Classroom antics inspired generations of maths pupils
Kevin Quinn was an influential, legendary and passionate educational leader and school manager. He is remembered fondly by a multitude of students and colleagues across the South Island for his almost six decades of service as a top-tier master teacher and as an entrepreneur who produced strong-selling maths equipment and textbooks, such as the Eton Maths tables.
He was also known as a strong curriculum specialist who led the Christchurch Boys’ High School mathematics department for twenty years, fostering, among others, the strong talent of Gillian Heald, later to head Rangi Ruru.
After running the Science Department at the then new Cashmere High School, Quinn departed in 1966 and greatly enjoyed working for two highcalibre CBHS headmasters, Charles Caldwell and Ian Leggat, and in his later years served as a feisty senior master at CBHS. In this role, Quinn proved to be a sound administrator and a humane disciplinarian, as he was gifted with an abundant and mischievous sense of humour that won over the most recalcitrant miscreants.
Quinn was also a very kind mentor to young teachers, warmly inducting them into the tricks of his chosen trade and impressing them with his belief in their success.
He pursued academic excellence with passion and fire and rejoiced when his students – whether from South Otago High, Cashmere High, Boys’ High or St. Andrew’s – achieved well, often beyond their wildest expectations.
This is a probable legacy from Quinn’s education at St Patrick’s College in Strathfield, Sydney. Quinn emerged from St Pat’s very well educated, and in declining the priesthood chose a different kind of mission: education. He loved teaching – opening young minds to the joy of mastering new concepts. In this he cultivated a zestful, almost eccentric persona which conveyed his absolute relish and care for people and for their positive development.
After formally retiring in 1989, Quinn continued his phenomenal streak of garnering top scholarship results for Boys’ High for five years until some new opportunities to serve at Christchurch Teachers’ College and CPIT arose.
Quinn continued to work in challenging and extending young minds, finally at St Andrew’s College, until the age of 84, his mind still razor-sharp and presenting top scholarship students with very stimulating mathematical tutelage.
One of Quinn’s strengths was his adroit use of wit to alleviate students’ anxieties and maintain their confidence. Quinn was a gifted ‘‘ham’’ in the classroom, and his boundless energy, inventiveness and good humour appealed to young minds. A former CBHS deputy-headmaster, Colin Macintosh, described him thus:
‘‘Kevin’s ego fed off his ability to be with people, interacting with them. He was excited and positive about the teaching act, with a rare drive for efficiency and excellence. In an age where teachers aspire to become administrators and educational philosophers, Kevin was firmly entrenched in the classroom, with a bit of chalk between his fingers, bouncing Mathematics around the room. Kevin’s great contribution to the school, apart from setting a very good pace, much needed jolliness, and a sense of purpose for the Maths department, was the way he personalised Maths and made it an interactive subject. This meant that he could ‘bully’ kids in the most humorous way: to make them part of the act, and he shared his own ‘antic disposition’ with a group of children, which they sensed and responded to.’’
Quinn also devoted time to improving the standing of the teaching of mathematics in Christchurch schools by conducting workshops for teachers. Quinn was also an avid writer involved in authoring or co-authoring six maths textbooks, all of which became part of the curriculum in New Zealand secondary schools.
Quinn’s own education, particularly his tertiary study, was demonstrative of his singular ability and character. After declining a potential trajectory involving the priesthood in Sydney, Quinn moved back to New Zealand where he enrolled and subsequently studied at the University of Otago. He wanted to complete a Bachelors and a Master’s degree within three years, cumulative achievements normally worthy of at least five years’ study.
In his first year Quinn passed and tallied up an incredible sixty points (the equivalent of a year and a half’s work). He was just 16 years old. Quinn passed with top marks, having completed both stage one and two mathematics.
This success was to be short lived; the university refused to accredit him as his secondary education was Australian. Pragmatic opportunism triumphed, however, as it would prove for the remainder of his long, fulfilling life. Quinn quickly moved on to buy a modest-sized paper run with some financial aid from his father. True to his positive nature, Quinn expanded the paper run to the point where it was one of the largest in Dunedin. This early success failed to entice Quinn away from what really interested him: academia, particularly mathematics. Upon turning 18, Quinn returned to the university, who by then kindly obliged his re-enrolment, and eventual graduation, as a straight A-student.
His family remember Kevin as an avid gardener, an intensely loving family man and a larger-than-life character possessed of a singular zest for life, whose infectious enthusiasm touched all who were lucky enough to come into contact with him.
Kevin enjoyed 60 remarkable years with his wife, Marie, who together invested much love and affection in a family they cared for immensely.
‘‘In an age where teachers aspire to become administrators and educational philosophers, Kevin was firmly entrenched in the classroom . . .’’
Former CBHS deputy headmaster Colin Macintosh
●➤ Kevin Quinn (born January 12, 1926) died at home on September 22, 2017; survived by Peter, Judith, Michelle, Joanne and Michael, and his grandchildren Sophie, Patrick, Millie, Connor, Joseph, Thomas, Louis, Jack , Nicholas, Zachary, Zayn and Raheem.