We were having some work done in the house that necessitated us clearing out the loft, which was long overdue. Down came boxes and boxes of school books, art work and reports of not just my children but my school days too. This covered my education from infant school right through to my university degree.
There was too much stuff to keep it all and this was a good opportunity to take stock and just keep a sample, taking photos of other items, before what was left would go back into the loft.
Millbrook Infant & Primary School
What I hadn’t remembered about my junior school days was just how colourful the covers were of my exercise books. Clearly we had been encouraged to cover them to individualise them and protect the precious contents held within. Some I was pretty impressed with: the dinosaur cover drawn with wax crayons and watercolours was, quite frankly, a masterpiece. On the other hand, the scrap of wallpaper used for my otherwise excellent tome on space lacked any imagination or talent.
Interestingly, the exercise books that belonged to my children had also been covered in a similar fashion. One made use of an old OS map to cover up the geography book seemed particularly appropriate. My grandchildren are still a bit too young for exercise books so I don’t know if covering them is still a thing but I hope it is.
Amongst these papers were also some very crude diary entries that we had clearly been asked to keep over one of the holidays. These were written on the back of computer paper and documented playing with my friend Ian, who lived two doors down from me, and cleaning cars for bob-a-job week. Some took this moniker a bit too literally. I remember one job we did involved us trimming the edges of a lawn with a pair of kitchen scissors for which we got 10p.
In amongst the books were also some pieces that had either been mounted or had neat borders around them indicating that they were good enough to be displayed on the wall. Looking at my pieces that had been selected for this honour suggests that this was either done on a rota basis or the quality of submissions that week really was quite low.
Segsbury Secondary School
My overriding memory of secondary school is of not enjoying it. I was not a great scholar, was bullied and had my lunch taken off me but I was too frightened to say anything to my parents.
On the other hand I remember well one form teacher who copied onto tape for me a number of Genesis albums for me to listen to. I am quite certain that would very much be frowned upon these days and also who’d know what to do with a tape?
I wasn’t the greatest scholar and this was reflected in my results which at that point were a mixture of disappointing O-Levels and CSEs.
The one saving grace in all of this was that I got an early introduction to computing which would both engage me and set me up for life. I have written a separate post about my introduction to computing at school over on my technology blog which you can read here.
Abingdon College of Further Education
Having disliked school I warmed to my next educational establishment – a college of further education. I possibly could have gone on to sixth form or maybe not given the less than stella grades I achieved at school but the environment at college suited me much more. You were treated more like an adult even though we weren’t and I remember being told that it was up to us to make something of it.
Because my grades weren’t good enough to go straight on to A-Levels I had to take a handful of O-Levels again. This was probably the one benefit of being born right at the end of the school year in that I could lose a year and come out being roughly the same age as the cohort starting A-Levels with me.
One of the books that came down from the loft was my O-Level English book. I was disappointed that it didn’t have the name of the teacher anywhere as I credit her with improving the standard of my English and equipping me to pass the exam. She taught me, for example, that if I didn’t know how to spell a word I should just think of a word that meant the same that I could spell. Perfect, that I could do. She also hated the word “nice” so you always had to find an alternative for that. Simple, straightforward advice that allowed me to scrape a C grade, enough to progress to A-Levels.
This final two year stint before university (or polytechnic as it was for me) was not academically a high point but, once again, it was computer science that saved me, allowed me to progress and complete a degree in computer science that got me a job.
Think of the Children
As I said at the beginning it wasn’t my own school work that came down from the loft but that of our two children too. We are still going through this all and seeing what anyone wants to keep but this following extract greatly amused us.
Looking at the date it seems that this would have been written in year five when said child would have been nine. They obviously had to answer the same four questions each week and I admire in this both my son’s chutzpah in his responses and the great response from the teacher who clearly spent quite some time crafting them.
Now everything we are keeping is going back into the loft and who knows when we might see them again.