistry labs were always a never-ending source of amusement. One could get strange things coming out of water taps, put a Bunsen burner at one end of the bench, light it then open a bottle of ether at the other end (don't try this at home), create nitrous oxide gas with a perished outlet rubber tube. Unfortunately I was never involved with these kinds of pranks. Not quite cricket you know as per the blog theme!
We had the cane, plimsolls etc but the worst punishment was cross-country running every winter. I never understood what we'd done to deserve it.
Brrrr! Fortunately cross-country running had only just come in and was just for the boys. That reminds me of a games mistress called Miss Fehrenbach (no, not that kind) and she certainly wasn't at all kind in the least. She had us playing hockey in the snow wearing our little gym-slips and black cotton plimsolls. I got hit extremely hard on the leg by a firmly-whacked ball and the bruise lasted for ages. I hated that game with a passion!!
Oooohh! jolly hockey sticks.... Nasty wuff game..
I recall that one day there was an after school football practice, so three of us who sat at the back of the class decided to put our boots on early before the final lesson of the day ended. As we left the classroom, the teacher, who had not noticed us changing, heard us clunking out and summoned us all back. Miserable %$^^&@ gave us 45 minutes detention writing 100 times "I must not put my football boots on in the classroom" - so we all missed the session. Games master was not exactly pleased with either us or the teacher!
We were once forced to play a match against another local school with 90% of the pitch under 2 inches of water. Utter lunacy as nobody could pass the ball and of course everyone got thoroughly soaked. But "the game must go on"... They don't make 'em like us any more these days.
Dunlop dap? Luxury! We had it tough...
I'd forgotten the blackboard duster, and that did hurt!
Another nasty fact about Joe was that after any game, the losing side had to run round the pitch boundaries - rain or shine. Bastard.
We also endured a system of serious beating exactly like the scene in 'If...'
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRA-M-_Bv6g
Luckily esacaped that particular harrassment. Happy days!
I wonder what the punishments today are like? Could they possibly consist of removing the glue between their mobile phone and fingers or ears without anaesthetic (I wish), girls staying behind to re-sew their skirt hemline so it actually covers their important little places, boys being taught how to clean up after themselves (oh how I so wish) and the value of manners and money? Somehow I don't think so because teachers are too busy getting to grips with new curricula and persuading some parents to part with hard-earned money so they can buy pencils etc. Personally I much prefer a good slap on the legs along with "wipe that muck / smile off your face or I'll do it for you". I think the old-fashioned bobby was just as good at keeping wayward kids under control.
Oh Goosey! As I said above - them was the days - and I fear they will never return. Even if Treeza managed to get some grammars reinstated, I am very doubtful we could find enough teachers these days capable of teaching (or even understanding) a 1959/60 'O' level maths or English grammar paper. I recall reading a while back that 20 'bright' students about to take their 'O' GCSEs were given the 1959 Oxford 'O' level maths paper to do. Only 2 out of the 20 managed to scrape through. A few weeks later they took their GCSEs and all came out with A* results. I suspect the current GCSE 'O' level equates to roughly what we were doing in the third year.
Back in the mid 1970s I met a so called English teacher fresh out of a teacher 'training' college who had never even heard the word 'parsing' let along what it or an adverbial clause actually meant. I was informed that grammar was no longer important; the new standard was 'phonetics'. When I mentioned that when one learns a foreign language, knowledge of the grammar was vital - so why not the same for English? All I will say is "If looks could kill...."
Re dress code, our history master took us to the local baths for weekly swimming and if one of the lads was wearing a bit skimpyish trunks, he would peer over the top of his glasses and remark, "Jones, I see you have just the necessary to cover the essential" - a remark I remember from over 60 years ago!
I think we oldies were lucky enough to get a proper education despite Brex.. er..
malevolent plimsolls.
I was lucky to be born in those days when you were endlessly taught multiplication tables, proper grammar (phonetics? What the ****?! Is that just a lazy and rather mobile phoney version??), how to compose letters, and had some teachers so full of knowledge that meant you could leave school with enough decent results to get you through life without reverting to a dictionary, calculator or having to ask how many days are there in September. You only need to watch "The Apprentice" to see how this so-called "brightness" is roughly equivalent to a candela (i.e. a common candle emitting light with roughly 1 cd luminous intensity) then compare it to the 250 watt bulb that fired us up, and you see what I mean. I use the Oxford comma because I like to, and try not to split my infinitives in case I reveal my rather rebellious nature which hitherto has not been explored as fully as I would like. At least there are no Mods on here, thank God!
Ah, a lass after my own heart. To rebelliously split infinitives..
wassa infinertive izzere also an outfinertive? Fernetix - everywun shud ave wun.
Better go now. Big Brother is watching us :-)
I could make a Photoshop of the right bitch of a teacher I had when I was about ten years old.
She always had a reputation for being totally nasty, and boy, didn't she have her favourites. There were only three boys, including me, in her class, and she doted on the other two (chums at that time), ignoring me while she let them do all the creative things boys like, while I languished with a crappy colouring book and a few old crayons.
I'll try and get her pic up here soon, so that everyone can see what an evil, scrawny, unmarried, unloved, bitchy, wasted harridan looks like. (Even my dear sister suffered from her total and utter nastiness a few years before me...
Yup, definitely time for a fecking good blow-up methinks.
Please go ahead boss!
That also reminds me of my infant school days. My class mistress (why are these types always women?) had a surname very similar to mine, just 2 letters difference. Even way back then I noticed that when she spoke to every other child in that class, and there were about 30 of us, she invariably used his/her Christian name - except for me who was always addressed by my surname. Funny how I now recall that blatant discrimination 70 years later!
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