First book of bible? Guinness?

IN reply to R Davies’ letter (Wed, October 3).

When I started teaching in junior school in 1966 I was given a history scheme of work by the headteacher.

There were sets of textbooks to implement this written by Unstead:

Cavemen and Vikings for seven to eight-yearolds ●●Normans for eight to nine-year-olds ●●Tudors and Stuarts for nine to 10-year-olds ●●The Victorians for 10 to 11-year-olds.

About 13 years later the headteacher retired.

Unstead was discontinued and teachers were forced to implement a new way of teaching history using their own worksheets.

Each term had a different topic – e.g. Autumn term Victorians, spring term the Aztecs, summer term the Greeks. There was no logical sequence. As an experienced colleague said ‘everything that worked was replaced by that which didn’t.’

On showing your letter to a friend, she said that she’d been in to complain to her children’s secondary school because her three children had visited Styal Mill on three occasions each during their years at school. I attended a talk given by a retired secondary school teacher who had taught at a well respected school in Stockport. He told of some exam answers he’d encountered.

‘Sir Francis Drake had a large boat and circumcised the world’.

‘The Duke of Wellington had a magnificent funeral, he had lots of men to carry the beer.’

‘On our history trip to York Minster we saw parts of the Minster not usually seen by the public’.

‘Kings were allowed to have 500 wives. They were called porcupines.’

RE wasn’t faring any better: ‘The first book of the Bible is called Guinness.’

‘Noah built the ark, assisted by his wife Joan of Ark.’

‘Who was dismayed at the return of the prodigal son? The fatted calf’ Name and address supplied