Mar 31, 2008
Political considerations delayed the start of my formal education. Mr Forbes, I understand, was having trouble balancing the budget in 1933, on account of the Depression. Apparently it was believed to be of prime importance that the budget should balance, and one of the measures that was taken was to reduce expenditure on education by delaying its onset from age five to age six. So I started school in 1934 at the age of six, after my mother had already taught me simple reading and writing anyway.
The junior half of the school at Fordell was run by Miss Toomath, a short lady with black curly hair, brown eyes, and an incipient moustache which gave her a rather severe aspect. However, although she was not particularly warm and cuddly, she never did me any harm during the two years she taught me before she left to get married.
Teaching in those days was inclined to be formal and repetitive. Each morning began for primer one and two with a promenade around the walls of the classroom in front of an illustrated alphabet, reciting in unison, "Little a for apple, Big a for apple, Little b for ball, Big b for ball, etc." all the way to "little z for zebra, Big z for zebra." We called each letter by its sound, not by its name, - "a" not "ay", 'B' not "be" which was more helpful for learning to read than the names would have been. Of course we also learnt that vowels in english can have different sounds, and that "jumping e makes a say ay, and e say ee etc." We were not silly. Later on, when I was learning to be a teacher, we dispensed with this "rote learning" and were taught to teach whole words as a recognition exercise according to the "look and say" method. Education is full of fashions. But at least I know my alphabet, which is useful for using a dictionary or an index.
Likewise for reading we didn't have Janet and John, but little "Beacon Readers" with illustrations in only black, white and red, so Rover, who illustrated "run, Rover, run", and "jump, Rover, jump" was a red scotch collie dog with a white collar of hair around his neck. Later of course we had "Little red hen", and the mysterious "Half chick" on whom, you may recall, the sky was prone to fall from time to time.
The teaching technique, as I recall, was to give you half a page to learn at home, (too bad if you didn't have a cooperative mother), and then at school, you would be called out in groups and stand in a row with your book until your turn came to read to Miss Toomath. If you tripped up on a word you were told it and sent to the back of the line to repeat it to yourself until your turn came round again. Some made pretty slow progress.
I don't think we ever got the strap for not knowing a word, even if you had forgotten it by the time your turn came round the second time. In fact I don't think Miss Toomath used the strap much at all, except if one of the bigger boys was pulling Audrey Skinner's plaits or something. With her moustache, Miss Toomath was forbidding enough that you could see it was better not to take chances with her. We missed her when she left though.