Pat and I recently interviewed someone with a good memory of the school from 1948 to 1955, though her memories relate more to the school and teachers in general than to English and what went on in the lessons.
She was taught English by Arthur Harvey for her entire time at the school. She confirms what others have told us, that Harvey had his favourites -- of which she was one in that class -- though this didn’t lead to any unfairness in marking. Some of the favourites joined Harvey in the Quick Service Cafe after school but not our informant: she belonged to an alternative group that met in another cafe, on the other side of the Old Kent Road, around the biology teacher, Eric Palmer.
Palmer was a quite different kettle of fish and he and Harvey didn’t like each other. Alex McLeod was associated with his group. Palmer taught frankly about sex and is said to have favoured free love (though his relationships were entirely ‘appropriate’, as we say now). But his main educational concern was teaching pupils about life. He was devoted to open air activities on the lines of the 1930s German hiking and health movement. He was associated with the Woodcraft Folk, took his group camping at their site and called them each by their Woodcraft name -- he himself was Fox. By all accounts Palmer was a thoroughly good thing and pupils benefited by his teaching and personal attention. Our informant regards him as one of the teachers at Walworth who had a lifelong influence on her (Harvey was without doubt another).
Another set of impressions from the same source supports what we’ve been hearing often, that Miss O'Reilly, the school’s first real head, was an ‘authoritarian’ who ruled pupils and staff alike ‘with a rod of iron’. What puzzles us, however, is that she was certainly a progressive in her principles: she believed in a school giving a social education as well as an academic one, through the practice of friendly and respectful relations; she stressed constantly that all pupils were equally valuable; she enthusiastically embraced the concept of an experimental comprehensive school; she introduced form meetings and a school council, and an innovative social studies curriculum that involved individual project work (not a great success, it seems) and a great deal of choice. She made unconventional appointments like Harvey and Palmer, and also Sean O’Regan the art teacher.
What’s the explanation? we suspect that her principles were more liberal than her personality could tolerate and that there was a real conflict between the two. But what sort of evidence would help us find out?
Showing posts with label Walworth. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Walworth. Show all posts
Sunday, 19 August 2012
Walworth -- more needed
Officially we’ve come to the end of our data-gathering: what remains is writing a book and, we hope, doing some presentations for interested people from our three schools. However, we’re aware there are embarrassing gaps in our coverage. In my last post I remarked how little we had on Harold Rosen’s time at Walworth (admittedly less than three full years). The same could be said of John Dixon (1959-63). So, we’d still welcome more and will add anything useful we receive to the pile we made publicly available in our archive (and also, ideally, via a website -- would some millionaire ex-pupil care to fund this?)
However, not every sort of written or spoken memory is equally useful. Compare,
I remember her as a sympathetic but strict teacher, and her teaching must have been effective because I passed my O and A level English
And
I enjoyed writing poems and [the teacher] often pinned them on the noticeboard
with:
[Writing] was not my thing. Being creative to that extent was not my thing. I mean whenever we… had to write a poem, this became a family effort, and the family would gather around, and what we would do was we would gather together such old Christmas cards and birthday cards that still remained in the family archive, we would get those out and find all the words that rhymed, make a list of all the words that rhymed, and I would somehow try to work them into the requisite poem.
[Acknowledgements and thanks to Ken Russell. I've edited that slightly from the transcript of his interview.]
That admittedly wasn’t about a remembered lesson, but memories of the experience of doing a particular piece of work are also valuable. We’re interested in not only what the teachers did but in what it was like for the pupils.
Or the following, from two emails -- thanks to Janet Midwinter:
He [Simon Clements, 1959-64] sometimes remarked that he'd 'enjoyed' reading something which was incredibly flattering and encouraging. He fostered the idea that there was no right way or wrong way to do it which was liberating. It was all about ideas. The important thing was telling the story, including dialogue and descriptions of characters. It was as if your exercise was to entertain. He wanted us to not worry - just write. In some cases, like the 'books' we had a second chance to go back and re-write after discussion. It was satisfying to be able to improve yourself and immediately see the results.
We were told to describe characters, their feelings and the streets they walked in. We were encouraged to visualise our own areas for inspiration. Best of all we didn't have to use formal language when a character spoke. We were allowed to use slang and portray them exactly as we wanted them to sound - even if that involved Cockney accents or others more exotic.
I recall that he often allowed noisy cross arguments where yelling would be briefly tolerated. Then it would be stopped, started again when he pointed to someone who had not initially taken part, involving others who hadn't spoken, until it built up to another crescendo.
It gave me the impression we were doing something we shouldn't have been allowed to do. That's why it was exciting. And he always seemed to enjoy it. As if the heat of the moment promoted better debate.
Those are admittedly from an exceptional writer, but many people have been surprised at how well they can write when they sit down and give it a try after all these years. After all, Walworth pupils weren’t taught English just anywhere!
SO:
The things to remember are:
specific
concrete
detail
[what it was like] being there -- your thoughts and reactions as well as what happened.
However, not every sort of written or spoken memory is equally useful. Compare,
I remember her as a sympathetic but strict teacher, and her teaching must have been effective because I passed my O and A level English
And
I enjoyed writing poems and [the teacher] often pinned them on the noticeboard
with:
[Writing] was not my thing. Being creative to that extent was not my thing. I mean whenever we… had to write a poem, this became a family effort, and the family would gather around, and what we would do was we would gather together such old Christmas cards and birthday cards that still remained in the family archive, we would get those out and find all the words that rhymed, make a list of all the words that rhymed, and I would somehow try to work them into the requisite poem.
[Acknowledgements and thanks to Ken Russell. I've edited that slightly from the transcript of his interview.]
That admittedly wasn’t about a remembered lesson, but memories of the experience of doing a particular piece of work are also valuable. We’re interested in not only what the teachers did but in what it was like for the pupils.
Or the following, from two emails -- thanks to Janet Midwinter:
He [Simon Clements, 1959-64] sometimes remarked that he'd 'enjoyed' reading something which was incredibly flattering and encouraging. He fostered the idea that there was no right way or wrong way to do it which was liberating. It was all about ideas. The important thing was telling the story, including dialogue and descriptions of characters. It was as if your exercise was to entertain. He wanted us to not worry - just write. In some cases, like the 'books' we had a second chance to go back and re-write after discussion. It was satisfying to be able to improve yourself and immediately see the results.
We were told to describe characters, their feelings and the streets they walked in. We were encouraged to visualise our own areas for inspiration. Best of all we didn't have to use formal language when a character spoke. We were allowed to use slang and portray them exactly as we wanted them to sound - even if that involved Cockney accents or others more exotic.
I recall that he often allowed noisy cross arguments where yelling would be briefly tolerated. Then it would be stopped, started again when he pointed to someone who had not initially taken part, involving others who hadn't spoken, until it built up to another crescendo.
It gave me the impression we were doing something we shouldn't have been allowed to do. That's why it was exciting. And he always seemed to enjoy it. As if the heat of the moment promoted better debate.
Those are admittedly from an exceptional writer, but many people have been surprised at how well they can write when they sit down and give it a try after all these years. After all, Walworth pupils weren’t taught English just anywhere!
SO:
The things to remember are:
specific
concrete
detail
[what it was like] being there -- your thoughts and reactions as well as what happened.
Harold Rosen -- more
Those who remember Harold Rosen at Walworth (English, January 1956 to July 1958) will be interested in the blog that his son Michael is doing on him. The most recent posting is a wonderful picture of a young Harold in army uniform (US -- by a strange set of circumstances he was born on US territory).
The caption is wrong: he was a young Harold but his age was 26, not 16. He’d been working as a teacher for some time before being called up.
Our research evidence continues to be contradictory, often leaving us with no basis for deciding what to think. If we had lots more people’s reminiscences it would be easier, of course. Rosen is a case in point. Some of our informants remember him as a wonderful, inspiring, warm and humorous teacher, but one person -- recalls him, with Alex McLeod, as -- she felt -- looking down on girls like her as ‘common’. And, most astounding, one recent interviewee -- admittedly not interested in English -- who had Rosen for all the three years that Rosen was there has barely any recollection of him at all and says that his friend in the class called him Happy Harry because he always looked so miserable, sitting at his desk at the front.
So we’d be glad of more memories of Harold -- you can send them as comments on our project blog -- click Comments here -- or by email to walworthresearch@me.com.
The caption is wrong: he was a young Harold but his age was 26, not 16. He’d been working as a teacher for some time before being called up.
Our research evidence continues to be contradictory, often leaving us with no basis for deciding what to think. If we had lots more people’s reminiscences it would be easier, of course. Rosen is a case in point. Some of our informants remember him as a wonderful, inspiring, warm and humorous teacher, but one person -- recalls him, with Alex McLeod, as -- she felt -- looking down on girls like her as ‘common’. And, most astounding, one recent interviewee -- admittedly not interested in English -- who had Rosen for all the three years that Rosen was there has barely any recollection of him at all and says that his friend in the class called him Happy Harry because he always looked so miserable, sitting at his desk at the front.
So we’d be glad of more memories of Harold -- you can send them as comments on our project blog -- click Comments here -- or by email to walworthresearch@me.com.
Saturday, 5 November 2011
Walworth/Mina Road info wanted on teachers
This process is endless. At the moment Pat Kingwell and I are looking for members of the class that started as 1CL (Mr Clements) in 1962 and ended as 5H (Miss Harvey).
We’d also like to learn more about Mr Graham Reid who taught English between, we think, 1962 and 1964 and then went off to work in Yugoslavia. Chap with a black beard and Scottish accent. What can you remember about his teaching -- and where is he now? He’d be an invaluable informant.
And, as ever, we’re looking for pupils' work done between 1946 and 1965. Do you know anyone who’s kept English exercise books or folders?
Contact us, please, if you have anything or know anyone who might have something, at walworthresearch@me.com.
We’d also like to learn more about Mr Graham Reid who taught English between, we think, 1962 and 1964 and then went off to work in Yugoslavia. Chap with a black beard and Scottish accent. What can you remember about his teaching -- and where is he now? He’d be an invaluable informant.
And, as ever, we’re looking for pupils' work done between 1946 and 1965. Do you know anyone who’s kept English exercise books or folders?
Contact us, please, if you have anything or know anyone who might have something, at walworthresearch@me.com.
Sunday, 16 October 2011
Mina Road Boys Central School
These photographs were kindly sent to us by Darien Goodwin. The portrait is of his father, Eric, who was at Mina Road Boys Central School between 1917 and 1921. The class photographs are of the first form (Eric top row, far right) and the top class (bottom row, far left). According to the system in central schools, the first form boys were aged 12 and the top class 15 (called fifth year in my time and year 11 these days).
Schools like this were selective elementary schools and some, including Mina Road (it seems), were very successful. Although they had a vocational emphasis, academic subjects were taken seriously, including, according to Eric’s reports, the ‘English subjects’, Mathematics (Arithmetic, Geometry and Algebra), History, Geography, Science and French.
We know a bit about the school around this time from Herbert John Bennett’s I Was a Walworth Boy (London: Peckham Publishing Project, 1980). At least in his slightly earlier day (1913-16) the headmaster was Edward P. Paul who in the first assembly explained the school motto, Agi quod Agis, ‘What you do, do well’. ‘I do not think he was liked by the masters. There was certainly little affection from us boys’ (32).
A Mr Dawes is remembered with respect and affection: ‘[Dawes] had seemingly realised that the best prospects for us boys from working class families lay in our entry into the Civil Service, and he specialised in putting his boys through the Boy Clerks examination.’ The attraction was the promise of a pension to escape ‘the insecure world of poverty that surrounded me’. Dawes’s friendliness is remembered; he used to play football with the boys (33-34).
Perhaps someone can even today tell us who were the teachers in the photographs.
‘Mina Road School was not a large school. There were only six classes but in addition to the six classrooms [there were science, art and woodwork facilities]. Next door [he seems to be referring to the layout of the playgrounds] was a girls’ school and contact between the two was forbidden.’ There was a school production, though whether it was Shakespeare is not clear (32).
The building is the one that’s still there on the site of what is now Walworth Academy. I wonder when the tiered seating was taken out?
Mr Bennett had ‘no regrets… [It was] a good school with some wonderful teachers’ (9-10).
One can indeed imagine the well-turned out boys in the photos, in their jackets, waistcoats and ties, being receptive to a good education, especially when the size of the class reduced from about 41 at the start to 15 in the final year. They look quite ready for good clerical jobs. (If you were going into a trade, would there have been any point in staying for a fourth year?)
I suppose one can’t judge by such photographs but it doesn’t strike me as an unhappy school.
The National Archives at Kew, by the way, have inspection reports on this and the girls' school from the 1930s. Both are highly praised.
Wednesday, 12 October 2011
Andrew Salkey at Walworth/Mina Road
We’ve been given a lovely letter of sympathy and good wishes that was written by a pupil to Andrew Salkey, her English teacher, who was then in hospital with bronchial pneumonia. It’s dated 24th October 1957 and was evidently never delivered. We would love to contact the writer, Barbara Allen: does anyone have her address or email, please? (Send it, please, to walworthresearch@me.com.)
We’d like also to learn more about Mr Salkey as a teacher. He was later a notable novelist and poet who dealt with themes relating to the Caribbean where he had grown up.
We’d like also to learn more about Mr Salkey as a teacher. He was later a notable novelist and poet who dealt with themes relating to the Caribbean where he had grown up.
Monday, 10 October 2011
Country hikes from Walworth/Mina Road, 1950s
Harold Rosen, he tells, used to organised Sunday hikes in the country for Walworth pupils. Adults went too. Shown here (click to enlarge) are, left to right, Harold Rosen, Alex McLeod (also NZ), Gillian Murray (wife of Mike Murray, biology, another New Zealander), Mrs Rosen (Connie) and Pat Darby (PE; married Pip Piper).
Anyone who went on these jaunts (via the ‘Ramblers Special’ train), do get in touch: walworthresearch@me.com. Or add a comment here if you can work the system.
Friday, 2 September 2011
English teaching, Romantics and Moderns
I've been carefully re-reading, for our history of English project, Ian Reid’s Wordsworth and the Formation of English Studies. It’s of particular interest because there’s an extended discussion of English at Walworth/Mina Road School in the 1950s and 60s, including accounts of some key teachers: Arthur Harvey, Harold Rosen and John Dixon.
His claim is that all these teachers, and teacher-educators at the Institute of Education and King’s, right back to John Dover Wilson and including Percival Gurrey and James Britton, were heavily influenced by Romantic values and ideas that sprang originally from Wordsworth’s poetry. The problems with his story are, first, that these people, for all that they had in common, had many important differences and were influenced, differently, by ideas that came from places quite other than Romanticism, and second that -- as Reid fully acknowledges -- Romantic ideas had been so thoroughly absorbed that they were no longer felt to be ideas or a theory but were simply the common-sense air that everyone breathed. How could a thinking English teacher not have been a Romantic if that was what you were if you didn’t espouse some moribund and atheoretical hangover from Augustan convention and classical rhetoric?
A question that continues to intrigue me -- it falls outside Reid’s remit -- was not how teachers were (still) influenced by Wordsworth but what they made of the liveliest literary movement of their own century, Modernism. If university-educated English teachers were a key group within that part of the society that seriously read literature, how can their work have been, to all appearances, so utterly unaffected by Ulysses, Kafka and Pound? Eliot got in there through certain exam syllabuses, maybe some Yeats too, but, as far as I can see, few others. Gabriel Josipovici (click on his name in the labels at the side) complains that British novelists still continue to write in nineteenth century genres. Well, it seems accordingly that kids in English lessons wrote nineteenth century narratives and Romantic poetry, as if the vast upheaval of Modernism had never taken place.
It’s possible to think of explanations. For instance, it’s not easy to see what teachers could have done with Modernism if they’d wanted seriously to build it in, in setting writing tasks, for instance; it may be that Modernist texts are simply too difficult for younger readers; or the Modernists’ sense of the exhaustion and irrelevance of nineteenth century forms wasn’t and couldn’t be shared by readers who hadn’t read enough of it to have grown weary.
His claim is that all these teachers, and teacher-educators at the Institute of Education and King’s, right back to John Dover Wilson and including Percival Gurrey and James Britton, were heavily influenced by Romantic values and ideas that sprang originally from Wordsworth’s poetry. The problems with his story are, first, that these people, for all that they had in common, had many important differences and were influenced, differently, by ideas that came from places quite other than Romanticism, and second that -- as Reid fully acknowledges -- Romantic ideas had been so thoroughly absorbed that they were no longer felt to be ideas or a theory but were simply the common-sense air that everyone breathed. How could a thinking English teacher not have been a Romantic if that was what you were if you didn’t espouse some moribund and atheoretical hangover from Augustan convention and classical rhetoric?
A question that continues to intrigue me -- it falls outside Reid’s remit -- was not how teachers were (still) influenced by Wordsworth but what they made of the liveliest literary movement of their own century, Modernism. If university-educated English teachers were a key group within that part of the society that seriously read literature, how can their work have been, to all appearances, so utterly unaffected by Ulysses, Kafka and Pound? Eliot got in there through certain exam syllabuses, maybe some Yeats too, but, as far as I can see, few others. Gabriel Josipovici (click on his name in the labels at the side) complains that British novelists still continue to write in nineteenth century genres. Well, it seems accordingly that kids in English lessons wrote nineteenth century narratives and Romantic poetry, as if the vast upheaval of Modernism had never taken place.
It’s possible to think of explanations. For instance, it’s not easy to see what teachers could have done with Modernism if they’d wanted seriously to build it in, in setting writing tasks, for instance; it may be that Modernist texts are simply too difficult for younger readers; or the Modernists’ sense of the exhaustion and irrelevance of nineteenth century forms wasn’t and couldn’t be shared by readers who hadn’t read enough of it to have grown weary.
Blue plaque for Miss O'Reilly
Miss Anne O'Reilly was the first real head of Walworth/Mina Road interim comprehensive school, 1947-1955. Her niece, Pat Jones, and my colleague on the Walworth history project, Pat Kingwell, persuaded Southwark Council to award her a blue plaque for her war work (for which she was given and MBE) and her headship of two schools, Peckham Emergency Central School during the war and the new Walworth School after it.
Some decent photos will be up on the Academy site in due course; in the meantime here’s my petty offering. (Click to enlarge)
1. On Mina Road facing the school and the plaque. I'm sure there were more people than that when we eventually got inside.
2. Here I can recognise on the right John Sparrow (English) talking to Simon Clements (late 50s and early 60s, English and Social Studies). Of those present, John must have been the teacher who taught earliest at the school (1952). I also see Mary Lou Thornbury who taught World Studies in the 1960s and 70s.
3. I'm sure there will be a better photo of the plaque forthcoming. You can at least see Miss O'Reilly's dates, 1891-1963.
4. Finally, the one surviving original building (1905: the Mina Road Higher Grade School) which only now can we get a decent view of, after the demolition and new site layout. Here the only people I'm sure of are, on the right, Kim James, who I taught in the first and second year and hadn't seen since, and Bill Metson on the left, who we met and interviewed through the project.
I'm looking forward to some decent pictures taken by Tony of the Academy.
Wednesday, 3 August 2011
Walworth / Mina Road Central School
All schools used to keep a log book that recorded staff appointments, staff absences, school events, inspections and the like.
Before the war there were two schools in Mina Road, sharing the two buildings: Walworth Central School (Boys) and Walworth Central School (Girls). The two amalgamated during the war and in 1946 were replaced by the ‘interim comprehensive school’ called Walworth County Secondary School. The log book of the boys’ school has survived, having been kept in a store by the comprehensive school, and contains a lot of valuable information.
But what happened to the log book of the girls’s school? does anyone know? Like the boys’ book, it would be an invaluable source for our research (see the label Walworth down the side of the screen). It isn’t in the London Metropolitan Archives where all the LCC records went.
Before the war there were two schools in Mina Road, sharing the two buildings: Walworth Central School (Boys) and Walworth Central School (Girls). The two amalgamated during the war and in 1946 were replaced by the ‘interim comprehensive school’ called Walworth County Secondary School. The log book of the boys’ school has survived, having been kept in a store by the comprehensive school, and contains a lot of valuable information.
But what happened to the log book of the girls’s school? does anyone know? Like the boys’ book, it would be an invaluable source for our research (see the label Walworth down the side of the screen). It isn’t in the London Metropolitan Archives where all the LCC records went.
Tuesday, 19 July 2011
Walworth/Mina Road writing topics: Harvey and Rosen
I've been wondering if there was such a contrast as I’ve thought between the English teaching of Arthur Harvey and Harold Rosen (and successors at Walworth/Mina Road School in the 1940s and 50s).
The impression I've had is that Harvey set titles for writing that were either wild imagings or literary/purple prosish. Examples of the first that we’ve collected are ‘My Wild White Cat’ and ‘The Red-Headed Man with a Glass Eye’ and of the second ‘Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow’ or ‘Observing the weather through the front room window’. Rosen on the other hand would be after writing about your real life in family and street -- grandparents, uncles, weddings, an adult who frightened you.
But looking more carefully at the information people have told us or sent us I note that Harvey also set the following, which seem exactly Rosen’s sort of topic:
Conversation at the fish and chip shop
At the barber’s
Waiting outside the pub
The last in particular taps into the vivid local experience of kids living in Walworth, Bermondsey or Peckham.
Readers who were there, can you recall more subjects set by Walworth teachers in the period (1949-64) of Harvey, Rosen, John Dixon and their colleagues? Share them by a comment on here, if you can work out how to do it (a pain) or, much easier, by an email to walworthresearch@me.com or a comment on our website, http://remakingenglish.org/. Whichever, we’ll be grateful and you’ll be contributing to history!
The impression I've had is that Harvey set titles for writing that were either wild imagings or literary/purple prosish. Examples of the first that we’ve collected are ‘My Wild White Cat’ and ‘The Red-Headed Man with a Glass Eye’ and of the second ‘Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow’ or ‘Observing the weather through the front room window’. Rosen on the other hand would be after writing about your real life in family and street -- grandparents, uncles, weddings, an adult who frightened you.
But looking more carefully at the information people have told us or sent us I note that Harvey also set the following, which seem exactly Rosen’s sort of topic:
Conversation at the fish and chip shop
At the barber’s
Waiting outside the pub
The last in particular taps into the vivid local experience of kids living in Walworth, Bermondsey or Peckham.
Readers who were there, can you recall more subjects set by Walworth teachers in the period (1949-64) of Harvey, Rosen, John Dixon and their colleagues? Share them by a comment on here, if you can work out how to do it (a pain) or, much easier, by an email to walworthresearch@me.com or a comment on our website, http://remakingenglish.org/. Whichever, we’ll be grateful and you’ll be contributing to history!
Friday, 24 June 2011
Standing up to speak in class
I just saw a clip of old German film (1950s?) showing a class of 10 year olds in a lesson. It was striking that the pupils stood up in their places to answer a question or read out what they’d written or make a contribution to discussion. I've often seen the same thing in American films.
(Colleagues point out that this was the practice in Russia, too -- with the variation that the pupil addressed not the teacher at the front but the rest of the class.)
Was standing up to speak ever the practice in English schools? Within living memory, even? I don't remember it from my schooldays -- we always answered, and volunteered, while remaining seated.
On the historical research project Social Change and English: A Study of Three English Departments 1945-1965 we’d be interested in people’s memories relating to our schools: Walworth/Mina Road, Hackney Downs, Minchenden.
(Colleagues point out that this was the practice in Russia, too -- with the variation that the pupil addressed not the teacher at the front but the rest of the class.)
Was standing up to speak ever the practice in English schools? Within living memory, even? I don't remember it from my schooldays -- we always answered, and volunteered, while remaining seated.
On the historical research project Social Change and English: A Study of Three English Departments 1945-1965 we’d be interested in people’s memories relating to our schools: Walworth/Mina Road, Hackney Downs, Minchenden.
Tuesday, 21 June 2011
Poetry taught at Walworth/Mina Road
Someone who was a student teacher on teaching practice at Walworth in about 1957 was invited by the head, Mr Rogers (who was an English teacher), to watch him teach a poetry lesson to a third or fourth year class.
The poem he taught (probably from a book) was the following and I wonder whether anyone else remembers that poem being taught either by Rogers or any other English teacher -- and what was the poetry book?
To a Young Child
Margaret, are you grieving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leaves, like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! as the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By & by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you will weep & know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sorrow's springs are the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
It is the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.
Gerard Manley Hopkins
Any memories, please send them to us (the Walworth history research project) at walworthresearch@me.com.
The poem he taught (probably from a book) was the following and I wonder whether anyone else remembers that poem being taught either by Rogers or any other English teacher -- and what was the poetry book?
To a Young Child
Margaret, are you grieving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leaves, like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! as the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By & by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you will weep & know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sorrow's springs are the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
It is the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.
Gerard Manley Hopkins
Any memories, please send them to us (the Walworth history research project) at walworthresearch@me.com.
Sunday, 17 April 2011
Mina Road: some documents
Before they were abolished in 1904, to be replaced by the London County Council as the authority in charge of London schools, the School Board for London produced a large printed report that includes a history of the development of its school buildings over the years since 1870. (Their achievement was impressive. There were no publicly provided schools when they started; over their 34 years they built 469.) One of the schools mentioned as significant was Mina Road (1882), and they print its plan, evidently of the first floor, where the Boys’ department was housed:
(Final report of the School Board for London 1870-1904, 1904, p.63.)
From other things I've read it seems the basic class size was 60, though it could be subdivided into 2 x 30 as we see in two of the classrooms, or doubled up for teaching by the head teacher, with one or more pupil-teachers, in the hall -- which had desks for that number. The broken line represents the ‘rolling shutters’ that were later removed. The principle was that the head teacher should be able both to teach one or two classes in the hall and keep an eye on the assistant teachers and pupil-teachers in the classrooms.
The total accommodation for that floor, going by the numbers on that plan, was 420 pupils (boys, not infants, aged 7-12) in 7 classes of 60 - and that fits with the actual pupil numbers I've found recorded in documents at the National Archives in Kew.
Mina Road was not judged a success. The Board’s account is as follows:
ln order to combine teaching with the occasional use of a large room for collective purposes, two types were now tried; one the Mansford-street (Hackney S) and Mina-road (East Lambeth K) type, of which four schools were built. Here there were large halls available for infants and for boys, but each of them were occupied permanently by two classes and the corresponding rooms for the girls were supplied on a separate floor over the hall. This type, though providing two handsome rooms, was not serviceable for teaching or for assembling the children. These schools are being improved by the halls being freed from the classes and used for their special purpose. (Final Report p.37)
That improvement was made possible by the removal of the oldest classes (Standards 5 and 6, what would later be called 1st and 2nd year secondary and now Year 7 and 8) to the new building, that still stands. Quite what was meant by that account of the girls’ provision on the second floor isn’t clear to me.
I hope the original plans survive in the archives. Patrick Kingwell and I will be looking in the London Metropolitan Archives -- we’ll report if we find them.
Friday, 15 April 2011
School desks at Mina Road
This is from the book written by the London schools architect, E.R. Robson in 1874 -- 8 years before Mina Road Elementary School (later Walworth School) was built (School Architecture, p.172).Were there desks like this at the school within anyone’s memory? Comments here welcome, or, if you can't work out how to do that (many people can't, I find) then email me at walworthresearch@me.com and I'll post your memories myself (with or without your name, as you prefer).
You can enlarge the image by double clicking -- then notice the slate rack at A.
Wednesday, 13 April 2011
Further memories of the building
Bit by bit we’re getting there. Now I've had this from Bill Cutts:
I was at the school from 1952 until 1957 and the old building was for the 3rd, 4th, 5th and 6th formers. The ground floor had a hall but it was Paddy Price’s gym and also served as the dining hall. I think there were 5 classrooms on the ground floor. Three classrooms in the gym section and one in each of the corridors at each end of the gym.
The 1st floor had a similar layout but the hall had been converted into the library, half of which was the 6th form.
The second floor I remember had the same classroom layout and numbers and the hall was used for the upper school assemblies.
A bit later Bill adds:
I have tried to remember the classrooms on the 2nd floor but all I can remember was that the first classroom inside the hall at the Walworth Road end was Miss Porchetta and next to that was Mr. Besch’s science room.
Incidentally, the Walworth Road end corridor of the first floor had a classroom on the Mina Road side that was my 3rd year form room. It had a piano in it and it was used for music lessons. Next to it with the door just inside what would have been the hall, was Miss Ashton’s form room, my maths teacher. Next to that was my 4th & 5th year form room and Mr. Rosen was my form teacher. The next classroom which was opposite the 6th form end of the library has slipped my mind. Through the double doors and again on the Mina Road side was my French teacher’s form room. He was Mr. Rogers.
I did make a mistake with the ground floor. The Walworth Road end corridor did not have a classroom. That space was the kitchen for the school dinners.
One day I'll search for the original plans in the London Metropolitan Archive.
Meanwhile, does anyone else than John (last posting) remember fires in the classrooms? Open fires, coal scuttles, tongs, pokers? how did it work, or not work? John remembers someone’s plimsolls getting burnt.
I was at the school from 1952 until 1957 and the old building was for the 3rd, 4th, 5th and 6th formers. The ground floor had a hall but it was Paddy Price’s gym and also served as the dining hall. I think there were 5 classrooms on the ground floor. Three classrooms in the gym section and one in each of the corridors at each end of the gym.
The 1st floor had a similar layout but the hall had been converted into the library, half of which was the 6th form.
The second floor I remember had the same classroom layout and numbers and the hall was used for the upper school assemblies.
A bit later Bill adds:
I have tried to remember the classrooms on the 2nd floor but all I can remember was that the first classroom inside the hall at the Walworth Road end was Miss Porchetta and next to that was Mr. Besch’s science room.
Incidentally, the Walworth Road end corridor of the first floor had a classroom on the Mina Road side that was my 3rd year form room. It had a piano in it and it was used for music lessons. Next to it with the door just inside what would have been the hall, was Miss Ashton’s form room, my maths teacher. Next to that was my 4th & 5th year form room and Mr. Rosen was my form teacher. The next classroom which was opposite the 6th form end of the library has slipped my mind. Through the double doors and again on the Mina Road side was my French teacher’s form room. He was Mr. Rogers.
I did make a mistake with the ground floor. The Walworth Road end corridor did not have a classroom. That space was the kitchen for the school dinners.
One day I'll search for the original plans in the London Metropolitan Archive.
Meanwhile, does anyone else than John (last posting) remember fires in the classrooms? Open fires, coal scuttles, tongs, pokers? how did it work, or not work? John remembers someone’s plimsolls getting burnt.
More on Walworth/Mina Road
John tells me:
When I came up from the Lower School in 1963 the old building was still in use. There were two halls and I remember the boys and girls in the third year being separated into them for sex education lessons. The RE teacher, Mr Tagg led for the boys , standing on the stage and asking the boys to send him confidential written notes regarding their queries about sex. As you can expect one boy's note was 'does masturbation make you blind?' Mr Tagg’s reply was confidently 'no' , but more hesitantly he admitted 'but it can make you out of breath'. He went on to state it was like 'running around the old school building at least three times'.
I can only remember two floors being in use. I don't remember whether there was a third floor. Most interestingly. during the winter the classrooms had open fires. The coke/ coal store was at the end of the building towards the Old Kent Road end. Often small bits of coke would be thrown around the playground. I think boys and girls had separate playgrounds, with the boys being adjacent to the old building and the girls being next to the remaining building. The upper school library was on the first floor of the old building. It was not very big and I think it was just a classroom made into a library. library periods were time tabled in year 3( 9), Sometimes school detentions were held in there. Brenda Harvey did much of her teaching in the old building and would be a good source of memories. However, I remember Reg Hunt saying that when the Old building was demolished they found a long length of railway track in the roof space, apparently , debris from the Blitz and bombing of Dunton Road railway yards in the second world war.
When I came up from the Lower School in 1963 the old building was still in use. There were two halls and I remember the boys and girls in the third year being separated into them for sex education lessons. The RE teacher, Mr Tagg led for the boys , standing on the stage and asking the boys to send him confidential written notes regarding their queries about sex. As you can expect one boy's note was 'does masturbation make you blind?' Mr Tagg’s reply was confidently 'no' , but more hesitantly he admitted 'but it can make you out of breath'. He went on to state it was like 'running around the old school building at least three times'.
I can only remember two floors being in use. I don't remember whether there was a third floor. Most interestingly. during the winter the classrooms had open fires. The coke/ coal store was at the end of the building towards the Old Kent Road end. Often small bits of coke would be thrown around the playground. I think boys and girls had separate playgrounds, with the boys being adjacent to the old building and the girls being next to the remaining building. The upper school library was on the first floor of the old building. It was not very big and I think it was just a classroom made into a library. library periods were time tabled in year 3( 9), Sometimes school detentions were held in there. Brenda Harvey did much of her teaching in the old building and would be a good source of memories. However, I remember Reg Hunt saying that when the Old building was demolished they found a long length of railway track in the roof space, apparently , debris from the Blitz and bombing of Dunton Road railway yards in the second world war.
Tuesday, 12 April 2011
Walworth / Mina Rd responses
June kindly emailed me the following, which she's given me permission to post:
I was at Mina Road from 1953 to 1958. My first year was in 1E(Miss Eggleston.'she was Australian') that class room was on the ground floor of the Lower School.
Then I went into 2 H.(Miss Harvey) and that room was on the first floor of the lower school. Then we moved to the Upper School and I was in 3W(Miss Wallace) I believe that to have been up on the first floor. Also on the first floor was the Library and staff room, they were near the sewing rooms - they always seemed bigger to me than a normal class room with a long table in there for cutting out. I do not believe there was a hall, the hall was on the next(top) floor where we
had assemblies. The Domestic Science (Housecraft) rooms were a separate single storey building near the lower school. The hall in the Lower School I believe as on the ground floor. I do not know if this is of any help at all.
Sunday, 10 April 2011
More on Walworth School/ Mina Road
First, as I've mentioned before, there’s a website about some research about the history of three London schools (1945-65) of which Walworth or Mina Road is one. It gives you an email to contact if you want to know more or have stuff to tell us; or you can email walworthresearch@me.com.
Also, if you look down the right hand side of this screen, some way down there’s a long list of ‘labels’. These are links to other postings on my blog. Try clicking on Walworth and Mina Road.
Now, here’s a question for those of you who remember the main old building, used as the upper school -- the one nearest the Old Kent Road.
Here’s a picture of it from 1905, from the brochure for the opening of the other building (the only one that’s still there).
At that date this building was what would now be called a primary school -- infants, boys and girls (with a wall to separate them in the playground). The new building was called a Higher Grade or HIgher Elementary school, and was what we’d call a secondary school for children of 11, 12 and 13: Mina Road Higher Grade School.
We want to know more about the older building, demolished in the early 1960s. It looks as if it has only two real storeys, ground and first, with perhaps a hall on each floor (those big windows). The second floor looks much lower, with dormer windows. So what went on up there?
And how many classrooms do you remember on each floor? and who taught in each, if you can really stretch your memory? We think the middle hall became the library -- is that right?
Here to help you is a much later shot of the same building, taken from the Mina Road side. Here it looks like three main storeys, not two, with five classrooms on each floor, but it would be nice to be sure.
photo
There may, of course, have been major alterations since 1905.
Also, if you look down the right hand side of this screen, some way down there’s a long list of ‘labels’. These are links to other postings on my blog. Try clicking on Walworth and Mina Road.
Now, here’s a question for those of you who remember the main old building, used as the upper school -- the one nearest the Old Kent Road.
Here’s a picture of it from 1905, from the brochure for the opening of the other building (the only one that’s still there).
At that date this building was what would now be called a primary school -- infants, boys and girls (with a wall to separate them in the playground). The new building was called a Higher Grade or HIgher Elementary school, and was what we’d call a secondary school for children of 11, 12 and 13: Mina Road Higher Grade School.
We want to know more about the older building, demolished in the early 1960s. It looks as if it has only two real storeys, ground and first, with perhaps a hall on each floor (those big windows). The second floor looks much lower, with dormer windows. So what went on up there?
And how many classrooms do you remember on each floor? and who taught in each, if you can really stretch your memory? We think the middle hall became the library -- is that right?
Here to help you is a much later shot of the same building, taken from the Mina Road side. Here it looks like three main storeys, not two, with five classrooms on each floor, but it would be nice to be sure.
photo
There may, of course, have been major alterations since 1905.
Monday, 28 February 2011
Walworth School research
We now have a website:
http://remakingenglish.org/
It’s about our research on English teaching in three schools, of which one is Walworth School (Mina Road).
It has a form on which people can comment and send in fresh information. We intend to keep adding stuff to the site.
http://remakingenglish.org/
It’s about our research on English teaching in three schools, of which one is Walworth School (Mina Road).
It has a form on which people can comment and send in fresh information. We intend to keep adding stuff to the site.
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