Colleagues
John Charlesworth
Snapshots of Calday - 1955-60
1. IT WAS towards the end of the summer term and, newly appointed to the English Department in my first post, I'd been over to Calday to collect my time-table and exam form set-books. As Eric gave me and another 'new boy' a lift down to the station, I asked him about the sanctions for misbehaving pupils. The answer was vaguer than I'd hoped.
September, and the class that 'tried it on' was, predictably, L.5A - still far enough away from O-level not to worry they might be jeopardising their chances, and senior and bright enough to know how not to overstep the mark. The ring-leader was a slight, thin-faced lad - let's call him "Cobley". That first lesson with L.5A was just before a free period, and - without thinking I might be able to work out a strategy, or go home and turn up my PGCE notes on classroom management, or consult my head of department - I marched straight down to the Head's office at the end of the lesson and explained what had occurred. If it happened again, Eric said, I should send the trouble-maker down to him immediately. It did happen again, and Cobley was duly sent down. The class seemed more attentive. Five minutes or so later, Cobley returned, white-faced and somehow diminished, went back to his desk and, with some reluctance and discomfort, sat down.
I'm not sure I believed in corporal punishment, but L.5A never 'tried it on' again, although they were never an easy form to teach. Utterly spontaneous and spur-of-the-moment as it had been, it was perhaps one of the wisest things I ever did as a teacher. Eric's understanding support had taught me a crucial classroom lesson: that 'trouble' must be dealt with firmly and immediately and not have a blind eye turned to it in the forlorn hope that it will somehow just go away.
2. KEN CREESE had been teaching for two years, myself for one now, and Barry Willcocks was new. Having daringly hinted to Eric one break the advantages of each teacher having his own classroom, so far as timetabling allowed, rather than wandering peripatetically and homeless from room to room, we were invited to discuss it more fully with him a few days later after school. This developed into a series of regular such meetings, perhaps twice a term. 'The Ginger Group' Eric called us. If was enormously encouraging for three novices to have their thoughts on wider issues of running the school taken seriously at the top in this way and sometimes put into practice. Eric was not too proud to listen. And whether intended or not, it had the effect of binding us closely to the school in a positive way beyond the classroom – now our own, incidentally, and blossoming into subject displays and so on. One suspects that in many schools these days, bombarded by business management baloney, only the Senior Management Team are allowed to have thoughts and ideas.
3. ONE OF Eric's ideas was the Calday Anti-Litter League (C.A.L.L.). Every pupil in the first three years was automatically enrolled - plum-coloured metal badge and membership card a bit like a blood-donor's card - and pledged not to drop litter and to pick up any that anyone else had dropped. I'm not sure what the privileges were - perhaps being allowed to stay indoors during the lunch hour - how one lost them or what was recorded in the membership card. Anyway, it was C.A.L.L. that led to my first venture into film-making. It was a short anti-litter film to be shot with my lower 4th form towards the end of the summer term on Thurstaston Hill. Alan Lawrence (history) had the Super-8 (?) camera, and Eric readily agreed to the day out of school. The climax of the film was someone falling on a piece of discarded broken glass and gashing his knee. The sun shone, the concoction of cochineal, gravy browning and glycerine looked passably like blood, and everybody enjoyed themselves. Oddly, I can't remember the film ever actually being shown.
4. THE POINT is that Eric was a yea-sayer, an encourager. Thus, when I rashly said I'd like to run a lunch-hour madrigal group, Eric cheerfully announced it in assembly the following morning. An encouraging dozen or so turned up for the first session, from first years to sixth-formers, and My Bonny Lass She Smileth in four parts beckoned. But when it became apparent that rabbits were not to be produced out of school caps or the secretary sawn in half, numbers halved. It didn't last long. But music flourished: the house music festival and one summer a performance of Haydn's Creation, chorus and orchestra, staff and pupils combined, possibly the High School as well ... with Billy Williams to my amazement singing the whole work from tonic sol-fa, not notes on a stave.
5. AND THEN there were the sixth form Easter walking trips to the Lakes led by Eric - quietly nick-named 'Moses' one year after an uncharacteristic detour through a bog (he led them into the wilderness). And no visiting school party from Germany escaped the obligatory ascent of Snowdon.
6. I WAS at Calday for five years and count myself very lucky indeed to have started my teaching career there under Eric. Stale routines of chalk-and-talk no doubt still continued in some classrooms, but fresh thought about how best to teach one's subject was an assumption. Innovation was in the air: the language lab, an engineering course. Good exam results were expected, but Calday was not a mere exam factory. Extra-curricular activities were as important for a full education as academic subjects. One of the most impressive was the polished and disciplined CCF, though I occasionally wondered how Eric squared this with his championship of the United Nations - as I suspect sometimes did he. As I moved on to my next post, I carried away from Calday not only happy memories and enduring friendships but also standards, expectations and aims that stayed with me for the rest of my career. I have always been enormously grateful.
Postscript
FIFTH FORM French 'mocks' at Calday. Translation into English. Furrowed brows, words hesitating down the writing paper.
When Mr. André and the child separated, Mr. André looked at the time, for he was afraid of arriving late at the instructor's. Then he perceived that his pocket had a hole in it.
Feverishly and examining every pavement slab, he retraced the way he had come. He arrived in front of our door, gave me a dirty look and like a shot demanded his watch.
He grabbed the banister and leapt up the stairs four at a time with a great spirit and a certain fitness. He found the precious object. Leaping into my bedroom, he began with remorse to torture me.
But I had been an early riser. I used to wash with hypochondriacs, I looked under my light listening to overtures and saying these richnesses. He himself is not well who should reminisce over your watch in the pocket of your fancy dress. Perhaps you are maltreated with a chain.
"Yes, that is it," replied Octave, and fondly handled his watch.
A budding James Joyce, almost. Although it is over fifty years ago, I can still picture the tall, gangly, dark-haired, moon-faced lad who wrote it. I can remember his name. It has nothing to do with Eric, of course, except that it was written at Calday in the late 1950s when Eric was headmaster. It's just that its mounting surrealism is too inspired to be lost for ever. Or perhaps it was partly this sort of thing that made Eric feel there must be a better way of teaching modern languages and eventually led to the Language Teaching Centre at York.