Looking back at my school years, they were influenced by postwar austerity and division. I passed the 11+ selection examination for Grammar School education, all due to rote learning, no teaching aids, only the cane. Taught by elderly spinsters and ex-WW1veterans. Females who married had to give up their career in teaching.
I am sure that my parents breathed a sigh of relief, when I passed that examination. Growing up in a coal mining village, expectation for many youngsters was to follow their fathers down the pit.
Now in Grammar School uniform, I would be assured of a good job, so my parents could relax, but there were no bookshelves in the house nor books, except the family Bible and Sankey’s Hymnal, to support my homework.
I confess, I treated school with a light touch. Keen to help the family purse in my latter school years, I took on an extensive paper round and regularly passed the school bus as I cycled home to get ready for school. I would arrive later as Assembly dispersed and join the throng on their way to our wooden classrooms.
During the class before PE, I would write a letter from my mother to the teacher asking for me to be excused due to some affliction or other. I had forgotten my kit. He knew who had written the letter but was only interested in those that showed potential and were well kitted out.
I left school with three GCE ‘O’ levels, Art, English Language, and Mathematics. At this point I realised that I had wasted an opportunity and resolved to improve in further education.
Having been physically lifted up off my desk seat by grabbing my short hair growing above my ears, because I couldn’t answer the literature question by the teacher hovering over me, it was such a difference being address as Mr Davies by lecturers at my local college and receiving encouragement from them and my employer.
It was mainly the older teachers that failed to move on from ‘rote’ teaching. My three O levels identify those who had a different approach. Thirty years later or so, my Art teacher, Mr Goodwin, was my daughter’s Sixth Form Art teacher. My wife and I attended a Parents Evening and as we walked up to his table, he opened his briefcase and produced my O level Life drawings!
In 1974, I was pleased to receive a Guinness Award for Teachers of Mathematics and Science.
I guess that the only careers advice available in my grammar school related to the choice of university and courses offered.
Today, the task of education and training for young people is different to that my generation received. Facts, formula, information are now at the touch of a button on your mobile phone. The challenge is to use the time to develop young people the ability to think ‘outside of the box’, create and develop new ideas. Challenge, experiment, explore. Gain respect, show respect; make a positive contribution to society. However, a shift of this magnitude requires major financial outlay.
Likewise, providing Careers Advice is a further challenge in a fast-moving world. The nature of the advice has now to be more generic. To support this Blog, the following poem CAREERS ADVICE in my POEMSBY AN OLD CODGER – BOOK ONE, is a true account of the Careers Advice session I received from my school in 1953.
CAREERS ADVICE – 1950’s
In the 1950’s when I was a scholar,
Blazer and flannels, tie, and clean collar,
Eight years after the end of hostilities
It was recovery, repair and things called utilities.
Ignorance of life in all its forms and fobs,
Unfamiliarity with prospects, direction, jobs,
And careers advice was not forthcoming,
Just follow your dad, at the end of your schooling.
Plodding on through each school year,
Rote learning, impersonal, not endearing.
Our home facilities were often slight,
For books and journals, space, and light.
Our final year had just begun,
Estimates needed on numbers staying on.
They called it Careers Interview, but it cut no ice,
As we stood in line outside the headmaster’s office.
One by one, we were called into his room,
Head and deputy sat ensconced in their visual gloom.
Two elderly Welsh men, one stout, one thin,
I stood waiting for one to begin.
‘What do you want to do?’ the Headmaster asked,
The other gent sat nodding his head.
‘Draughtsmanship’ I replied, as if I knew,
One turned grey, the other looked askew.
‘Humph’ said the Head, looking down in despair,
And I could see that he hadn’t much hair.
That was the end of my career interview,
Directed back to my class and my pew.
Those two Welsh gentlemen of academic thinking
Knew only of teaching and preaching,
And perhaps a little of male voice singing,
But not what skills our land was needing.
We carved our own destiny with a lot of pluck,
No guidance, no steer, it was a matter of luck.
We grew up fast, worked long hours,
Just two percent went up to Universities’ ancient towers.
Just twenty-two Universities then, for the two percent.
Today, one hundred and thirty accepting fifty percent.
Courses across all spectrums of leisure and working life,
Some with intensive content, hard study, no party life.
Others better suited to ‘On-the-Job’ learning,
Where they could be trained and enjoy earning.
No fees were paid in those austere post-war years,
Now graduates have fees to pay, with possible tears.
It’s good to have a focused dream,
But things aren’t always as they seem.
I knew a lad who left his options all behind,
But his childhood dream died, as he was colour blind.
Copyright@2023 Neil Davies
“A man that looks on glass,
On it may stay his eye.
Or, if he pleaseth, through it pass,
And then the heavens espy.”
Hymns A&M 337 vv2
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THE BRITISH RED CROSS UKRAINE APPEAL