What were you like at school........?

I left school at about 15 miles an hour and didn't stop till I got home!!!! Glad to see the back of it, never to return.

Did any of you go to the Friary school Lichfield?

Expatmaggie this is really sad about your old school:
(You said: The last time I saw it whilst in Sheffield in 2007, it was shabby, windows dirty and the tennis courts overgrown with the nets hanging down. It was made into a comprehensive of course.)

My old GS at Heckomondwike is still a GS, and kids sit an entrance exam for the 150 places at age 11. It is still free. It is nice to know some things never change. About 700 kids sit the 11+ equivalent exam for those 150 places, which means places are available for 21% of children who take the exam. It doesn't sound a lot, but out of the 28 kids who took their 11+ with me back in 1956, only 2 passed, which was even worse at 7%.

My little sister went to school in Sheffield: she is blind, so she went to Sheffield school for Blind Children and boarded Monday to Friday. She then got a scholarship to Chorleywood College and hated it. She refused to go back to do her A levels so I persuaded Mum to ask the headmaster at Heckmondwike GS to take her. It was unheard of back them for handicapped kids to go to a regular school, but he agreed, and she did really well there.

Joan that's a moving story about your sister.
My childhood was similar to that of Roy Hattersley, who lived not far away from me in Sheffield and went through the same system. He maintained in his autobiography 'A Yorkshire Boyhood' that Sheffield had only grammar school places for 10% of its children. He is older than me but till it was my turn nothing much had improved.

Is that the same school David Blunkett went to Joan.
One of the sad things about the grammar school system is the number of children that felt like failures and rejects at the age of 11.

Yes Jess and the reverse is true. Having passed the 11+ I felt quite superior to the others who didn't, there was so much fuss made about it and so much depended on it. I always felt self confident or full of self esteem as they say today. It marked you for life.
My best friend failed for some unknown reason but later studied the hard way at nightschool and became a teacher. Then years later my boyfriend told me he had also failed, but teachers in the secondary modern school noticed and recommended he be given another chance at 13 years of age. He moved over into a grammar school. OK good for him but nobody noticed my friend. Girls were just not as important as boys.

It's true there were I think more than a few boroughs where there were more grammar school places for boys.
I was talking to a man recently who was amazed when I said there were no sports fields in my grammar school. Girls grammar in Wales, housed in wooden shacks... But still in some ways a very priviledged edn. Even if I cant spell that word...
But some incredibly boring teaching that would not be tolerated these days. Endless dictation in History for instance.

I was always in the A stream at my sec mod and never seemed to be without friends in spite of being what my grandmother called a scruffy tom boy! I was rather loud, a bit of a clown and hopeless at games - couldn't throw or catch a ball, run very fast, jump or swim well. I was bullied for a period by a girl I went to enormous lengths to avoid outside school, but who seemed to make it her mission in life to find me! About twenty years ago, I saw her again. We didn't speak - just stood there and stared at each other; it was like High Noon. Then she walked away. I don't know what I would have said if she'd spoken to me! "Hello, what are you up to these days? Still putting cigarette burns on people's arms? No? Well, that's good isn't it?" I did get caned when I was at school. We had a geography master who used to throw the board rubber at us. I was egged on to take it and hide it in my desk - what I should have done was hidden it in someone else's bloody desk, but I was a bit of a clot! I owned up when the whole class was faced with detentions from here to Christmas. He had a selection of canes ranging in thicknesses. I got the thin one - always the most painful. More flex, you see.... I was a heroine for about five minutes.

JessM Yes, my sister went to the same school as Blunkett, but he was a bit older. The school at Chorleywood was a posh boarding school; she didn't like the prevailing superior attitudes, but the teaching was generally pretty good, and she enjoyed the horse riding.

Artygran There was a bully like that for me: she went to a different junior school from me, but it was on the same walking route so she would wait to attack me. There were a few different routes, which I varied, but she would still sometimes catch me. Older and bigger than me, I was hopeless at fighting back, though I tried.

After we all grew up, she went on to become a prostitute, a thief and did time in jail. Her brothers, who were in the military, refused to come home on leave if she was there. (My Dad got to know her Dad after we were grown up, hence I found out what happened.) Ah the Schadenfreude!

To me it's been a bit crazy not keeping the school canes ( on hands ).
You can say some schools have had about 200Yrs. no problem .
If pupils are caught smoking , young , what's wrong without them getting 6 strokes of the cane , to teach them not to, again??????

It would only teach them not to get caught again!

Well, when I was hit at school, usually a couple of whacks on the palm of the hand with a ruler, far from learning not to do it again it just made me more trucculent and determined to show the teachers that I couldnt be beaten into submission. On the other hand unexciting punishments like writing lines or copying out pages of textbooks was so tedious and boring I usually decided the crime wasnt worth the punishment and desisted.

Mind you my 'crimes' were very minor. My main problem was that I thought that both sides of any disagreement should get a fair hearing, teachers and pupils, while the school felt only the teachers side counted so I was always either in trouble for answering back or alternatively 'dumb insolence', when I didn't answer back but just stood there not saying a word.

abcde12345 At my school at least they had the sense to realise that a hand is a delicate mechanism, while the buttocks can absorb quite a lot without being damaged.

Which is not to say that hitting people of any age and of either sex is acceptable, or even productive...

I have just read the back log on this thread. Its quite moving and brings back a lot of not altogether happy memories. Butternut I recognise myself in your description of your school days.

I was not outstandingly naughty, too timid and shy for that but I could be subtly subversive. I seem to share the loneliness, never being picked at sport etc. that a lot of you have posted about.

I have much more confidence now. I don't know where it came from though!

Ahahahah I'll let you guess?

If I liked the subject and the teacher, I was enthusiastic and full of imagination and bright ideas.

If I didn't - well, least said . If you'd told me in those days I would one day become a teacher, I'd have had a fit (I was 32 when I did)

Funnily enough, the subjects I liked were totally the opposite of yours Greatnan. Loved history, geography, biology and languages - hated maths and sciences with a vengeance. Probably the very dry methods used- might have got on much better if taught the modern way.

I was on the arts side - loved languages and history, but was very bad at chemistry and physics. I was OK at biology though. All this was 1956 to 1961.

A few months ago I discovered Richard Dawkins' book 'The Greatest Show on Earth' which is all about science: physics, chemistry, biology, including evolutionary biology which is his speciality. If only it had been available when I was failing physics at school! Mind you, I did end up understanding the difference between potential energy and kynetic energy, when Mr Stone, our terrifying physics master, (Think Harry Potter's Professor Snape) held a metal ruler over me, with fury and frustration in his eyes, and said it had potential energy. Then he dropped it on my foot, saying it then had kynetic energy.

I remembered the difference all my life.

Anyway, Dawkins is an educator, and a very good one: that book taught me more about science than I ever managed when I was young!

I did love that school though (Heckmondwike Grammar, in West Yorkshire). The only bullying I experienced was from the evil exile from hell PE mistress, who simply hated my uncoordinated hopelessness, and total lack of interest in her subject.

licking through this thread, it's interesting to see how many of us have changed names and also how many seem to have dropped out, though they too might have changed names. Someone called annobel seems to have a lot in common with me.

Did it taste nice?

(Sorry, very rude of me but I couldn't resist it!)

I was a short, fat, four eyed little sod who never took a word in.

Oh boy do I regret it now. I missed out and I only have myself to blame, oh me and the teacher who gave me concussion throwing a blackboard rubber straight to my head. You guessed it my dad said 'Well you cheeky little madam, you probably deserved it!'.... THOSE WERE THE DAYS.



I sent them to myself by the way.

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I should have checked that post, jeni and I can't even blame an iPad, since I use a laptop.

Joan That Dawkins book is beautiful - my young brother (71) is getting a copy from me for Christmas!

Jeni I am afraid your comment on annos post is my sense of humour as well. I can't stop my mind going off at silly tangents at odd remarks.
Once the secretary at work wanted me to take a call and asked me if I "could just give a bit of advice to a midwife."

So what came straight to my mind? "Just tell her to stick her hand up and pull". The poor secretary was in stitches.

I do have to careful sometimes not everyone likes such flippant remarks.

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