The happiest days of our lives?

[aeolium]

S_A

I liked that quote by Roger Cooper, the British businessman who was imprisoned in Iran for 5 years on spying charges. On his release he said "Anyone, like myself, who has been to an English public school and then served in the army is quite at home in a third-world prison".

[antongould]

I thought this only happened in Nazi Germany!

No deep in rural Northumberland in the 1920s!

[amateur51]

I thought this only happened in Nazi Germany!

It happened to my great-auntie Olwen in North Wales. They didn't try this stunt on me when I turned out to be a lefty - my school just insisted that I should learn to write the italic script instead which, if you've ever tried it as a lefty, is tantermount to torture of the inky variety

[Mary Chambers]

King George VI, another left-hander, was made to write with his right hand as a boy, one of the many things that no doubt contributed to his nervous disposition and stammer.

[amateur51]

King George VI, another left-hander, was made to write with his right hand as a boy, one of the many things that no doubt contributed to his nervous disposition and stammer.

I think I'm corrct in saying that there is a vague statistical link between being being male, being left-handed and stammering.

Whether the stammer relates directly to the gender and the left-handedness or results from the experience of social 'difference' I don't think anyone has resolved.

[mangerton]

Posts 4,6,7,8 and 14 have almost said it all for me, especially Mandryka's post, and SA's remarks on "If".

If I'm asked about my schooldays, I usually say that my public school in the 60s was run by thugs called prefects, and bullying, beating and buggery were regular features.

I suffered badly from two, and narrowly missed the third.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I quite liked Primary School, and Secondary once I reached the Sixth Form: but I really didn't like being a child. I wasn't abused or bullied, but I just resented having no control nor any real say about what I could do in day-to-day life. I adored University, but, like DracoM, the best days of my life are here and now.

[Don Petter]

I am sorry to hear of all these negative experiences from many of our contributors.

Mine weren't necessarily the happiest days (I've had many as happy since) but certainly were very happy in their own right. I am thinking particularly of the seven years spent at my local grammar school (which did have some pretensions to public school ethos, being a member of the Headmasters' Conference). Perhaps because I was a day boy, I missed all the bullying, beating and buggery (the three B's, I presume) and it was a time of great exploration of new fields in music, literature, languages, geography etc. Though I did hate history and struggled with the rigours of Latin, something for which I am now very grateful, if only for help with crosswords.

Does no one else share such happier memories?

PS I almost forgot - I did hate all sport. Wednesday afternoons and the weekly PT lesson were the very dark side of the coin for me.

[Nick Armstrong]

I am sorry to hear of all these negative experiences from many of our contributors.

Mine weren't necessarily the happiest days (I've had many as happy since) but certainly were very happy in their own right. I am thinking particularly of the seven years spent at my local grammar school (which did have some pretensions to public school ethos, being a member of the Headmasters' Conference). Perhaps because I was a day boy, I missed all the bullying, beating and buggery (the three B's, I presume) and it was a time of great exploration of new fields in music, literature, languages, geography etc. Though I did hate history and struggled with the rigours of Latin, something for which I am now very grateful, if only for help with crosswords.

Does no one else share such happier memories?

PS I almost forgot - I did hate all sport. Wednesday afternoons and the weekly PT lesson were the very dark side of the coin for me.

With you there, Don. Also a day boy at a similar sounding school. I remember the sixth form being filled with laughter during and outside lessons, and although I shared your hatred of sports, I was allowed to fix trombone lessons or go to swimming lessons or do photography (which often meant getting homework out of the way in the dark-room so I could watch telly in the evening ) to avoid the muddier, more unpleasantly cold sports... But I have to say I'm loving the 21st century too

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

I hated my primary school, but going away to boarding school was the best thing that happened to me.

[Lateralthinking1]

Family life until 11 - 9
School until 11 (Primary) - 8
Other areas of life until 11 - 0

Family life until 18 - 8
School until 18 (Local Authority Grant - Independent Day School) - 1
Other areas of life until 18 - 3

University - 9

Since university 22-31 - 8
Since university 32-41 - 3
Since university 42-48 - 1

[EdgeleyRob]

...............school days. They're supposed to the happiest of our lives; were they for you?

No! My happiest days have been since my children (and grandchildren) were born.

[BBMmk2]

Iwas happiest at Prep School! And working in the school where i am now!!

[Chris Newman]

At my grammar school the head was a pretentious and profligate flogger who beat backsides as if they were going out of fashion. For demeanours we were given "merit marks" (talk about twisting language at an early age). Get three merit marks and it was Saturday morning detention. If the head felt like it, which he usually did, the cane would be added on. I think I had the cane about eight times in my time at the school. At a reunion last autumn our class "swot" asked me how often I had the cane. When I told him, to my surprise he admitted that he had been beaten six times: and he was a goody two shoes! Most of the other staff were pleasant guys (there was only one gal) indeed some teachers were really hardworking and kind. The prefects were not allowed to beat boys but one or two were bullies (pinching the fleshy bingo wings under the arms was a popular torture). Although at about the age of thirteen I took a liking for classical music I avoided most of the expected bullying that accompanied such wetness by being excellent at long distance running (I enjoyed cross country running and even in my thirties still was actively involved in orienteering), field events, swimming and was fair at rugby. I was also one of the clowns in my year which helped me to survive with most boys and staff except for those types who would never tolerate any humour. Thus I got through school either being top of the class in subjects I liked and those taken by teachers with whom I got on well or I ended up being bottom with those that I clashed. My school reports looked almost schizophrenic in the good/bad divide: though it was purely down to personality.

I guess I must have liked most of my time at school. Why else would I have become a teacher myself? I think my education taught me to make the subject I am dealing with as exciting as possible, to give all pupils opportunities to think they have discovered facts for themselves thus maintaining their sense of achievement and self esteem. Above all I learnt to be known to be fair. Those are things I learnt from my best teachers. They were the people who gave me my self esteem which could have been lost to a father who was impossible to please and to them I am very grateful.

[Lateralthinking1]

I wasn't going to say much but a few comments.

My parents weren't at all demanding on me academically. They knew I had more intelligence than most at my local junior school and were pleased about it. They didn't think that necessarily meant very much. I was given the option of taking the eleven plus type exam. I said "yes". The head teacher was against it politically and "because no one passes it in this school". We were all wholly naive about it. I was a bit taken aback by the sudden push of aspiring parents on their own kids. It was as if there had been a big secret in other households for years that this was what it was all leading towards. Time for business! Anyhow, three of us got through. I remained matter of fact about it but two things during the wait caused big, perhaps even lifelong, problems. First, while those who didn't get through congratulated me, the amount of jealousy and even bile from their parents was quite unexpected and indeed horrible. Not for the last time, I learnt that people often become less mature in adulthood. Secondly, and I did start to have very mixed feelings about leaving my mates behind, their parents spoke of my new school as if it were like going up into aristocracy. Oh, the high standards! Suddenly I did have expectations of it.

What really shocked me at the age of eleven was the sheer unfriendliness of the pupils. It was like nothing I had experienced and was essentially class based, combined a little with their resentment at earlier prep school experience. They had joined at age ten so they thought in any case that they were established. They were used to homework, to competition, to the ways of that system which were learnt initially from their parents, and emotionally it was just incredibly troubling. By contrast, my parents had always been open and sociable. In the sixth form, things were a bit more normal. There was tacit recognition of the fact that some of the council school people had weathered it while some of the prep school people had fallen by the wayside. I actually thought then that it had been an age thing. People had matured. University experience supported that theory as did quite a bit of my life in the workplace afterwards. Only since Cameron took over the Conservative Party have I been reminded so vividly of the attitudes. Of course, that has affected me personally far more than others who didn't have my experience. It made me more anxious. I was also less prepared to accept it and came a cropper. But now I look back at my time in the Civil Service, I can see that the place was riddled with the same kinds of attitudes, in middle management as well as senior management, and not merely restricted to one particular class. I just chose to see what was going on through a different, more charitable, lens.

So when I read these stories about people doing things and nothing seeming good enough for their fathers. Well, I do understand it very clearly because I have experienced it but not in my own family. In fact, they often act as if there is nothing at all I can do for them. That, while well intended, has its own problems. I have spent a proportion of my life protecting them from the realities of school and work situations. They got something out of my joining "the establishment". Now that I am unemployed, they are having to negotiate what it has often been like. It is sad for them in that way. The order of things probably makes a difference. For some, the world at large can seem like a bit of an escape from upbringing. I have to say that I have often been quite disgusted by what I have encountered there. I have sometimes found it unnerving and generally depressing. It is the bloody-mindedness of people mainly - and it is mainly an affliction of the intelligent. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that my greatest acheivements have always come when I've been seen to put in the least effort. When I have worked like a trojan, people have seen the scope for using me. I have always found that downright weird. Finally, honesty is never appreciated and is seen as a barrier to good business. Ditto individual logic, however robust. In fact the more robust it is, the more there is an inclination to try to weaken it. From school onwards, the message is "keep to team rules and never life rules - talk about facing outwards but never do it".