The school system for infants and juniors at the time I was at St. Barnabas was a throwback to Victorian times. Being a church school, the church carried a lot of authority in the shape of the vicar, a kind and understanding man who progressed in his chosen vocation, becoming in time a bishop.
The teaching staff were all female, all dour and to me exceedingly severe. I believe they were all spinsters. The teacher in charge of the infants was a tall angular lady to whom all the other lady teachers deferred, all except Mrs. Brown the infant entrance teacher, who acted a second mother to all new entrants. Her job was to introduce us to the rules and regulations for the efficient running of the school. Self-discipline was also expected in her class. we were all marched into school on the first day and into the cloakroom where we were allocated a clothes peg on the coat rail and we had to hold that until everyone was holding on to her or his clothes peg. We were then told its number and to remember under a threat of dire punishment—our first introduction to discipline as understood by the powers in control. We were taught to look after our clothes and always to be clean and tidy at school followed by threats if we were otherwise. However the teacher of the first infant class took a very lenient view of all this and was to small children kindness personified.
We all then progressed to teaching proper, the programme of lessons being the same everyday of the week; reading, writing and arithmetic. Pens were not allowed in the second class only pencils, graduation to using pen and ink was a promotion in Standard 1, the next class where the programme of lessons was exactly the same. English consisted of using first a pencil and then a steel pen with a separate nib and an inkwell plus the use of blotting paper. Literature was taken care of by having chosen passages read to us and then having to answer questions on what we had heard and possibly understood. Arithmetic was the chanting of the multiplication tables up to 12 X. Great emphasis was given to mental addition and subtraction, and simple problems mainly to do with everyday life. You were taught and expected to remember or you were relegated to the back of the class. Remedial work was non-existent and punishments were dire, the use of the cane frequent; the moderate one was to stand on your chair or to sit upright with your arms folded for a period of time.
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