School Days were Happy Days: 52 Ancestors - Week 36

“Back to School” is Week 36’s theme in Amy Johnson Crow’s year long prompt “52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks."  With very little in the way of ancestor stories, I am featuring here my own school day memories.

I  come from a family of teachers (two uncles and an aunt), married a teacher and both my brother, daughter and myself have been trainers in our particularly fields.  So teaching is in the blood there somewhere.  My husband taught   physics, and quickly found that to admit to this fact  brought to an end any social conversation.  

  Here is my first school photograph from the 1950's. 

I attended primary school  in  Blackpool, Lancashire.  I am on the second front row, second from the right, next to the boy in the  striped pullover. The fashion and hair styles here  were so typical of the day - the girls with plaits (me), pudding basin haircuts, side slides or fancy top ribbons.

I counted a class of 46 - double today's standard for class size!   We sat in serried rows of  battered  individual wooden desks with inkwells,  and I remember chanting our times tables, copying handwriting,  the hated mental arithmetic sessions which I dreaded,  and of course reading which I loved.

Playing the triangle in my infant school percussion group  is one of my earliest school memo.ries.  I was not too pleased at being given  this instrument.  Like everyone else, I wanted the favourite choice  - the sleigh bells. 

Every Wednesday afternoon we gathered in the hall for community singing and I learnt such patriotic songs as The British Grenadiers, Hearts of Oak, The Bonnie Bonnie Banks of Loch Lomond, Bluebells of Scotland and my favourite Men of Harlech, sung with much gusto.  Sea shanties were also popular as we swung from side to side to sing What Shall We Do with the Drunken Sailor?   Are these now all forgotten,  as I doubt that children are familiar with them today? 



There was not a strict uniform at my primary school, but I was desperate to wear a gymslip and tie.   My mother did not like them, but eventually I got one handed down from my cousin and wore  the school red and navy striped tie and the red girdle round my waist, feeling I had stepped out of one of the school stories I loved to read. 

We didn't seem to get  individual or class photographs at my secondary school (girls only)  but I remember two occasions when the whole school (about 500  of us I think) gathered on the playing fields for a massive group photograph.  The first year pupils sat cross legged on the grass, with the staff in their academic gowns seated  on chairs, and the rest of the school grouped behind, either standing or  balanced on gym forms.  The result was a large rolled photograph in a scroll box.  Unfortunately I did not see fit to keep these and threw them out when I was having a major sort-out, prior to getting married.   I regret that now. 

My recollection of my teachers is they all seemed quite elderly (though this probably was not the case) and very few were married - most would fit the now old fashioned description of "spinsters". 

Miss Robinson (English) was a great mimic at adopting dialects and accents.  She brought to life the characters in such plays as "Midsummer's Night's Dream", "The Rivals" and "She Stoops to Conquer". 

I liked Miss Jones (Latin).  Unusually for me, one day I was brave enough to write on the blackboard the jingle "Latin is a language as dead as dead can be.  It killed off all the Romans and now it's killing me!"  Fortunately when she walked into the classroom she saw the humorous side of it.  

Another Welsh teacher was Miss Edwards who more than anyone made me want to study history - my first love.  It is amazing what facts I learnt many many years ago that come back to me when answering quiz questions on TV.

Miss Mutch (German) scared me.  She was from the Shetland Isles, bit of a bean pole, with cropped grey hair and given to wearing viyella checked blouses and v-necked pullovers.  She was burdened with the schoolgirl ditty of "If you miss Miss Mutch, you don't miss much".  I felt doomed from my first German lesson  when my attempt (in front of the class)  to pronounce a lovely German "Ich" came out as "Ick".   Still I persevered.  She was a good teacher, her lessons stuck with me, and I can still get-by in tourist German when abroad. 

From my first term at grammar school, science bored me stiff.    Our science teacher went by the unfortunate name of Miss Smedley, which was far too easy to change to Miss Smelly.  I could not work up any enthusiasm for learning about microscopic creatures such as the amoeba and hydra, nor get  fired up over a Bunsen burner. My  science knowledge is  poor, which is an awful admission to make in the modern world, though I have learned more from watching the quiz show Pointless on TV.  The irony is I went on to marry a physics teacher!  

We moved to Edinburgh where I finished secondary education at a co-ed school and for  the first time in my school life  I was  taught by men.   Mr Scott-Allan continued  to develop  my interests in the past with a new dimension to it now of Scottish history, and Mr Ironsides (known as Tin Ribs) kept  Latin alive for me. 

So I have nothing but my memories to remind me of my High School days and University days where I was unaware of any group  photographs ever being taken.  I envy the American tradition of School Year Books - a great resource for family historians. 

I did toy with the idea of becoming a teacher myself, but my Aunt Edith (right)  was not encouraging.  She won  a scholarship to Fleetwood Grammar School , in Lancashire, riding the four miles on her bike in all weathers.  She became a teacher at Burn Naze School in Thornton Clevelys (a poor area of town in the 1920's and 30's)  and had a keen memory for past pupils (particularly black sheep)  and humorous incidents such as excuse notes, written  for absences.  Unfortunately her memorabilia from her teaching days must have been thrown out at some stage as I never came across it following her death - such a pity. 

But a few years ago I had a delightful find, when the school was celebrating its 100th anniversary and featured on its Facebook page fond pupil memories of Miss Danson as their infant teacher.

My student days ended on graduation, - followed four years later by my brother - and look at those 1970's sideburns!  Both our parents left school at 14 years old,  and we were the first generation to go to university - something our parents were very proud of.

I feel I went through education at the best of times, inspired by some dedicated teachers. 

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