Plasticine and chalk
Every issue, Yours writer Marion Clarke will be reliving the best bits of our lives. This fortnight she shares more memories of starting school
‘Some things hadn’t changed since the previous century’
My first school was a typical village school with just two large classrooms for infants and juniors. I had a lovely teacher called Miss Jones who had taught my mother when she was a little girl. Most days, I walked the mile to school, but sometimes Miss Jones would give me a lift in her black Austin 7. (I was a bit of a teacher’s pet!) Barbara Searle also went to the same school her mum (as well as her grandmother and her great -grandfather) attended. “On my first day, Mum took off my coat and took me into the class to meet my teacher, Mrs Adamson. There must have been other children there, but all I remember is following her around the classroom carrying my doll’s carrycot with my doll, Robert, in it.” When Jean Jackson started school in 1939, some things had hardly changed since the previous century: “There was a row of pegs for our coats, each identified by a picture. I was given one with a pig and was not too pleased as I wanted the peg with a teddy on it. “I was given a slate framed with a narrow piece of wood on which we copied the letters of the alphabet using a stick of chalk. As it was wartime, there was an airraid shelter in the grounds where we sat packed tight on long narrow benches.” The war was still on when Margaret Anderson had her first day at school in 1943: “I was so scared and terribly shy that my mother had to leave her shopping basket with me so I knew she would certainly come back as that basket went everywhere with her!” Three years later, Sue Buckey entered a class of 60 children: “My only memory is the noise. I was an only child with no others nearby to play with, so was accustomed to a quiet existence. The sound of all the other children crying at top volume was terrifying to me!”
Heather McEwen was also an only child and lived down a country lane in Yorkshire: “I was five years old and hungry for playmates. The teacher was kind to us little ones and when the bell went for break, we all went to the entrance to pick up our small bottle of milk. In winter the birds had pecked off the foil lids to get to the cream, but it was still a treat. “Back inside the classroom it was warm and cosy with a large coal fire; it was a mining village, so we were never cold.”
Patricia Dann remembers that it was rather daunting being in the reception class, but she had a kind teacher: “She tried to help her pupils settle down by celebrating their birthdays. When it was your birthday you were called to the front to stand by her desk while she rolled a sheet of cellophane into a cone and filled it with dolly mixture sweets. Then she handed it to you while the class sang ‘Happy Birthday’.” Sadly, Patricia’s birthday fell in the summer holiday! Joyce Clifford writes: “The morning I started school didn’t go well. To start with, my mother insisted
that I wore green knickers with a pocket in them for my handkerchief but they fell down! I stamped up and down, but to no avail.
“As we lived only five minutes away from the school and my brother was three years older than me, he was instructed to bring me home for lunch. At lunchtime, when all the children and the teacher departed, I was left on my own. I was beginning to get quite frightened when my mother rushed in. My brother had forgotten to pick me up!”
Jeanette Young got off to rather a bad start in a different way...
“Our first lesson was to make something out of plasticine. I thought I would get all the plasticine and roll it into one large ball. I was told off by the teacher who made me sit and pick out and separate all the different colours which was really hard. I never made that mistake again and I still love the smell of plasticine.”
A much worse odour assailed the nose of young Edwina Jones, “I hated my early days in the first class of primary school. I had to sit at a front row desk next to a girl who smelled badly because she hadn’t been toilet trained. She also had nits in her hair. “Every afternoon, thick curtains were pulled over the long windows before
‘Canvas camp beds were lined up for us to have a nap’
small canvas camp beds were lined up for us to have a nap under rough grey blankets.”
Not surprisingly, many little ones had the same reaction as Janice Reynolds: “My mum told me that on fetching me from school at the end of my first day, she asked me how it went. I replied, ‘Quite nice, but I don’t think I’ll go again. I’d rather stay at home with you’.”