The happiest days of our lives?

[Guest]

Posting an old school photo on SHB's Me as I was then thread got me thinking about my school days. They're supposed to the happiest of our lives; were they for you?

[LeMartinPecheur]

No: university was far preferable. Certainly to school, and also to much of what's come after, particularly work!

Having vast amounts of time to listen to music, whether or not studying at the same time, probably has a lot to do with the happy memories. And in Oxford, good concerts every night if you had the money, which sadly I didn't. Biggest idiocy: not bothering to go to hear Artur Rubinstein - obviously yesterday's man :missing doh icon times lots:

[Petrushka]

It's always puzzled me how anyone can say this. Perhaps the mix of psychopathic teachers and bullying pupils has rather coloured my view.

[Mahlerei]

Agree with LMP, university was my happiest time too. I was sporadically content at school (several of them) but hated boarding school (for the reasons Petrushka gave).

[Stillhomewardbound]

Miss Meredith's nursery, St.Stephen's green, Dublin - All bliss, innocence and kindliness.

St.Philomena's Infant School, Dublin -My one and only experience of the nuns. Not too bad, but they were a twisted and bitter old crew for a fact.

St.Mary's, Haddington Road, Dublin - I kid you not, it was like being one of the Bash Street Kids mixed in with kids from very tenement homes. Good muckers we were to each other.

St.Conleth's, Clyde Road, Dublin - My one brief taste of private education an the first time I learned the word 'lavatory' which other boys used when they wanted to go to the toilet. Funnily enough, I quickly got by on my wits and quickly became the school mimic. For a diversions the teacher would have me come up and impersonate the headmaster and 'conduct' the national anthem.'

St.Teresa's RC Primary School, Finchley, London - I was 9 and we'd just moved to London and that was my first taste of bullying and initimidation - my bete noir was one Vinnie McCarthy. Yes, he even had the name of a thug. Why he had it in for me I really don't know. 'Spose he just saw a vitim in me and went for it.

Bishop Douglass RC Comprehensive, Finchley, London - A school that struggled to get 15% of its pupils to tertiary education, entirely to my mother's despair who had been to the Sorbonne, but after the dreadful disruption of the move to London I can recall being driven by my mum to the Starter's Day in my brand new uniform and satchel and walking into a hall full of similarly attired newbies - and there we were, all on the same level. A fresh start. God, it made all the difference.

TBC>

[DracoM]

All I can say is that if schooldays are the happiest of anyone's life, what a bluddy awful life a lot of people must have been living.

For me, the happiest days of my life are NOW.

[Mandryka]

Whenever I recall my schooldays, I often shake my head in despair to recall the causal violence, sheer injustice and routine homophobia/racism/sexism that prevailed as much amongst the teachers as it did amongst the pupils.

A perfect preparation for real life, then, as cynic might argue.

No, I don't recall them with any affection whatsoever.

University was much better, but I think it allowed me to get into too many bad habits.

[amateur51]

As the redoubtable Robert Morley was wont to remark: "Show me a man who enjoyed his schooldays and I'll show you a liar or a bully!"

It would be good to hear from some of the women board members about their schooldays

[Mary Chambers]

The happiest days of my life were probably when I was a postgraduate in London in the early 1960s, and I was also very happy when I had small children, but I loved school for the most part, especially once I had got rid of maths and games! I suspect my schooldays were rather sheltered - my children certainly think so. I was privately educated from the age of three, never experienced bullying, punishment (apart from a small incident with the seven times table when I was around six) or any real bad behaviour. I think one or two other girls were bullied, always mentally, never physically - but I never was, and I don't think it was serious for anyone. There were no boys in my school life after the age of seven. That may be a bad thing, but it didn't bother me in the slightest. I enjoyed the all-girls atmosphere. It's more relaxed, I think, than having to worry about whether one is or is not popular with the boys. It was a cosy, safe, ordered world. I'm not sure, though, that it was a good preparation for adult life.

My brother's experience at his prep and public schools were very different - he was miserable - so I sympathise with the males on here who have suffered the casual (and the organised) violence of similar schools. He would probably have been just as miserable at an all-boys state school at the time.

[salymap]

I didn't have a lot of formal education. I passed the 11 plus but not the medical so lost my chance of further education at 11 years old in 1941. The Blitz meant staying alive was the important thing.
My happiest years were, oddly enough, at work. In a Music Library, then in publishing and promotion etc. I found like minded people who became my friends. I learned a lot about life,a bit about music, and enjoyed most but not all, of those years. I wanted to go to university and become a Vet. Ah well.

[mercia]

I passed the 11 plus but not the medical so lost my chance of further education at 11 years old in 1941.

you had to pass a medical? sounds a bit harsh.

[salymap]

you had to pass a medical? sounds a bit harsh.

Yes, another MBer met with the same problem but he/she got another chance. I lost my 'place' that was it.

[antongould]

My mother passed but the family couldn't afford to send her to Grammar School. She was also like me left handed but was forced to write with her right hand .........scary!

[Serial_Apologist]

The happiest days of my life? Pretty much not - apart from 2 years at a little private school off Gloucester Rd in S Kensington run by a Scottish couple, where I learned rudimentary Latin, supposedly a prerequisite for the public school I went to aged 9, though it was not, and French. We had a French teacher who really was French lady in her late 50s who could not actually speak any English, so lessons were entirely in French, we addressed her as "Madame", and we picked up accurate French accents - something which would never have happened without that vital experience. We learned all about good manners - on our afternoon walks to the park, in crocodile file, naturally, one boy partnering one girl - the latter always on the inside of the pavement - we all took the headmaster's cues to raise caps as he raised his trilby, or in summer salute, when passing acquaintances. Who salutes today, outside the armed services? As we reached the top form, the head invited us to their flat at the top of the building, where we would give him the names of countries and their capital cities in a sort of weekly learning ritual, and felt privileged to watch The Trooping of the Colour on his 12-inch screened telly, phew! I remember so well the floral covers on the armchairs.

So many of us on here seem to have had our first taste of disillusionment at boarding school. I was homesick the entire duration of my Prep; as for the "senior school" the best by far portrayal of what the place was like, fascism in microcosm, would have to be Lindsay Anderson's great 1968 movie "If...", which utterly blew my mind for its accuracy for a week - how I and doubtless many others identified in fantasy if not reality with the unheroic rebels in the closing scene.

The one great advantage of that public school experience was the lifelong lesson it taught me, and doubtless many others who were not the winners and supposed exemplars to the unwashed the bloody place produced via its "prefecture"; namely, the lengths and depths of barbarous depravity to which privilege and unaccountable power can descend.

S-A

[Serial_Apologist]

She was also like me left handed but was forced to write with her right hand .........scary!

I thought this only happened in Nazi Germany!