AS IN THE LONG AGO

Here's another quote from 'Primary Education' (HMSO 1959): 'There is, in good schools, enough leisureliness to prevent the children or teachers feeling hurried.  Children of five are still slow in doing quite simple things, such as washing and going to the WC, or putting away their materials and preparing to move from one place to another.  From a sense of there being time to do what has to be done, comes a feeling of calm and serenity.  Without serenity no environment can be satisfying to a child; nor should he be forced beyond a pace at which he can go without confusion.' When I started teaching it was just about OK to say things like that.  Nowadays people look at you as if you are crazy.  Once I taught a boy, let's call him 'A'.  He moved to the school where I was teaching from another one nearby and I met his previous teacher.  'Poor Andrew,' she said.  'He's just not very bright, I'm afraid.'  On his first day he said:...

I've given this blog a new title and a slightly new direction.  The new title is from a Norman MacCaig poem which I've written about before .  I want to share some of my favourite things from my collection of old education documents.  They remind me that English primary education used to be the envy of the world.  Occasionally I might write about other things too, like bikes or guitars or even writing.  But just now there will be regular posts about education. In front of me now I have PRIMARY EDUCATION, subtitled "Suggestions for the consideration of teachers and others concerned with the work of Primary Schools." (1959)  How polite HMI used to be! I read the pages of this book and find myself nodding in agreement with almost everything it says.  Don't be put off by the use of 'he' and 'his' for every child and teacher - this, from the introductory pages, still makes perfect sense to me. The primary school should not (...) be regarded mere...

See Part 2 for basic maze instructions. When we did this as a class we spent a lot of time exploring the possibilities which result from the fact that, when you join two points together, as long as your line doesn't cross another line or touch it, your maze is topologically the same.  When you join those first two points you can take your line on as many diversions as you like as long as it doesn't cross or touch.  Like this: When you enter the maze you can reach every part of it.  As long as your line doesn't touch the edge of the page you can reach every part of the page.

Here's how to draw a maze.  Sorry it's taken so long!  When you have drawn the first two pictures in the sequence with the cross and the dots and the four right-angled pieces, pick two adjacent ends or dots and join them together with a bridge.  Then take the next pair of points to the right and left and join them with a bridge.  Continue as shown, but don't cross any lines, or let them touch. Done!

As I remember it, a child came into school with one of those colouring books that have dot-to-dots and the occasional maze that you're meant to find the way through with your pencil.  We started talking about how hard it would be to design your own maze.  It ought to be easy, we thought.  Definitely easier than making a birds nest.  Though these were older children, and not the same ones. The children quickly figured out that you needed one pathway through the maze to the objective, and lots of dead ends to fool the victim.  But it was hard to make the path through the maze un-obvious, and the dead ends were boring.  Plus, if you went wrong when you were drawing it was hard to put it right without making a mess.  So then we went out into the courtyard with every plastic and wooden brick we could borrow from other classes and made mazes using those.  They were more like winding pathways than mazes, but it was definitely fun to do and we spent a...

I was talking to some young teachers at school and they were asking me what it was like in the mythical times before the National Curriculum.  I started telling them about some of the things we did back then.  The funny thing is, you could still do these things today, although you would have to think of some Learning Objectives, write them up in big writing and nail them to the classroom wall before you began.  This might possibly remove a little of the fun.  You do not always know what you are going to learn when you start to do something!  So here is the first in a series of small adventures in Primary education.  Think of it as an antidote to Govism. One morning a five-year-old turned up at school with a bird's nest.  I have no idea what kind of a bird made it, though I'm sure we looked it up at the time.  It was a perfect little bowl, made from fragments of woven straw and grass and beautifully lined with the softest moss and feathers. 'I wo...

This is one of the photographs pinned to the noticeboard in the room where I write.  You wouldn't want to meet this lot in a dark alley, would you?  My grandmother is the one on the left and it is said that she hated this picture, but I love it.  I think she thought it looked as if she was wearing the living-room curtains.  Maybe she was.  These are proper old ladies, although I don't think they can be that old - sixty-ish probably.  From the moment I first remember her she always seemed to look pretty much like this. People really do age more slowly these days.  I have old photos of children before the war and the fourteen-year-olds look about fifty.  Young men of twenty dressed in tweeds and grey flannels with pipes their mouths look twenty years older than they really are. My grandmother lived to be ninety-four.  She lived just long enough to meet my daughter, Emily, and to advise us to feed her on bread-and-milk....