Late 50s Grammar Schools

[Pseudonym]

Manaman... I questioned the parentage as an alternative to using a mild obscenity... As for belittling a family and a family business, I'm afraid you've lost me there, I wasn't aware that I'd done so...

 

On your other point, when discipline was applied, you couldn't wish for better-behaved pupils, so yes it was most certainly necessary... a salutary lesson for today I think?

 

BTW... I remember that we had someone just like you impress me as being, in our class, he didn't bring an apple for the teacher every day as far as I know, but he was treated by the rest of us as though he had!

[manaman]

I also remember the arrival of that PE teacher, either from college or national service. He was also a sadist of the first water.

 

My first form master, Peter Spinks is the one I will always remember as Mr Nice Guy. He started at NEGS at the same time as me and was my form master on more than one occasion. He also taught maths but, in my case, not very effectively. Perhaps he should have not spared the rod so much.

 

The P.E. teacher started the same time as me. He came straight from Loughborough College, which was and still is a physical training and specialised sports university.

 

Peter Spinks never taught me nor was he ever my form master, but in any ad hoc dealings with him, I would agree he was a Mr. Nice Guy.

 

The most effective maths teacher that I had at NEGS was Laurie Arden. He took over from George Wilkinson when George was appointed headmaster. Laurie was a hard taskmaster, but at the same time was able to explain in relatively simple terms the intricasies of the maths in hand, and then give positive encouragement to our problem solving.

[manaman]

Manaman... I

 

BTW... I remember that we had someone just like you impress me as being, in our class, he didn't bring an apple for the teacher every day as far as I know, but he was treated by the rest of us as though he had!

 

If you mean that that lad didn't follow the sheep in lighting fires in desks and throwing knives at teachers etc. during lessons, then yes he would have been like me and MOST OF MY CLASSMATES. We did have our moments in both Claude Raines' and Freddie Potts' classes, but nothing like the above.

 

The lad may have thought it was a privilege to have a grammar school education in order to aspire to, and achieve a better quality of life when reaching adulhood. Especially if his siblings or neighbourhood friends hadn't been lucky enough to have had the same opportunity. It could certainly concentrate the mind.

 

In hindsight, do you consider that you gained from a grammar school education, or do you think you deprived somebody else from having the opportunity.

[Pseudonym]

...In hindsight, do you consider that you gained from a grammar school education, or do you think you deprived somebody else from having the opportunity.

With hindsight I consider that my being able to take advantage of a grammar school education meant considerably more to my parents than it did to me at the time...

 

However, it taught me a great deal... though not much about geography and chemistry, unsurprisingly!

 

Len Buchan for example, was an excellent teacher of english, both literature and language and was even able to make The Bard (not Beedle the bard) sound interesting... A great achievement in my estimation.

 

It was him what learnt me how to write proper, innit!

[Puffin4]

Senc. is not South African, he is a Sheffielder, born and bred at Gleadless.

He was a classmate of my brother, and both are on a photograph of Gleadless School Infants in Pauline Shearstone's book, "OLD GLEADLESS, Just a little country village".

 

His speciality was maths. He never taught me nor was he ever my form master.

 

Hi Manaman,

 

Thank you for exploding that myth for me. I don't know where I got hold of it but I can now delete it from my memory banks. The only other bit of gen I have on him is my memory of an entry in the births column of The Star " To Jean (?) and Senc. a son, Sensicle". Can you explode that one too? After all, it is 52 years since I left NEGS and 50 since I left Sheffield.

 

I remember when Vince arrived, he wore a blazer with a Loughborough crest on the pocket; I think it was more his demeanour which put me in mind of the sadistic PTI's that I met a few years later when I joined the RAF.

 

Mike

[Fareast]

I think it 's a measure of the respect / fear that we had of our teachers at NEGS that, even after more than 50 years, I can still remember as a 1st. Year, seeing the door to our classroom open and Len Buchan 's 5 fat, white fingers, curling round the door, signalling his entrance into the classroom.. A shudder of fear went through most of us at the thought of the ordeals, learning and possible punishments to come, during the next40 minutes.However, as somone has said, he was a very effective teacher, and was never physically brutal. Our ' wonderful ' , overpaid, educational bureaucrats have never learned the simple lesson that

if you take away the authority and fear of the teacher, the vacuum will be filled by bullies-------and hence the almost total mess that education is in today. Still.......if the sheep-like British Public don 't mind wasting billions of pounds on what passes for education today, so be it ......! Perhaps you don 't need education to watch Big Brother......etc.... ?

[Thorpy]

I graduated from Nether Edge in 1947, the uniform at that time was a kind of orangey brown. Weren't there a couple of Intermediate schools as well? Sort of in between Grammar and elementary.

I remember the orangey brown blazer at Nether Edge. We wore that uniform when I started there in 1953(now I really feel ancient)! I think that the brown blazers were phased out maybe the following year and the black blazers, still featuring the two crossed torches became the uniform.This uniform was carried forward after 1958, when the School was moved to become Abbeydale Grammar for boys.

[manaman]

Hi Manaman,

 

Thank you for exploding that myth for me. I don't know where I got hold of it but I can now delete it from my memory banks. The only other bit of gen I have on him is my memory of an entry in the births column of The Star " To Jean (?) and Senc. a son, Sensicle". Can you explode that one too? After all, it is 52 years since I left NEGS and 50 since I left Sheffield.

 

I remember when Vince arrived, he wore a blazer with a Loughborough crest on the pocket; I think it was more his demeanour which put me in mind of the sadistic PTI's that I met a few years later when I joined the RAF.

 

Mike

 

Hi Puffin4,

I didn't know any thing about Senc's private life as an adult because my family moved away from Gleadless before I was born. In fact it was while I was at NEGS that he asked me if I was any relation to to an old school mate of his, because I had the same surname. I told him it was my brother.

 

I have done an Ancestry search on the family. Jean is the Christian name of his wife, and they did have a son in the summer of 1956 called Nicholas J. S. presumably the S standing for Sensical.

 

I know what you mean about Vince, we had an ex RAF PTI for physical fitness training when I played in junior football. I think that their similarities extended to more than their demeanour.

[manaman]

 

Len Buchan for example, was an excellent teacher of english, both literature and language and was even able to make The Bard (not Beedle the bard) sound interesting... A great achievement in my estimation.

 

It was him what learnt me how to write proper, innit!

 

Hi Pseudonym.

Len Buchan, what a teacher! I agree with everything you've said about him. I can picture him now at the front of the class, acting the part of that old Shakesperian rogue Sir Toby Belch. Not only did he have the right physique for the part, but he had the acting ability and voice as well.

[manaman]

I think it 's a measure of the respect / fear that we had of our teachers at NEGS that, even after more than 50 years, I can still remember as a 1st. Year, seeing the door to our classroom open and Len Buchan 's 5 fat, white fingers, curling round the door, signalling his entrance into the classroom.. A shudder of fear went through most of us at the thought of the ordeals, learning and possible punishments to come, during the next40 minutes.However, as somone has said, he was a very effective teacher, and was never physically brutal. Our ' wonderful ' , overpaid, educational bureaucrats have never learned the simple lesson that

if you take away the authority and fear of the teacher, the vacuum will be filled by bullies-------and hence the almost total mess that education is in today. Still.......if the sheep-like British Public don 't mind wasting billions of pounds on what passes for education today, so be it ......! Perhaps you don 't need education to watch Big Brother......etc.... ?

 

Hi Fareast.

I had Len Buchan in the 2nd year. You describe perfectly how we felt as he entered the classroom. Can you remember his enormous briefcase that was always full to bursting point with pupils' homework. Can you remember that if you got a question wrong you had to stand at the front of the class; and within 10mins of the class starting, everyone apart from the odd one or two would be stood at the front of the class.

 

When I was in the 5th year I had Len again. He was completely different in his attitude from the earlier year. The lessons appeared to be given with a more relaxed attitude and we looked forward to the lessons. This did not mean we didn't work as hard, far from it, with "O" Levels at the end of the year.

 

Years later I often wondered why he had such a difference in attitude to the respective years; was it because he preferred to teach older boys, or was it to instill discipline in the earlier years, i.e. NEGS equivalent to "square bashing", so that by the 5th year we were fully immersed in the ethos of the school and also more mature. I suspect it was the latter case, which would reinforce your above argument about authority being essential in schools.

The essential skill for the teacher is then to turn that fear/authority into respect, which Len could certainly do.