The class of '68 part 5 teachers and possibilities

Poundswick High School Lower School, 1982

Now most of us can look back on teachers who were very special. 

They come in all sorts of shapes and sizes, from the larger than life and eccentric ones who sweep you along to the quiet and thoughtful who radiate calm confidence and bring that out in you. 

And then there are all the variations in between.  True as the critics of state education delight in shouting there are a few who were unsuitable, some who had no idea how to communicate and one I met who was a downright bully.  But they were the real exceptions.  In thirty-five years of teaching in inner city schools and of course those years when I was on the receiving end all but a handful of the people who chose to stand in front of a class were all that you could want from a teacher.

Some of the Class of '68, 1968

I remember Norman Parry, who left elementary school, spent years in the Direct Works Department of Manchester Corporation before becoming a metal worker teacher at Oldwood Secondary School.  He was much loved by generations of students and by us younger teachers who marvelled at the way he drove his motorbike up and down the corridors of the school with little regard for authority.

Many of his generation who made such an impact on me as I began teaching were men and women who had seen active service in the last world war and were determined that they were going make a difference in the post world war. Men like Austen who had flown fighter bombers off aircraft carriers, ran a very successful part time optician’s business but made his main job that of teaching maths in Wythenshawe.

And a generation later we the class of ’68 were fortunate in having so many at Crown Woods.  My  three history teachers, all of my English ones and many others who came my way were excellent communicators, and caring individuals who unlocked the doors to new worlds and above all gave me a love of learning that I have never lost.

I remained in awe of Mrs Hussein whose rapid delivery of events of the 18^th and early 19^th century left us tired and desperate fearing not to look out of a window lest we lose fifty years of European history.  All of which was in direct contrast the slow delivery of Mr Levine who would sit and throw out the “big idea” about Gladstone or Disraeli and then seek to weave subtle arguments which while they were entertaining were also powerful examples of how to develop A level history essays. And in amongst all this was the equally powerful presence of Mr Naismith who managed to mix style and delivery with a deep knowledge which always ended with a flourish as he tore up his teaching notes at the end, as if to say “here another original and fresh lecture” which would not be brought out for another trip next year.

Michael Marland

And then there was Michael Marland Head of English and later Director of Studies. His was a dominant presence in my years at the school.  His quiet manner was as effective in one of those last classes with a bottom set Year 9 group on a Friday afternoon as when exploring the comic side of Shakespeare’s Henry IV with his lower sixth on a Tuesday before lunch.

Looking back what I treasure most was his sense that all of us were important and that however ungainly we expressed ourselves and “got it wrong” there was merit in what we said and his job was to take us forward and bring out our talents.

It was a quality which on more than one occasion led him to persuade me in to doing something “dramatic” that at best I was uneasy with and at worst just didn’t want to do.  Like the performance of Pinter’s “The Last to Go” which he and I did at one the evenings of prose and poetry hosted by the English Department.  Now being asked to do the five minute conversation between a barman and newspaper seller in front of an audience was daunting enough, but to actually have to do it with Mr Marland made you feel very special.

Some of the Class of '68, 1965

And when you had been chosen to be part of one these events there was a real sense that there was no way of getting out of it.  I well remember another such evening, which was to be a collection of 18^th century readings and music performed at Ranger’s House on Blackheath to  invited audiences.

There was the causal enquiry about  becoming involved, followed by an invitation to his office high up in the school.  The part was outlined to me which I politely declined using a variety of excuses all more desperate than the one before. These were listened to and quietly but carefully put aside with a mixture of humour and a little flattery, before I realised that this was truly what I wanted to do, and I left with script in hand, only to see that there on page one already printed out along with the rest of the cast was my name beside the piece Clever Tom Clinch by Jonathan Swift.

It was something I thoroughly enjoyed and one that I will always be grateful that he pushed that raw 17 year old to do.

But the degree of his standing in my profession only became apparent once I began teaching.  His book “The Craft of the Classroom: a survival guide to classroom management in the secondary school” published in 1975, offered me and many other young teachers the practical side to the job.  I was arrogant enough to think that I had as he said that mix of "a spirit compounded of the salesman, the music-hall performer, the parent, the clown, the intellectual, the lover” but it was the “organiser" that I was lacking.  Simple things like keeping a register and how to start and end a lesson were taken as read by my older colleagues but never imparted to me when I started in the September of 1973.

It is a reputation that went deep and so during a meeting with English teachers in the late ‘80s the fact that he taught me was met with a mix of envy and a series of questions about him.  I have to say I was less than modest and let slip he had once told me I featured in the preface to one of his books. 

Now for me that still ranks as something.

Pictures; from the collection of Andrew Simpson and  Anne Davey.  The photograph of Michael Marland courtesy of CATHERINE SHAKESPEARE LANE   PHOTOGRAPHER, http://www.csl-art.co.uk/index2.htm

The class of '68 part 4 widening horizons and lots of fun

Few of us get the chance to leave a past life with all its associations and disappointments behind and start out a fresh.

This is pretty much what I did in the September of 1966 when I walked into Crown Woods School.  I left behind an indifferent five years in all boys’ secondary modern school and one real friend.

And in its place embarked on a two year spree of new friends amazing academic challenges and a new confidence about who I was and where I was going.

But enough of the indulgent personal stuff suffice to say that when I sat down in that room on the second floor with a dozen or so complete strangers I took control of who I wanted to be.  There was no one to judge me against the untidy, loud 11 year old afraid of his own shadow of five years earlier.

Here I could be a new me, and it started with walking to school with a rolled umbrella.  A piece of sheer affectation, silly in retrospect but it made me feel different.

So here in this new place everything was possible.  The school had a confidence about itself and you came across it at almost every turn.

The year before the timetable had been collapsed for certain year groups and various departments collaborated on a drama production “The Price of Coal.”

Set in the 19th century it examined the conditions in which children worked in the coal mines...  And so while the History department set to research the story the English and music departments worked on the production and Art created the backdrop.

Nor was the school alone in sending out a message that comprehensives were just as good at offering exciting and innovative experiences.  Just down the road at Eltham Green School their staff and 6th Form hosted major conferences each year where 16-18 year olds could take part in workshops, listen to leading writers, historians, and scientists, meet and debate with each other and just have a good time.

I can’t remember the theme for the summer of 1967, but Sgt Pepper had just been released and by one of those rare coincidences the organiser was a Mr Pepper, and so much of the two days was filled with the sounds of that LP.  What I do remember was listening to Arnold Wesker discuss with others the cost of the Arts.

Back at Crown Woods there was a regular slot where well known writers were invited to come, meet and talk to us.  I am not sure what Margaret Drabble thought of the meal with four Sixth Formers in the Domestic Science rooms or the level of our discussion but for me this was something totally beyond what might have been possible just a few years earlier.

And that was the point.  At that critical moment in growing up I had the opportunity to discover a whole new set of experiences.  So within a year into being there as a few passed their driving tests and were trusted with the family car we were off along the country lanes of Kent hunting out old pubs or just going the three miles to sit beside the Thames on late warm summer nights listening as the tide on the river banged the barges together.

Then there were the theatres, concert halls and art galleries.  For a pretentious 16 year old in love with himself as well as half the girls in the 6th form I just couldn’t get enough of all that was there to see and hear.

It might be the Old Vic with Lawrence Oliver, Joan Littlewood’s theatre at Stratford East, or one of countless small rep companies performing across the capital.

We hoovered them up as if there was no tomorrow.  Most were fun a few were dire and some still resonance today, like the visit to see King Lear at Stratford.  Three of us had travelled in Crispin’s car and while he settled into a bed and breakfast Mike and I camped for the night by the Avon within walking distance of the theatre.  How we got away with that I don’t know but we did and that is about as far as you get from a small secondary modern school in Brockley to all that followed at Crown Woods.

Pictures; from the collection of Anne Davey, Wikipedia Common

The class of ’68 part 3 a comprehensive school called Crown Woods

Crown Woods wasn’t the only comprehensive school delivering a fine education but it was the one I went to.

So it is a place I can talk about with confidence and a lot of affection. I arrived aged 16 in the September of 1966 having done five indifferent years at a secondary modern school, which if I am honest were a standoff.

The middle years had been troubled and were not happy ones and while I became more settled I was ready to leave. So nothing quite prepared me for Crown Woods.

Here were two thousand students, half of them girls, a building which was less than a decade old and a dynamic, young and talented teaching staff. This was all state comprehensive education was meant to be.

Every night there was something going on ranging from the usual sporting clubs, and music sessions to poetry evenings and the big set concerts and drama performances. And without much effort you got sucked into it. I performed a piece by Pinter with Michael Marland the head of the English Department, joined a mixed bunch hosting an evening of 18th century readings and music in a fine period house in Blackheath and co produced a radio programme on folk music broadcast to the entire school.

It was also the way you were left to take on bigger things. So when after a few months of going to a local folk group I fancied putting on a concert at school one evening all I had to do was ask. The details are now lost in the fog of the past but we did more than one so I guess it all went well. Then there was the teaching. 

Never had learning been so exciting and meaningful before or since. These were the years of discovering Shakespeare, John Donne, and of watching as 18th century literature opened up the history of the period giving it context and depth.

It seems so obvious now but then the idea that before we read the set A level plays of Henry IV and King Lear we would immerse ourselves in the other great Shakespearian histories and tragedies.

Or that in preparation for the prose and poems of Samuel Johnson the 18th century writer we would look at the rhyming techniques of Alexander Pope and gaze over countless buildings of the century to understand the idea of balance and style.

Now for a working class boy who had just about reached his limit with Ian Fleming this was a revelation and a passport to another world.

And it extended out to theatre visits, from the National and Joan Littlewoods’s Stratford East to countless little rep companies across London. We were not just watching live theatre but for the space of two years were living it.

Amongst all this was a gentle assumption that the natural next step for many of us was University, a path which had only been trodden by one distant cousin in our family.

 Finally there were the friends, some of whom have lasted through the last 55 years and of course the girlfriends none of whom sadly lasted more than a few months.

Now I was just 16 and I  guess the cynical will shrug and dismiss it all as hormones. After all this is or should be when we live life in an intense and uncompromising way.

And there is also that creeping fog of nostalgia which makes the past a series of hot sunny days. But on balance for me and I think some of the other class of '68 this was a fine place to spend two years.

Pictures from the collection Anne Davey 

Tomorrow; widening horizons and lots of fun

The class of ‘68 part 1 an ending

We were the class of ’68.

Twelve young people from south east London about to leave school for the last time.

It would have been in late June or early July 1968 outside Crown Woods School in Eltham, our exams were finished and we were all preparing for that long hot summer which would end with exam results and the beginning of a new phase in our lives.

Of the twelve sitting on the car I can easily name seven of the young people staring back at me. I’m there fifth from the left, beside me was my girl friend Ann, and on my right was Anne Davey, David Hatch, and Mike Robinson while perched on the car at the edge of the picture was Crispin Rooney and behind us Karen and Richard Woods. I rather think the chap on the end was Keith Bradbury while my dear friend Anne Davey  has informed me that behind us was Jenny Turner and Ian Curle.

We have become that favoured generation, “the baby boomers”. Not for us world wars or bitter trade depressions.

 We were born in to a world our parents were determined would be better and different.

And we grew up against a backdrop of rising prosperity, looked after by a welfare system which confidently planned to care for us from “cradle to grave” and entered adult hood with the promise of full time employment and the opportunity of a university course which for some of us would be totally free.

Now there was a dark side to all this. The Korean War had begun just as most of us were coming up to our first birthday, and the ever present threat of nuclear war hovered in the distance, and as if to round off our child hood by the summer of 1968 there was the awful tragedy of the Vietnam War.

But that summer was a good one, and I have to say truly it seemed the sun shone all the way through.

 Now I was the late comer to the group along with my friend Bernard, we had washed up at Crown Woods Comprehensive in the September of 1966. Me, from a Secondary Modern School and Bernard from a grammar school.

And Crown Woods was  mixed, which pitched both of us into a series of wonderful new experiences and opened up new friendships that have survived the space of over 54 years.

Of course the intervening years have offered up both triumphs and dismal dog days and along the way some of those twelve have disappeared while we have all had to cope with a mix of disappointments as well successes.

Most stayed in the south with only me washing up in the north and never going back. We did the full range of post school careers, with some of us heading off to pursue a degree and others getting down to it directly in offices and factories.

And now most of us are on the cusp of retiring or have done so with all that that will bring. And as I stare back at the class of 68 I ponder on the stories that we made and the people we touched.

Pictures; from the collection of Anne Davey

Tomorrow, part 2, one of the class of '68 and a secondary modern school

The class of '68, part 2 ..... failing the 11 plus or Andrew and Samuel Pepys Secondary Modern School

The one sure certainty of failing the 11 plus was that you went to a secondary modern school.

Not of course that this over surprised me.  My mother had been told by my year 6 teacher back in the January of 1961 “that I was not academic material.”  A sentence that burned deeply into my mother and condemned my father and me to endless evenings of 11 plus tests by the kitchen stove.

All to no avail.  I failed.  But not before I along with all the other also runs had to endure the class interviews where the hopefuls destined for a bright grammar school future would give a presentation to the rest of us, which were really rehearsals for the real thing in front of the head teachers of the local grammar schools.

To this day I remember my first introduction to Vasco da Gamma that Portuguese sailor who boldly went where no European had sailed before.  Even then I wondered why the cabin boy and cook as well as the man steering the ship never got a look in through the entire talk.

Years later teaching year 8s the European voyages of discovery, plunder and much else I was always pulled up by the mention of the said captain and taken back the twelve years to the upstairs classroom of Edmund Waller Junior School and the talk given by Barry Whatshisname.

But enough of such bitter vituperation.  That was what the 11 plus was supposed to do.  Separate the elite from the rest of us, and while they went on to a bright academic environment we were destined for schools which specialized in more practical things, .......woodwork not Wordsworth, technical drawing not Tennyson and so much more.

Added to that our schools were not as well funded and led to one glorious episode where just before my O level history exam in 1966 we were given a world historical atlas published in 1938 which finished with the wonderfully optimistic comment that “it is hoped the leaders of Germany and Italy will see sense and rejoin the League of Nations in a profound desire to solve issues by peaceful means.”  Now today I can see the dark humour in that, but at the time I pondered how we had to use a thirty year old text book which added to everything else got the next ten years of European history so wrong.

But my secondary modern school and many others across the country strived not to give us a second class education.  They were fully aware that a rigid test at 11 did not mean that those who failed to pass were failures.  And so many of us were entered for 0 level exams that badge of so called academic excellence while class mates were given the practical skills which enabled them to become tradesmen in a whole range of occupations.

And these places attracted the talented and committed teachers.  I can remember many who I would have been happy to work beside when I started teaching in 1973.  Indeed in the years after I started I benefited from the advice, good humour and wisdom of those who had been at Oldwood Secondary School here in Manchester before it was merged with the local grammar school to form Poundswick High School.

But despite all their efforts secondary modern schools were just that.  They were a secondary form of education for those who judged unsuitable for the full academic experience.

Today as then selection at 11 has its supporters who in their advocacy of grammar schools focus on the poor records of some comprehensive schools and on a golden age of grammar school education in the late 1940s and 50s.

Now I can be both objective and generous in my recognition of the opportunities grammar schools gave to children of all classes particularly ones who like me came from a working class background.

But I was under no illusion at the time and since that what we who failed that 11 plus were offered was less than best. Not for us that heady excitement of preparing for a new educational world with like minded bright young things.  In the September of 1961 I assembled with the majority of my male ex classmates from junior school in the playground of Samuel Pepys, and apart from the uniform and an absence of girls there was little to mark this off as any different from what I had already experienced.

It would be five years before I had my opportunity to enter a school of all the talents where money and resources were on offer to all of us.   This was Crown Woods School in Eltham, one of three big shiny and exciting comprehensive schools and the place where I really began to feel valued and above all come to love learning.

Tomorrow, part 3 at the centre of something pretty good, ..........Crown Woods School

Pictures; Andrew Simpson aged 16, 1966, and the badge of Samuel Pepys School from the collection of Andrew Simpson, and Oldwood Secondary Modern School, 1956, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council m66278