Alarm Bells not Applause

The contrast between the primary school I attended and the one my kids attend is so vast that I felt it would be interesting to review the differences. I have one son who is 12 and has started Secondary school and two daughters 10, and 8, still in what is called Upper Primary. They are at day schools so I have been priveleged to get a front row seat at how these formative years are spent today.

Most people are familiar with the broad philosophies prevalent in education today. The whole child, love of learning, positive education etc etc.

But some people may not be familiar with the style of my school in the 1970’s. My prep school in the UK was an expensive boarding school. One of the last group to follow the military school model. We joined as soon as we turned 8 years old and I left at 12. The guiding principles of the military school model were:

1. Fellowship – You are nothing without divine purpose and without your comrades.
2. Resilience – Ability to still make informed decisions under intense physical and emotional pressure. To know your deep inner wells of strength as an individual and as a community.
3. Resourcefulness – Thinking creatively with what problems or opportunities a situation may provide.

These principles borrowed heavily from the military experience of the Founding Headmaster and were continued more ardently by his son, who took over from 1953 to 1979. It was therefore one of the few schools left in the country little changed since the First World War. I therefore will describe as swiftly as I can how we spent our days.

A typical day

At 6:45 each morning the matron would come to inspect our beds as we stood to attention in our uniform. If there was a crease in the bedsheets, a mark on our polished shoes, a badly done tie, or slippers not lined up correctly, there would be black marks given out. Our school did not have or believe in heating, and juniors had to wear shorts at all times. It was incredibly cold in the morning and the basins only had a cold tap. Hot water was only available in the sports showers or the two baths a week that we were allowed.

Meals were massive with no choice other than large or small. If you failed to eat your small portion black marks would be given. Portions were double what my kids eat. For example I ate 15 fish fingers where my daughters eat 3. We were burning so many calories to stay warm and with physical exertion we needed it. Everyone had to stand in silence until the masters came in, then we bellowed various Latin prayers of thanks before tucking in.

After breakfast there was always chapel. We had chapel 8 times a week, twice on Sundays.

In class, as soon as the teacher came in, we all had to stand to attention at the left side of our desk and shout in unison “Good Morning Sir!” Or Madam for the french teacher. We could not sit down until the teacher gave us permission. Any poor work or poor behaviour got you black marks. At the end of each class the fire alarm would ring and we would have to move swiftly to the next class. If you ran in the corridor that would be a black mark, if you didn’t open a door for a teacher, more. If you were late for class, still more.

Sus was at 11am, with more bread with butter and salt followed by recess. Recess was a time when arguments between boys were settled by challenging them to a top pitch. You would meet behind the rhododendrons with a friend selected as second, who held your coat and tie. You would fight until someone conceded defeat or, if the end of recess bell sounded, it was a draw. There were some broken noses and arms. I remembered my first top pitch was with a 10 year old and I was very proud that I got a draw.

From age 8 we had classes in Chemistry, Physics, Biology, History, Geography, Divinity, Latin, Ancient Greek, and French along with the staple of Mathematics and English. There was no such thing as Integrated Studies, although we had General Studies option, which ended in an annual quiz, which included anything to do with the present day, politics etc.

Art classes were 3 hours a week where we would paint in oils, do sculptures, or pottery. You could do more after dinner if you didn’t have theatre practice.

Carpentry classes were 2 hours a week with one project per term. We would build a desk, or a trunk, or a ladder. Each was built well enough that they were used for a long time. My grandmother kept my first ladder for many years in the pantry to reach her cans.

Straight after lunch was 2.5 hours of sports, every day, five days a week, with interschool matches on Wednesdays and Saturdays. Rugby, Cricket, Swimming and Athletics, and Football. Sports was compulsory for all. The swimming pool was not heated and swimming season started and ended once it reached 58F or 14C. We would be shivering so hard that I used to always have a sore jaw after swimming. Rugby boots came with 5/8 long metal studs that we used to shave to sharpen so we could cut kids in the maul. We wore wool shorts, no pants, and one shirt. We played in all weathers including snow. To open your fists after a match in February you would first put them under a cold tap, before the glory of the hot shower, otherwise they stung too much. Rugby clothes were only cleaned once a week and they would be stiff with dried mud when you put them on.

As a military school we had Corps and Venturers twice a week, I think Thursday and Sundays. In Venturers you got your own hunting knife at 10 years old, we built 5 storey treehouses high up into the tops of trees, learned how to tie knots, start fires, and the names of the different plants. We each had a vegetable patch which we had to look after in pairs. In Corps we began shooting air rifles at the range at 10 years old. We learnt map reading and did war games of capture the flag and orienteering. There was a camp for five days at the end of term.

After sports there was tea, more bread with salt and butter then two lessons and prep (homework) before dinner. After dinner was extra theatre, music, astronomy, chess etc. before bed. We were allowed to watch TV for one hour per week. It was always a detective program ‘The Professionals’ and once a month we had a film showing, which created huge excitement.

Everyone had to play a musical instrument. And each term the school would put on a play. One Shakespeare play and two others each year. These were full productions, not shortened versions. Everyone had to take part. If you didn’t act you had to make sets or do lighting. The 12 year olds generally played all the leads.

Discipline

If in one week you had 6 black marks or more you had to do Drill! Drill involved 3 exercises for punishment. The worst was feet on the pipes. You had to get into the plank position with your feet tucked behind the hot pipes. You had to hold this position for 20 minutes. Mr Wiseman would patrol with his metal bar, any bum too high or too low would get a whack. If you fell down early an extra minute was added. The heat on your feet made you sweat so much, a puddle would form, as you pivoted from hand to hand, your arms going in to spasm.  Often it was only the encouragement of those around you that got you through. This was one of the exercises in pain management we received. It starts to hurt after just 1 or 2 minutes but curiously, if you can ignore the pain you can hold the position for a long time. It was amusing on joining a gym as an adult when they asked me to do the plank for 1 minute. The second drill was Bench. This was stepping up and down onto a bench for 20 minutes. We would all be in unison 1,2,3,4  1,2,3,4. Finally you had to run around the cricket pitch as many times as your age with different minimum times for different years. These last two sections were simply good muscular and cardio exercise. The whole process took an hour and a half and ruined your Sunday.

There was a notice board with everyone’s’ black marks listed, when you hit 4 you started to sweat as one infringement could take you over the 6.

If you had 12 black marks, or had done something considered particularly bad, you went to the headmaster where you received 6 of the best, which was delivered to the top of your thighs just under your buttocks. It was spectacularly painful but over quickly. Some of us preferred to be caned to avoid drill so if you had 10 marks you would intentionally get 2 more rather than have 4 points carried forward a week, risking two Drills. Taking the Lord’s name in vain was considered particularly bad. I was once caned for saying ‘God this is bad’.

For whispering at night you were sent into the corridor, put your nose to the wall and hold your arms out straight and hold the position for 20 minutes. Again arms would go into spasm as you tried to hold them up. Like plank, this was an exercise in pain management as the pain starts in the first 2 minutes. Alternatively you would get bunny hops, which involved bouncing around like a bunny with your hands on your head until you were allowed to stop. Both of these are borrowed from basic military training.

Beatings with hairbrushes or slippers were doled out on the spur of the moment by prefects or housemasters.

We were allowed to write to our parents once a week. Phone calls were not allowed. Saturday morning we had a letter writing period. Our letters were checked. If we said we were sad or the school was terrible the letter would be torn up and we would have to start again. While this censorship is shocking today, there was no way most parents could have indirectly tolerated our pain, and the program might have simply ground to a halt as parents queued at the entrance to pull their children from the program. My first letters had ‘prison’ and ‘hell’ in them and all ended up in the bin.

Sometimes when a ‘crime’ was committed and the teachers didn’t know the culprit, the whole school was put on bread and water until someone said who did it, or the child confessed. There were attempts at escape. I even trained on the track for an attempt to get to my grandmother’s 32 miles away.

This all may sound shocking today. But I would like to address what was actually terrible and has improved these days, and what was great and has since vanished.

Improvements

• Paedophiles – They ran amuck in those days and prep schools were magnets for them. Pretty boys like myself always had to be careful not to end up alone with the music teacher or the doctor. All the kids knew who they were and we did our best to scrape through with little more than gropes and kisses. Today even if there are these criminals present it is very hard for them to operate on any level above gloating and favourites.

• Bullying – The school ignored bullying. It happened on a massive scale. I was lucky to be friends with the biggest boy in my year. It would be safe to say that 10% of boys would probably spend most of their adulthood trying to process their horrendous experiences at the hands of other boys. While this is much better today, the extreme punishment for fighting, sometimes even expulsion, is wrong. I don’t really remember the punches or kicks, the only bullying that scarred were the harsh words and when groups ostracised individuals. This more damaging form of bullying is probably more prevalent today than it was when I was at school, because the physical nature of settling issues created a clear hierarchy and gave finality to disagreements. Also the toughness of school gave us a comradery that is absent today.

• Petty tyrants – Amongst the teachers, were some very nasty characters, with what today would be termed issues. For instance, while Mr Wiseman was in charge of drill and was a strict disciplinarian, you could feel he had a real affection for the boys, so we didn’t mind. Likewise for the headmaster as he strode up raising his cane. Our science teacher Mr Pepys, by contrast, had sharpened a broomstick into the shape of a large pencil. If he saw a child switching off, he would sneak up on them and whack the broom across their hands screaming a question at the top of his lungs. He took great pleasure in any boys who cried or wet their pants. I believe some of these characters still sadly make it onto staff, cleverly hiding their behaviour in class from their fellow teachers. This is hard at my children’s school as there are two teachers in each class, except in music. On a micro-level, teachers still have enormous power in their tiny fiefdoms, more than in any corporate environment. So it still survives, but they are rare and the power games are much more subtle and less cruel.

• Affirmations – Nine out of ten bellowed comments from teachers were negative in my day. Today, with ‘positive education’, this stands at a much more healthy 4 encouraging comments to 1 point of criticism. This fosters self-esteem and has done much to make school less of a trauma.

• No refuge – At school all teachers and even the wives of the housemaster and headmaster could dole out black marks. This meant there was no adult that could be approached as a friend, even though some were very friendly. Parents could not be reached as letters were censored. The dormitory was full of 15 screaming boys. There was no refuge to relax or resolve. The only benefit of this, as in war, is the boys were driven closer together and formed stronger bonds. At a day school, home is an hour away. Hopefully this is a refuge. Boarding, in such isolation, at this young age has significant negative impacts, unless ofcourse there are problems at home. Some children, with difficulties at home, loved it.

I’m embarrassed to say, that is the full length of this positive list, but they are big items.

I would now like to look at the areas which have slipped.

Concern

• Life-long love of learning – There is one simple reason why my children’s primary school fails to cultivate a love of learning as effectively as my primary school. It is because they have one teacher for all subjects, except Chinese. Where we had nine separate teachers teaching subjects they were passionate about, my children have one and that one teacher also has to work within the confines of one subject, Integrated Studies, for most of them. My Geography teacher would whisk us out to explore erosion aged nine down a muddy path. He was so excited that the words spilled out. My Maths teacher would bounce back to the black board to explain long division, what he saw in it, I don’t know, but his enthusiasm was infectious. The history teacher would lose himself in the Tudors. Miss Bunting would throw chalk at us in a rage when our French accent was abominable because she loved French. Ancient Greek was a whole other world with our eccentric professor. We were dissecting squirrels at an age when my kids don’t even know what the word biology means.

• Creativity – It pains me to go to yet another Christmas concert at my children’s school. The orchestra is appalling because few children learn instruments other than the piano. They sing carols and that’s it. Children are applauded for reciting 3 lines glumly into a microphone. 11 year olds at my school would be reciting from memory 400 lines of Shakespeare as Portia in The Merchant of Venice, full of emotion. The children now learn presentation skills by doing short PowerPoints to their class. Nothing beats acting without a microphone to learn voice projection and how to speak with passion and humour. Art – the work my children produce has to integrate what they are learning elsewhere, much as they try to do their best, the limited time makes it impossible. The leaning towards technology, where gimmicks, copy and paste, out shines original work, erodes it further. Carpentry. My children returned with a sword at age 8 which was two bits of wood connected with a nail. Saws and other tools are considered too dangerous for young children even though we never had an accident at my Primary, and again, to build a piece of furniture requires time and this isn’t allocated. Skills with the hands beyond moving a mouse are not being developed.

• Resilience – Self-discipline is a lot less ‘natural’ than people think. Try the natural approach to sleeping patterns for babies, and parents learn quickly that they end up with a 6 year old still waking them up throughout the night! I know very few people born with self-discipline. Sadly for most of us this is taught. It doesn’t take self-discipline to do something for a short while, or that is fun, or that is not hard or painful. My children’s education involves small snippets of tasks that are mostly fun, rarely hard, and never painful. As an employer I can say with hand on heart that we have produced a whole generation that cannot apply themselves to a painful, difficult, long, and tedious task. Unfortunately, to achieve greatness, there are long spells just like these. Watching my two children, who are still in Primary on Sports Day, with the magnificent display of abject and half-hearted mediocrity is an exercise in verbal restraint. Giving 70% of yourself to an easy task such as lobbing a foam javelin, is showered with positive affirmations. We had metal javelins at this age, and those who participated in javelin on Sports Day had trained hard all summer. Cross country took just over 40 minutes. For my children it is a 8 minute jog with a little sprint infront of the doting parents. We did 100m, 200m, 400m, 1500m, hurdles, etc. These ‘difficult’ events are now only started aged 12. A classroom at the temperature of 25C can’t be tolerated, a swimming pool below 28C is too cold, the rain is too hard. There has been an interesting study of premier league football that shows that, since the introduction of team physios and the tightening of rules to protect players from violent tackles, the number of injury days per player has increased substantially, rather than decreased. The easier you make it the weaker you get. This applies to access to information or a telephone address book. Whereas when I was a teenager I knew off by heart all the telephone numbers of my friends, I barely know my own now.

• Sports and teamwork – At 8 we were playing 80 minute matches eleven aside come rain or hail. My daughter, aged 10, plays a 20 minute netball game which will probably be cancelled anyway if it rains. We did 12 hours a week of team sports. We didn’t need to attend lectures on team building we learnt it on the pitch. We were also so much healthier. It is particularly important that the children who are no good at sport, or hate it, play it. Now it is voluntary. They don’t developed their coordination and health. At my children’s school there are some kids who barely know how to run, there are others that already have health and behavioural problems because of inactivity.

• Strategic thinking – One of the biggest surprises about modern education is how it falls short on lateral thinking, figuring things out for yourself. There is much hype about ‘teaching strategies and teaching children to think for themselves’. I don’t see this in practise. When I was at school we weren’t taught strategies so we had to make them up on our own. I throw a problem at my children and say figure it out for yourselves. The reaction is alarming. They are so used to hints as to what strategies are required that throwing them a curve ball, with no reference, makes them freeze like a rabbit in the headlights. ‘Which strategy should I use?’ Is the usual question.

• Depth of Analysis – Most ‘essays’ are presented now by my primary children in PowerPoint format. I watch their process. Counting the number of words, they are roughly 1/5^th of the length of the essays I was writing at that age. Bullet points copied from Wikipedia, with photos copied and pasted. Long decisions about layouts and fonts. In my company, anyone who produced a PowerPoint which had anything more than simple text is criticised and teased for wasting time. They don’t do it again.

• Handling crisis – A teacher recently explained that they have greatly improved the process of transitioning to secondary. They said, gone are the days of him seeing a child running between classes, tears in her eyes, because she is not sure where she should be. Now they have an extensive period of orientation to ensure that entry into secondary is as enjoyable as it should be.The recent children’s movie Inside Out had a powerful message about the importance of sadness in achieving a goal and living a life.The goal of education is not to ensure that the journey of education is as happy and painless as possible. It is to prepare people for what life will throw their way. Between 1815 and 1874, Britain had three generations without war. If we exclude the Crimea, a whole century of peace for the English to 1914. People talked then as they do today as if war, and other crisis are no longer a part of our world. That our students will never experience real life threatening challenges. This is an illusion, and the saddest part of this story is that we are producing children who will be completely ill prepared for the horror of a major crisis. We were the last generation to be taught by teachers who had fought in a World War. The entire ethos of my Primary school was designed to build resilience, comradery, and resourcefulness. These lessons are now mistaken for abuse. I do not regret in anyway the physical harshness of my primary school. In fact, it is the single greatest gift that my entire education gave me, and it has stood me in good stead for what little crises my blessed life has thrown me.

One of the biggest problems with ‘modern’ education is it believes without a doubt that it is much better than education in the past. This sense of superiority makes it particularly vulnerable to stagnation, and intolerant of criticism. Yes, state schools for the poor are better today than they were in Victorian times with the latter’s rote learning and huge classes. Yes, schools are slightly less terrifying. But the top private schools a century ago were better than the top private schools today in almost all areas. Alarm bells rather than applause should be ringing out among the parents and the teaching staff, but they unfortunately convinced themselves with their own hype, crisp brochures, teaching Apps, and elegant PowerPoints, littered with multimedia snippets of smiling children.