Varied Curriculum in a 1950s Inner London Primary School

What strikes me about the posts here so far is that everyone is saying how much they "learned" through exciting activities. Not from the book work that is too often stuffed down throats!

Oh, dear, what I liked about school was all the books, I would read anything and constantly changing schools meant a new seam of books at every school. Until I reached my first grammar school and they had a real proper library, heaven could not offer me anything more. I had free access to a library.

I strted school in 1948, shortly after the war and books were in short supply everywhere.

I don't think I learned through exciting activities either. I did a lot of listening, writing, reading and behaving myself - as did most of the others in my class. We didn't do chanting and rote learning but we worked on tables with our own individual work boxes and became independent learners from an early age. I don't think I ever regarded any teaching/learning as exciting but I liked learning about new things. We certainly weren't molly coddled and I remember walking to school on my own when I was still an infant - no school runs then.

I have happy memories of primary school. Mornings were always Maths and English but the afternoons were always creative subjects such as art and craft, nature studies, music and dancing etc. We had lots of nature walks which I guess formed the basis for biology and geography in secondary school. We were all encouraged to be independent learners and find out information for ourselves using books. Music, dancing acting skills were really encouraged and we used to put on shows which were done with very little help from teachers. Anyone who was learning to play a musical instrument was asked to play in the school morning service. It was quite scary and I remember playing the hymn ‘Jesus loves me’ . I was so nervous beforehand but it gave me a lot of confidence to get through it without too many mistakes! This was a small rural school in Wales. Another thing I remember is that if you were told off for poor behaviour you didn’t go home whining to your Mum and Dad. Not that it would have made any difference as the response would have been something like ‘you probably deserved it’.

I didn't actually mean books as such Monica when I said book work but more the act of purely memorising information.
As the OP stated, it was the variety of the curriculum which went way beyond learning the 3 R's that excited me.

I think we concentrated on the basics ie Arithmetic until we went to High School, then it was more involved mathematical theories.
There were no calculators in those days so we did get a good grounding in aspects of numeracy which are useful to all in everyday life.

I remember cardboard coins we used for learning money. Sixpence, shilling, half crown etc. If we were very good we were allowed to play with them at dressing up time in the shop corner of the classroom.

I think one of the reasons why the curriculum was more varied may have been that schools were not constrained by all the health and safety, risk assessment stuff. On a sunny afternoon the teacher could just decide to take the class out on a nature walk or whatever. If you misbehaved you knew that next time you would be left in school. Risk assessments have to be done for almost every activity outside of the classroom these days.

Yes Gwyneth, it all seemed much more spontaneous then.

All those things we knew so well, Ellianne ?

£ s d Farthings and ha'pennies. Guineas
Ounces, pounds, stones, quarters, cwt, tons
Fluid ounces, gills, pints, quarts, gallons
Inches, feet, yards, chains, furlongs, miles
Perch, rod, acre

Pecks and bushels - I've forgotten what they were.

I always loved getting a new exercise book. That first page of sums all neatly set out with margins drawn perfectly with a ruler.

I've just remembered music festivals where our school choir won trophies and individual verse speaking medals. I remember reciting The Lamplighter and a poem by Evelyn Underhill? (I still have the stash of medals, all engraved on the back, and I award them to my DGS for PE and football in the garden).

Swimming at the local baths every week and learning to pick up a rubbery brick from the bottom of the pool. I think we had to drag a friend along the water as in life safe saving.

Such good fun!

Yes we had a wide curriculum but the teachers tended to be grumpy. My young woman teacher (for four years) used to stand us all on our chairs and then go round the class hitting the boys on the backs of their legs with a ruler. There was no understanding of special needs and a lot of favouritism. There was also racism - I remember standing up and telling the teacher she was wrong to pick on the only Asian girl in the class and blame her when something happened. There was always a prize for the boy who came top in the 11plus but when I came top they couldn’t bear to have a top girl so they gave the boy who came second to me a prize as well. However, it must have been a good education as I achieved that and a place in a good grammar school without any of the tutoring that is ubiquitous today.

Lots of memories brought back here! We had the dreaded maypole (wasn’t there a 50s English folk music revival?) and I was always the one who messed up the pattern? Our nature walks inYear 5 in modern parlance were to pick Dandelions for the teacher’s home made wine. With a class of 48 she must have had a good supply of wine!

Oh Humbertbear, those are sad memories of primary school. You sound like a very perceptive pupil who disliked injustice.

Cycling proficiency was also part of the curriculum. The local policeman used to come to the school once a week and teach us about safe cycling. We then had to do a practical test. I still have my certificate from over 50 years ago. Is this still done in schools today?

Yes.

I grew up in a rural area and we definitely did May dancing ( the school had banned the practice of May day singing, believing it interefered with education) and country dancing. I am so glad we did - it is the only dancing I have ever enjoyed.
We also had a very varied curriculum, and we did a lot of local history. Through that, I realised later, that it made me question some of the 'official' history we learned at my grammar school. My area had a strong radical history and we definitely learned the iniquities of the slave trade and local efforts to abolish it. There were local people who remembered the 'sugar boycott' and buying sugar beet sugar to make the jam that saw them through the winter.
I was a bit sad when I had to teach my children about Chartists and Peterloo because the school weren't covering it.
I was at Primary School 1956 - 62 and the cane was not used at all.

I was at primary School in the '40s and there were a few unmarried female teachers who were a bit mean. Like Humbert's example.
They were probably from the generation when so many young men were killed in WW1.
The only things I remember from those days were practising 'times tables' by rote for the 11+. And the book/paper shortage. The only reading book available was "Prester John" and it didn't appeal to me. We all had to read it. Can't even remember what it was about now.

Some things were wondrous to me as a child at my primary.
Wide Range Readers I galloped through the levels apace. Bonnie Prince Charlie, Grace Darling, Helen Keller, Louis Braille, Beethoven/deafness.
Have now acquired the full set for nostalgia trips!

I had the Wide Range Readers, too, and loved them. There was something new to learn every time you turned a page.

I remember a couple of lovely teachers. Mrs MacDonald, who was young and very kind. Also Miss Bryant, who was also young. She handled a class of forty two children with aplomb, especially when looking back, I can now see we had several children who today would require a special needs education. There were no teaching assistants in those days, either.

The year after I had Miss Bryant, she got married. She chose to have all the girls in her current class as bridesmaids, or flower girls as we’d call them today. My mum took me to the church to see them. They were all wearing dresses in either turquoise with white polka dots cotton or white with turquoise polka dots cotton and they each sported a little handkerchief scarf in the opposite pattern tied behind their heads. They all had white sandals on.

I was so envious of them and I can still see them in my minds eye, nearly 60 years on!

Oh, ixion, you’ve brought back so many happy memories. School was wonderful - except the milk that was unfrozen on radiators!

Learning was basic skills, reading, writing, arithmetic, plenty of exercise, strict but fair teachers, and no bullying.

Also, I can never remember school being closed because of snow - we all just carried on.

I recall dancing Strip the Willow in the main hall in a Leicester Junior school sometime between 1964 and 1969. And we also learned to walk on stilts in the playground; surprising what memories come back to you when you think back.

I have happy memories of primary school. I enjoyed all of it and had good friends. Not so much secondary (grammar) school as I disliked sports (used to hide in the toilets) and was bullied. Long since water under the bridge now though!

Wendy is the girl in Peter Pan who has a house underground under a tree, She is the mother figure to The Lost Boys

I have very unhappy memories of school. At 9 years old I moved school and was terrified of my new teacher. She hit me with a ruler and taught the class quickly and so at times when I didn't understand she would shout at me. I just fell behind and didn't want to go to school. She was dismissed in the end but the damage was done, I was not interested in school. After I left school, without any qualifications, I learned Shorthand and Typing got my Pitmans exams and went on to have a very successful career. This shows that children do have the capability to learn but at different rates and they should never be bullied the way I was. I have just passed a GCSE Maths at age 72 so it's a pity my school was below the standard you would expect today.