How History Was Beaten Into Me

School - Sharmans Cross

I started at Sharmans Cross High School For Boys in Shirley, Solihull in 1958, aged 11. Now do not get confused about it being called a High School, for in Solihull you needed to fail your 11+ to qualify, unlike Redditch High School which I went to when 16, where you needed to pass your 11+, but that is a different story.

Sharmans Cross had 950 boys and in my baby boom year there were 8 classes of 38 boys in each class. I was in the top class so goodness knows what it was like to be in the lower reaches.

History Lessons

In the four years I was at this school we had the same history teacher. His technique was simple, we were given a text book, told to read a chapter and towards the end of the hour lesson we would close our books and he would open his and ask us a series of questions. You were required to answer a minimum of 60% questions correctly in the first year when aged 11 to 12 an amount that increased by 5% each academic year. Fail to do this and you had to go to the front of the class to be slippered. This meant you bent down and touched your toes and then the teacher would hit your bum with one or two strokes with the sole of a large pump (plimsoll). Slippering was a lot less feared than the cane which was reserved for more serious misdemeanours although a few more sadistic teachers never bothered with the slipper but reached immediately for the cane.

Now I realise this is not a good or perhaps now even legal method of teaching but back in the late 50s and early 60s we never questioned it. We did however develop a tactic to reduce the chances of being hit.

The diagram above shows the layout of the classroom. Note the boy at Desk 28 balanced the history book on his knees beneath the desk. He got 100% every week. His answers were copied by the boys in his row and also the row behind. The answer was whispered to a boy in the row before 28 and so the answers were propagated around the class. The accuracy of these answers diminished as they travelled, similar to the game of Chinese Whispers so those further away would sometimes fail to meet the mark and be slippered.

I sat in the back row so escaped but the poor lad who sat at Desk 1 had no chance and I can see and hear the teacher even now saying "It's always you Youngblood" (not his real name, but close) as he bent over and touched his toes.

None of us thought of complaining, not that it would have done any good. The teacher was quite decent and never laid it on hard. He was probably bored with the lesson as much as we were and looked forward to his fag in the staff room whilst we looked forward to 20 minutes of mayhem in the playground.

The only time I can recall him beating me was when I tried to eat an apple. "Are you eating Tallis" he yelled. I swallowed the piece of apple and replied "Not now sir." He was not amused and I was summoned to the front and given a couple of blows.

The sad thing is I can only remember one thing from the 4 years he taught us and this was one of the rare occasions when he picked up chalk and wrote on the blackboard. It was about Charlemagne and the extent of his empire.

Change of School - Ridgeway

In the 4th year just after my 15th birthday we moved to a Worcestershire village which meant changing school. Ridgeway was much more rural orientated and only one third the size. The classes were smaller, about 30 in a class which made a bit of difference but the fact that half of them were girls made a big difference.

Mr. Lippet was our teacher and he could not have been more different. I believe he was a Baptist lay preacher, but I may be wrong on this. He controlled the class effortlessly, never spoke down to us and the thought of him beating any pupil was unimaginable. We were studying social history and I remember many small points of interest he talked about. For example he discussed with us why a man who works many hours of hard labour still works in his own garden afterwards, a mixture of necessity and the satisfaction of working for oneself he believed.

Eighteen months later I spent a day in glorious sunshine sitting on the flat roof of the local Observer Corp building on top of a hill just outside our village cramming history dates before tomorrow's O-level exam. Around me are Bredon Hill, Malvern Hills, Abberley Hill and in the distance the Clee Hills and beneath me swallows catch insects just above the grass.

It must have helped as I managed to pass the exam quite well with a grade 2, in those days grade 6 was the minimum pass level. This went towards the five passes I needed to qualify for a place in Redditch High School 6th form to study for A-level. At the time I did not realise going into the local grammar school was possible, it was only a chance remark by someone asking my father if I had started at the school that made us aware of the possibility. Dad made an appointment to see the headmaster and I started a week after the term had begun.

 

Posted with Blogsy

School 1958 and my first caning!

I went to the senior school, Sharmans Cross, a large secondary modern school in Shirley Solihull in September 1958. To get to a secondary modern you had to fail your 11 plus which I did, but I soon got over the disappointment although remained jealous of my pal from across the street who not only passed but his parents rewarded him with a new bike with deraillure gears!

It was a large school with over 900 pupils, all boys and as I was a baby boomer the new first year was very large, with classes 1A1, 1A-Inter, 1A2, 1B1, 1B2, 1C, 1D, 1E, each with 38 boys. I was in 1A1. 

So how was this school run? Basically by the slipper and cane. The slipper was the sole of a size 10 plimsoll, or pump as it was called locally, and administered by any teacher for lesser misdemeanours in blows of 1 to 4 across the backside. For more serious offences the cane was used up to six of the best. 

Even before I went to the school I knew of this as my brother, 7 years older than me, had already experienced these. I vividly remember seeing him in the bath when he was 14 or so with big blue wheals across his behind. He had been in trouble over something or other and for punishment the teacher had told him to carry all the chairs and desks out of the classroom. 

"You must think I'm a bloody fool to expect me to do that!" and for saying this he was rewarded with six of the best. 

The same teacher was to teach me science later on and he had not mellowed much, but I will expand on this in a later post. 

Before my first day my brother told me that at some time a teacher would ask for volunteer to be caned and I should volunteer because afterwards I would never fear being caned again. 

In one of the early days 1A1 was in the Art Room. The Art Teacher walked up and down between the desks looking at our work. He carried his 1 meter long cane with him, on the top he had pushed a plastic Jiffy Lemon with which he use to "playfully" strike us over the head as the fancy took him.

In the front row a boy had dipped his brush into a colour at random and splodged it over his paper. 

"What do you call that?" shouted the teacher.

"I call it 'All Colours', sir."

Obviously not impressed by the abstract side of painting "Get out to the front" he barked "and bend over! "

He rotated the cane over so that the Jiffy Lemon was above his hand and gave the budding artist two swipes. 

"Anyone like to volunteer for the cane?"  he asked after the boy had sat down. 

Remembering my brother's advice my hand shot up, "Yes please sir" to everybody's astonishment, including myself, I called out. 

So he ordered me out and repeated the punishment on me. Well I immediately began to doubt the advise once I felt the pain but on balance I think it did remove the fear as there were many times I received the cane there after. 

Now this may all sound at best silly and at worse brutal, but it was a good school with great repartee between teachers and pupils, and if we took it too far then one or several or even the whole class would be slippered or caned and the balance restored. Anyway that was the view from the A1 stream, not sure how the C, D and E streams faired. 

Still I would not be happy now for the same treatment to be handed out to my grandchildren. 

Colour Blindness

There were three characteristics I have that as a young child I was unaware of, namely

1. Red-green colour blindness
2. Short sightedness
3. Speech problem

Now none of these could be described as handicaps, at worse just deficiency, but the point is I was unaware of them. In this a post I will discuss colour blindness, the other two in later posts.

My elder brother was also colour blind so perhaps this had been discussed at home but it did not register with me. The first time it effected me was when I was 5 or 6 years old,  about 1952 or 1953. I was at school and we were drawing a picture of a daffodil, probably an Easter Card for our mothers. We were all at our desks, the old fashioned type with a lifting lid.

When the teacher saw my picture she instructed me to stand on my chair with my hands on my head and told the other children to  "Look at silly Roddy's painting, his daffodil is orange not yellow!" I gazed down from my high vantage point and for the life of me could see no difference in the colour of my daffodil to the others. Luckily these type of incidents did not bother me but I never forgot it.

In the 1950s schools were visited by nurses and doctors and everyone eyes were tested and I was soon diagnosed with red-green colour blindness but I did not worry about it.

In fact it was not until I was 17 can I remember the next incident. I was now playing rugby for the small market town Alcester in Warwickshire. We played in red and black hoops, just like Moseley but some many skill levels lower. I am told to most people red is a vibrant colour but not so for me, so when the shirts were old they merged into one near black colour. Now being short and short-sighted my natural position was scrum-half and although a basically solid player I had little flair, but for a short guy I was a surprisingly good tackler. I especially enjoyed felling the big opponent forwards as they broke through a line-out and were all off balance. I was somewhat dumbfounded on one game when one of our forwards ran towards me from the line out, passed by and continued towards our try line. Why was he going that way? The opponents were Shipston-On-Stour and they played in all black shirts.

Then I started to drive and this meant I had to get to grips with traffic lights. Again not a real problem as for me they were not Red, Amber (whatever that is) and Green but Red, Yellow and White with a greasy smear, and they were normally on poles at a certain height.

When I became a parent my inability to recognise colours was of great interest and amusement to my daughter. I think it pleased her that I could get something so basic wrong. "What colour is that?"  was the frequent question. Some I got right some not. There are references one uses. Grass is green, pillar boxes are red so I try to match these. If the green is dark then I call it brown, if the brown is light then I call green. This behaviour now fascinates my grand-daughters.

Graphs can be challenging.  At one branch meeting the presenter was discussing the red line on the graph.
"Excuse me," I interrupted, "I am colour blind, which one is red?"
"The one above the green." he replied.
"Excuse me," I interrupted, "I am colour blind, which one is green?"
Plonker!

Final example. I was watching Prof Alice Roberts on TV regarding evolution of mankind and how man can see three primary colours whereas most animals only two. The film showed a market stall of fruit, first as animals would see it, and then as we humans see it.
"Well they seem the same to me." I said.
"Good grief," my now adult daughter said "for the first time I think I understand what you see."

Shame that teacher all those years ago never did.