John Bull's * Schooldays

. . . Or Else!

By CASSANDRA IWAS not classically educated. I was not scienti- fically educated. I was not expensively educated. I was heavily educated. My tuition was divided into five periods. Board School; Preparatory; Secondary; 'Crammer'—and Military. The Board School was Barbaric. The Preparatory School was Primitive. The Secondary School was Soporific. The 'Crammer' was Curious. And the Military was largely Moronic.

I went to the Board School when I was exactly four years old. The place smelt of disinfectant and disapproval. I learned nothing except how to fight and swear. I could curse horribly long before I knew that C.A,T. spells CAT.

I learned to fight as a result of cowardice and a knowledge of the Lord's Prayer. I could say the Lord's Prayer when I was three. My mother had taught it to me very carefully. I knew that it was something very Good about a Man with a Beard Who lived in the Sky.

During the first' week at Board School Barbaric I was set upon by 'a ferocious, foul-mouthed, ginger-headed boy who must have been about seven. His name was Goldsmith, and together With his gang he seized me and shoved me up against a brick wall in the, playground..

He grabbed me by the ears and said : Say Durfarverwhichartineaven!'

I said nothing. He banged my head hard against the wall. I saw stars and, as 1 do whenever I knock my head, I smelt the smell of hot iron.

'Say Ourfarverwhichartineaven!'

I said nothing. He banged my head harder against the wall. Again the fierce pain, the flash to front of the eyes and the smell of hot iron.

`Say Ourfarverwhichartineaven!'

I thought of the Man with the Beard in the Sky. I thought of Mother. Then I did a Judas on the Man and Mother.

Me: 'Ourfarverwhichartineaven.'

Goldsmith : `G000-on.'

Me: 'Hallowedbethyname.'

Goldsmith : `G000-on.'

Me: 'I forget.'

Bang goes my head against the wall. Smell of hot iron.

Me: 'Thykingdomcomethywillbedoneonearthas itisinheaven.'

Goldsmith : `G000-on.'

Me: `Giveusthisdayourdailybreadandforgiveus our trespasses asweforgive thosewhotrespassagainst us and lead us not into temptation butdeliverusfrom evil forthineisthekingdomthepowerand thegloryfor everandeveramen.'

Bang goes my head against the wall harder than ever. Tears—and the smell of hot iron.

It must have been about two years later when I caught Goldsmith on his own—without the gang. We fought and rolled in the road like savage mon- grels and a passing lady remarked in disgust : `Filthy brats !' And indeed she was right, but I re- membered the Lord's Prayer—and the smell of hot iron. My nose bled but Goldsmith lost. It was the first and the last time that I fought for God, Mother and myself—probably in the reverse order.

The Board School was not much of a place.

From the Barbaric to the Preparatory Primitive. In its snobbish, tiny way 1 suppose it was a good school and the,fact that among its Old Boys there is now one of Her Majesty's most distinguished Judges probabbi says something for it. It was called Frankfort House School, but as the 1914-18 War dragged on and hatred of the Germans grew, it hastily and rather neatly, I thought, changed its name to Franklyn House School. The brass plate outside the front garden needed only `FORT' to be altered to 'LYN' and honour and economy were satisfied.

It was there I learned those lost arts of parsing and analysis. No sentence was safe from us. We went to work with our tools labelled Subject, Predicate and Object, and hacked our way through the jungle of English Grammar. Such is the ridiculous lumber-house of memory that even today I can parse and analyse sentences that were given to us for dissection forty years ago. I can still rip open the intestines of 'At daybreak on the bleak• sea beach a fisherman stood aghast' or, 'Chained in the market place he stands, a man of giant frame.'

But it was the learning of French that was to generate a shock from which I have not yet fully recovered. We pronounced French exactly as it was spelt in English.

Thus L'hirondelle est dans le jardin came out `Lee hire-on-del esst danze lee jar-din.' • Combien de francs est-ce que Marcel a dans sa poche? came through our brave Anglo-Saxon mincer like this : 'Kom-by-en dee franks esst sir queue Marcel ah danze sa posh?'

No word escaped our remorseless British cul- ture. Deux was 'Dee-ucks.' Besoin was 'Be-so-in.' Noires was 'No-ires.' Voici was `Voy-sigh.'

*

When I went to the Secondary School I was staggered at the ignorance of the French master. Deux pronounced 'Der.' Noires pronounced 'Nwaaa.' Void pronounced 'Vwaaaaceee.' Rub- bish, and decadent rubbish too. Sometimes even now when I hear the descendants of Voltaire, Marat and Napoleon chattering away in Paris, I still think we had things better organised on our side of the Channel.

The main thing that I learnt at the Secondary School, apart from Doppler's Principle, Playfair's Axiom and the specific gravity of mercury (thirteen point something or other), was how to acquire an Acute Sense of Failure. I still possess it.

The spectre of examinations stood between us and success and it was made perfectly clear that if we did not pass 'the London Matriculation no employer would look at us. It was the first thing that bosses asked. 'Did you Matric?' If the answer -was 'Yes,'.the future, if not golden, was certainly rosy. If the answer was 'No,' there was a hoarse laugh and you were thrown into the street. I never knew after an examina- tion what position 1 would be. Some- times I was third or fourth. Then I would plunge to twenty - seventh. Next, like a glider in an up-draught, I would soar to sixth. Then sail down to four- teenth and nose- dive to twenty- ninth.

At the time I put it down to my own vagaries. But now I am not so sure. I suspect the form masters (they were mostly young men recently re- turned from the war who shouted 'As you were !' and 'Fall out!') just didn't take much trouble in marking our papers. Or if they did, their standards varied enormously from time to time. Sir Eric Ashby, the Vice-Chancellor of the Queen's University of Belfast, has been recalling some interesting experiments that were conducted in examining the examiners : 'Fifteen history scripts, all of which had re- ceived the same mark in the School Certificate examination, were marked independently by fifteen experienced examiners. There was no semblance of unanimity about their verdicts.

'One candidate was given credit by six examiners, passed by five, and failed by four of them. A year later the same examiners were given the same papers to mark again. In 44 per cent. of the cases they changed their minds about the verdict, credit, pass or fail.'

I think we worked on the same system at the Secondary School. It was a sleepy sort of place without much pride and, down the perspective of the years, I should say that its main characteristic was to produce middle-class mediocrity. I was an apt pupil.

*

At seventeen it was decided that I might make an officer in the Royal Navy (a rather bold assumption) and, at considerable expense, I was sent to a 'Crammer's' to reach the quarter-deck by what was then known as Special Entry. The 'Crammer's' was a curious place where real learn- ing was contraband. I never ceased to be alarmed for the whole year that I attended this remarkable academy. It was run by a jovial proprietor who had been headmaster at one of our better public schools and had left it to start his own racy establishment.

He used to shout at us a good deal in a friendly way and took no trouble to conceal his methods. 'Blockheads!' he would roar, 'you'll learn nothing here. Your addled pates will, if possible, be more addled than ever when you leave to become ornaments of the Church, the. Law and the Armed Forces. Be as diligent as the parrot and there may be some hope for you.'

When he called us 'Blockheads' there was some truth in it, for crouching behind some of the desks were young 'gentlemen with half-grown mous- taches who' for years had been trying to pass the 1Common Entrance examination. They had been despairingly handed over to the 'Crammer' by care-worn parents who, had heard' of his fame in getting idiots through examinations. He knew all, or almost all, the people who set the examination papers and he claimed to be able, after long study, to forecast accurately what questions they would set.

And he was uncannily right.

`I am,' he said, `the finest tipster in the academic stakes. We don't worry about knowledge here. What we worry about is whether I shall predict at least seven out of ten of the questions that will be asked. We will rehearse the answers until we are all sick of them. Then we will go through it all again just to make sure you have the real nausea. Finally, for good luck, we will rehearse everything a dozen times more until you morons are word-perfect.' • When his pupils returned from an examination he would snatch the question papers from their hands and he knew at once whether we had passed. If questions were set that we had not prepared for, he would say : `Damned unreliable, some of these examiners. Can't trust 'em. They are wrecking the form book.'

He was a scholastic punter—and a first-rate one at that. I was quietly horrified at all this and felt greatly out of my depth.

Everybody seemed to be in the conspiracy and enjoying the villainous plot. What astonished me more than anything else was that after lunch scholars and tutors alike—two groups whose aver- age ages were seventeen and about fifty-seven— seemed to be different people. They were more vehement. They spoke with great freedom. Some of them threw their hats on the floor to mark their return. All were often flushed and happy. It took me a long time to understand that pedagogues and pupils alike had been drinking. The light ales had entered their blood streams and they were joyful.

However, the Navy never got me—which in retrospect I think was just as well. I was stupid— but no parrot.

The last phase of my heavy education occurred in 1942 when, at the age of thirty-three and having failed the Royal Navy sixteen years before, I offered my services to the Army. In due course I presented myself to a War Office Selection•Board and was easily able to persuade the psychiatrist that I had no Freudian designs, on my mother. I then found myself in a Gunner OCTU, where I went for the fifth time to school. Hete was the old deadly scholastic snakes and ladders again. Examination papers. Swotting. Prep in the Nissen Huts.

At the 'Crammer's' they had tried to teach me Trigonometry. Co-sine. Co-tan. And all that. They failed again in the Army. Gunners had to understand ballistics and ballistics means Co-sine, Co-tan with their ugly trigonometrical attendants. You had to pass in this—Or Else. And Or Else meant the same thing as being guilty of consort- ing with a heavily painted young lady known locally as `RTU Annie.' RTU meant, and I sup- pose still means, Return To Unit—or Back Where You Started From.

In this gloomy atmosphere the last stage of my education started. It was made desperately clear that in order to be commissioned in the Royal Regiment of Artillery ('Without whose company in battle, war would be but a vulgar brawl') it was vital to pass in Trigonometry. At the same time we were told : `Initiative, Gentlemen, is the thing that wins war. Leadership, surprise, deceit, and the ability to think big, to think ahead, to plan, to fool and to get the better of the other chap when you are up against it, are priceless virtues. Practise them. Preach them. Rejoice in them.'

I rejoiced.

I had as a cell-mate a young and pleasant Welshman who was nineteen. He had been a Bombardier. He knew the murky secrets of Bal- listics. He revelled in mathematics. He was on Christian names with Co-tans. He also had an incipient but promising thirst.

I at once came to terms with him. Said I: `Dai, will you teach me what you know of gunnery and what you fail to convey to me will you allow me to burgle from you by a process that is com- monly called cheating?'

'What have you to offer in return?' he asked, '—and please remember that I have been told that honesty is the best policy.'

`Not in these parts, soldier. Theft, sometimes called winning or scrounging, is compulsory in the British Army. I just wish to steal certain parts of your adolescent brain. What I offer you in return is to teach you how to drink beer.'

He eyed me carefully.

I went on: `With the possibility of free samples during tuition.' 'Done!' said he. 'Fine!' saidj.

The first thing to instil into him was to write in a big legible hand.

`Give up this pinched, clerkly writing of yours and cultivate a bold calligraphy that I can read during examinations without breaking my eye• balls.' I taught him to write my way—a fine, legible fist.

The next part was, much more difficult. Dal could usually score about 90 per cent. This was no good for me. Had I cribbed from him and got the same high marks the authorities, who already had grave doubts about me, would have been alerted at such unnatural brilliance.

`Get back in the undergrowth of the sixties, Dai,' I said. 'We can safely stay hidden there without drawing attention to my defects. Stop the 'brilliant, swanking stuff. Get humble. Lie low. Use camouflage. Don't forget that you, I and Rommel are taking on the British Army.'

Dai settled for what I thought was a rather flashy paper in the early seventies. He got 74 marks. I managed to submerge to 65. We then set to work on a cover-plan for a crib. I remem- bered what the OCTU instructors had drummed home into us time and time again : 'Surprise, deceit, the ability to fool and big thinking may save your life.'

Earlier in my educational life 1 had learned about cribs—miserable little clues written in a microscopic hand on tissue paper or miniature hieroglyphics engraved on the finger nails. I decided 'to think big.' We worked on trestle tables the tops of which were scrubbed pine measuring about 10 ft. by 3 ft. It was on this wooden plateau that Dai and I engraved our mighty crib. It was so large that no one suspected that it was a crib. The tablets of Moses were smaller by far. Our table-top was smothered with every sort of clue writ large that a non-trigonometrical mind could want when being examined.

On D-Day we trooped into the examination hut. To my horror we found the tables had been changed, Our crib had gone. We shot out at high speed and two minutes before the examination began we located the table-top in another hut. We seized it and, one fore and one aft, lugged it back in true furniture-removal style. We got the brute back on the trestles seconds before the authorities arrived and I used it very successfully to score a very nice and unobtrusive 52 per cent., which was my proper trigonometrical station in life.

In retrospect, after my heavy education, I sup- pose the French are right when they say that it is better to be intelligent than to have one's head stuffed full. Maybe. Maybe not.

But what I am sure of, is that a very good way to pronounce Mieux vaut une tete bien faite qu'une tete bien pleine is 'My-yooks might oon teet by-enn fate kewn teet by-enn plyne'—especi- ally if you don't believe in foreigners.