The Sin of Pride

Pride is one of the Seven Deadly Sins.

It was drummed into us in our formative years at primary school by Miss Twomey. 

Although my family was Church of England, I went to the small private junior school that my Mother had gone to decades before when it was run by a Miss Smith who was of that faith. By the time I was a pupil the school was run by a Roman Catholic family and teachings were on the basis of that Faith.

Miss Twomey was the principal teacher. Miss Twomey was a witch. A pretty evil witch at that when it came to her dealings with children.

From the inception religious instruction was an important part of the curriculum. I'm sure that by the age of 6, I could recite all my prayers and several verses from various Collects and Epistle by heart. 

At the tender age of 6 or 7 Miss Twomey was lecturing us on the Seven Deadly Sins and in particular the sin of Pride.

So imagine my confusion when I was told to have pride in my work.

In all innocence I asked how I could have pride in my work if that would be a sin.

You can imagine the scene, I'm sure.  73 or 74 years later I'm still standing trembling with fear in front of her as she delivered the dressing down. Unusually she didn't actually hit me.

From that moment on I hated school. Having passed the 11-Plus with flying colours I went to Quarry Bank - a smallish prestigious Grammar School much sought after by parents for their children. I was two classes behind John Lennon.

Much to my parents' distress I'm sure (they were wonderful parents and supported my decision regardless of their disappointment) I left on the first day that I was legally able to leave. 

Coughing and Schooling

Over the last 10 years or so I have been learning things about the private primary prep school to which I went up until the age when I took the 11+ examination (which in England determined whether you went to a grammar school or a secondary modern school). The streaming system was very academically and socially divisive. 

I assume when it was thought up the idea was to stream academically minded people towards academia and university and 'the rest' to more practical education. I passed the 11+ with flying colours and was awarded the first choice of school which my parents had specified when I took the exam. 

That was Quarry Bank Grammar School in Liverpool. It was the home of many who became illustrious people. John Lennon was a few classes ahead of me. He was eccentric even at school. He also started a group at school called The Quarrymen.  However everything there was aimed at getting those who were Oxford or Cambridge material to one of those Universities.

Unfortunately at the age of around 14/15 I developed a disease called bronchiectasis.

It is a disease which is often fatal. It is often also associated with poverty and lifestyle. It is very common in the Pacific Islands. When I lived in New Zealand the niece of the then Governor General of New Zealand succumbed. She was the same age as I was when I succumbed. The difference was that she was not expected to live. She became a campaigner for better health education and lifestyle for Pacific Islanders in particular.  I believe that she died shortly after I left New Zealand.

My bronchiectasis was caused by the smogs (cloyingly thick smoke laden freezing fogs) common in cities in the UK in the '40s and '50s before the Clean Air Acts banned the use of coal in domestic fires. It had consumed the lower lobe of my right lung.

The result was that I had a wracking cough particularly during my last year at school. It was rather disruptive in class and a number of the teachers just kicked me out of the class. I joined the Natural History Society and the Beekeeping Society so that instead of just standing outside the classroom as I was bidden I went and looked after animals and bees. 

I have had a great love and respect for bees ever since. I have had a rather jaundiced opinion of teachers ever since. I left school as soon as I was legally able to. 

So far as the disease was concerned I was one of the fortunate ones. I had an operation to remove much of my right lung and I have coped admirably in the 64 years since the operation (by the surgeon Mr Leslie Temple). Oddly I can recall his name and many of the nurses I worked with in the Hospital after I left school. It's a shame I have difficulty remembering my own name these days. 

The real point of this post, though, is that teachers and 'the system' thought it was quite acceptable to deny an equal education to anyone if they felt like it. The idea of simply kicking people out of a classroom now because of a disability is, I hope, completely anathema.

Could Do Better

I'm not sure that I ever got those words on my report cards at school - do schools still issue report cards? - but if I didn't they would still have been very appropriate.  I never worked hard at school. I detested school. My parents were good enough to save on other things and sent me (and, later, my brother) to a small private prep school in Liverpool where I was born.  The discipline was ferocious. The preparation for the 11Plus was second to none and all but the most educationally challenged (in our parlance of the day 'the thickest') did exceptionally well in the 11Plus for the Grammar Schools or entrance exams to the many private public schools in the area (my apologies to anyone from the US who is probably totally lost in the terminology). 

I won my first choice and followed a couple of years behind the exceptionally talented and totally way-out John Lennon at Quarry Bank. Quarry (Motto: Ex hoc metall virtutem - out of this quarry came virtue) was an excellent and very small (680 pupils) Grammar School which concentrated on only one thing - getting pupils to Oxford or Cambridge. Anyone else was a failure and left to drift. I was never Oxbridge material.

My Mother had always wanted me to go to Quarry because she had gone to the partner girls school next door and had loved every minute and left with flying colours and very good academic results. 

I could have done better. But I didn't.....then. 

All that was by way of trying to say that recently my blogging record has been parlous and, although I have been reading some blogs, I'm feeling a bit out in the cold. 

So I'm going to try and do better.

This was the view from my window this morning: clouds dumping snow over The Minch and Mainland Scotland.

On Being Bullied

I disliked school. However I loved English language and literature and mathematics and, oddly, geography but I loathed history. As, even then, I had a very poor memory I was useless at languages and anything that involved using the gifts I was sadly lacking.

What I did have as a schoolboy was a reasonable ability with the English language. I never fought physically. I tried to argue my way out of trouble. Schoolboys don't respect that. They respect fists.

Bob Brague, in his post of 21 May mentioned 'The one act of violence in my life'. I too had one such moment.

In the Fifth Form during a maths class the teacher left the room. One of the school bullies (of no greater stature than I) was sitting behind me. He decided to start flicking my ears. I lost the plot. Turned round fully to face him. Picked him up by his blazer lapels and flattened his nose all over his face. Leastways the amount of blood seemed to indicate that was what had happened. There had been no resistance because my action was obviously completely unexpected.

After class I waited for a retaliation but it never came. Word had got out. His credentials as a school bully had been wiped out with one single, but well aimed, punch. 

So far as I can recall that is the one and only such act of physical violence I have perpetrated. Well there was one more but that was entirely self defence and that's another story.

Spelling Bee

Rainbow today over Bayble Bay, Isle of Lewis

I can spell 'rainbow'. In fact I can spell lots of words pretty well. I should be able to too. Words were my stock in trade. However, I have always had some bêtes noir. Diphthong, diarrhoea and, oddly, muesli spring immediately to mind. I also went for much of my life convinced that 'across' was spelt 'accross'.

At primary school spelling bees were a common way of testing and improving our spelling ability. They were also supposed to be enjoyable and, to be frank, I did enjoy them. So did Joan Rigby. Joan was the brightest person in the school by far (teachers included I rather think). On one occasion she and I were captaining two spelling bee teams. The teams were level pegging until she and I had to face each other. I cannot recall what I was asked to spell but I spelt it correctly. Really at my wits end, and definitely in awe of Joan, I asked her to spell 'bee' as in 'spelling bee'. Much to everyone's astonishment she either couldn't or she miss-spelt it and my team won.

I don't expect YP to have any such problems but I'd love to know what bêtes noir the rest of my readers have: if any.

Thankful Thursday

My Thankful Thursday post will only just make it on Thursday.  I set up the post when I got up this morning but had other things to do first.  For the rest of the day I've been living in Wednesday.  It wasn't until I texted a friend a short while ago to wish her a safe journey home from France tomorrow and received a reply saying she was already home that I realised.  I am beginning seriously to wonder.....

The original building of Quarry Bank Grammar School. 

 

 

 

I've recently been contributing the occasional post to a Facebook page on my old Prep School, Ryebank.  On the whole I can't recall it being a particularly bad place to be although I never liked school at any stage.  It prepared me well enough to get though the 11Plus (the Grammar School entrance exam) with a high enough pass to get to Quarry Bank, my first choice of Grammar School.  At 630 pupils it was quite small and, together with the Liverpool Institute, was the most sought-after Grammar School in Liverpool.  Quarry Bank was John Lennon's school and The Institute was Paul McCartney's.  Like all pupils at Quarry at the time I had my John Lennon memories.  I wish that I'd kept his maths book that I inherited a couple of years after he'd left!

So today I am thankful for the fact that I survived unscathed from a school system which I can say without any doubt provided the unhappiest days of my life.