When I was first at school way back in the dark ages – which actually weren’t so dark because most of the world was enjoying a new freedom after the end of WW2 and we in the UK were enjoying good health because of the National Health Service, major industries had been nationalised, and there was a certain stability in our society. Obviously there were many people still in poverty, and many people struggling to find work, and despite council housing, a lot of families lived in what was actually quite squalid conditions.
When I was at school most of us were in similar situations – families counting the pennies, mums cooking everything from scratch and making our clothes, vegetables grown in back gardens and on allotments, dads taking on extra jobs – but we were lucky enough to have free school milk, and also free school meals for the most needy. Many of the teachers in schools, especially junior schools, were not as well trained or as educated themselves as teachers are now, but a lot of us received a good education which was broad and balanced just as is demanded now.
The basics in those days for me and my friends at junior school English and arithmetic, music and PE, geography and history. We were shown maps so we learned not just where we were in the world, but something about our neighbours, something about the other countries in what was still the British Empire. We learned about other countries – or at least their whereabouts on the globe and we actually had a globe in our classroom. Most of us became familiar with at least the names of the continents and countries and if they were hot or cold, or temperate like us. Our history began with our town of Cambridge – starting as a small settlement by the River Cam, until the Romans came and organised us, and then later the Normans came and organised us a bit more (we were too far away from the sea for the Vikings) It was very basic, but we read little books, we wrote little stories, we coloured little pictures. When I was at school, the school leaving age was fifteen, and many of my friends left school to go to work, or into training for employment. Because of this, many of my contemporaries have a very different education history from me.
Now education and the school curriculum at all levels has changed enormously. To me – remembering my own time at school as a student and as a teacher, it seems somehow narrow, rigid. I’m pretty sure I couldn’t go into teaching if I were back to being at the age to enter a profession, there seems little spontaneity, too many lines to be within, too regulated – is there room for imagination? Off-piste inspiration? Changing horses midstream if things seem to be going awry? Or do things never go awry because it’s so regulated and managed?
I’m probably very wrong, because the teachers I know are splendid people, and maybe I was too rock and roll, too wild-west – or maybe I only imagine I was!!
Lois Elsden 