Part One.

A piece I wrote for a local magazine after being asked if I'd like to contribute something based on my time spent in Penwortham, a suburb of Preston. Penwortham was a good four miles from my family's house in Deepdale, but back in the 1960s my mother had deemed that for my secondary school education, that is where I needed to go. 

I could use many negative adjectives to describe those years spent at Penwortham County Secondary school, particularly the first three years, and the draconian approach that was employed towards the pupils - especially the boys - not only made an impact on me at that time but it resonates with me to this day. 

Here, I've decided to post the written article in sections, and to invite comments from others who have had not only similar experiences, but who have something, anything to say on the subject of school discipline, whether it be the older or newer versions. 

I'm very aware that not everyone was effected as deeply as I, and where I may have felt a truly deep sense of violation and injustice at the hands of certain teachers, there where others much tougher than myself who even regarded physical punishment as a badge of honour. 

Whereas these days any thoughts and expressed feelings on this subject are generally respected, the geometry of that time was quite the opposite for the young; a good example being that any cry for help I made then was usually written off on the basis that either I was uniquely different to other kids - therefore rendering my emotions unimportant - or that whatever punishment was dished out, and for whatever reason, it must have been deserved in some way.  

However, I know there must be a significant minority out there that struggled to a greater or lesser degree from that neo-post Victorian mindset of the era; people who possibly, because of their quieter or more introspective nature, not only might they have been more deeply affected at the time, but subsequently would have difficulty voicing their misgivings with any assertiveness. 

I'll reflect more on these issues later, but for the time being here is Pt 1. Included are one or two excerpts from my mother's diaries.

Old School Days

Monday, September 3rd 1962; with a slight chill in the air of an overcast morning, a nervous 11-year-old boards a Corporation Bus; the maiden journey, and the first of many more that would carry him through Preston’s busy morning traffic from the County Arms in Deepdale four miles to the suburb of Penwortham. 

He disembarks, and following those wearing the same combination of blue, gold and grey – and with a greater look of certainty about them, his walk from Liverpool Road, through Crookings Lane and finally into Crow Hills Road, led eventually to the wide, flat, concrete example of 1950s architecture that would be his school for the next six years. 

– – –

This was Penwortham County Secondary School, the place my mother had gone to enormous lengths to have me become a pupil of. Maybe it was based on reputation, or perhaps because of nothing other than it sat in a rather middle class suburb, which might well have appealed to my mum’s desire to protect me from the “commoners” of Deepdale Modern, the school that by default would have naturally followed on from the Junior School I'd attended.

On my arrival that morning came the instruction for all first year pupils to stand in-line in the school yard, after which a member of staff appeared. With a look expressing every bit of authority his position held, as though a military inspection was taking place, I stood there and I waited as he walked back and forth, his eyes taking measure of these new recruits.   

Names were called out and pupils sent to their designated classrooms, first all those assigned to class 1a, then 1b, and so on, until a small group of thirty-or-so of us were left. Strangely, the downward consecutive alphabetical order in class names seemed to stop, and jump - suddenly, we who remained were to be the pupils of class 1r.

During that time it was never completely clear as to what the “r” stood for, some seemed to think it meant “removed” others suggested “remedial”, but what I did know was that it was at the rock-bottom of the academic scale. This wasn’t of any great concern to me at that time, I’d heard the adjectives “slow” and “late developer” so many times that I trusted they must indeed be correct, and along with being regarded as academically inept brought with it a lack of expectation and pressure, which suited me - I was comfortable with that.   

Such was my initial introduction to secondary education, the beginning of an experience sometimes unpleasant, occasionally enjoyable, but more than anything else one riddled with anxiety. I guess it had everything to do with the generation, the geometry of the time, the tail end of an institutionalised Victorian era that seemed to carry a belief that children needed to have goodness beaten into them.