If you did see it, what did you think?
[ Added on 20 Jan at 19:52. Well, I'm sorry about the link. When I put it there a few days ago, it took you to a page on the iPlayer site that allowed you to play either or both episodes. But now, it seems, the BBC has decided to remove the programmes and has replaced them with a couple of very brief descriptions of the programmes].
Great program which was strangely moving. TGS was perhaps not one of the better Grammar Schools but I tend to think that it gave a number of us opportunities that wouldn't have been there in the comps. I'm not sure that this loss is compensated by the theory that some have done better at the comps than they would have done at the Secondary Mods.
ReplyDeleteYes ... not quite as good as listening to Mr Lawson on the subject of course . He adds the nostalgic dimension that touches us all as ex TGS ers .
ReplyDeleteWatched both programmes, the second, based on my era (1953--1960 ) and was more relevant to myself. Grammar schools certainly gave children from working class backgrounds, such as myself, an excellent education and provided opportunities to enter the professional world. The 11+ was perhaps not as divisive as the programme suggested. I remained friends with my contemporaries who went to the local secondary modern. I began teaching in 1964 at a boys secondary modern, within a year or so we began teaching some O level subjects with excellent results, on becoming a comprehensive with a 6th form, the excellent results continued into the 1980's and then began to decline ( National Curriculum?)
ReplyDeleteThroughout this early period, a significant number of pupils went into higher education, I know of doctors, dentists, lawyers, teachers, research scientists
I do not know what happened to my entry, it decided to submit itself before I had finished! To continue --etc- who matched the results obtained from the grammar schools.
ReplyDeleteSadly, those wishing to enter the professions are now doing so via the public schools If there is a moraI, it is that political interference in education, or anything, has been a disaster!
Unfortunately the BBC I player does not let you watch programmes outside the UK.So I will have to wait to see them on my next visit ,if they are still available.I will read people's comments with interest.I feel very fortunate to have had the Grammar school education,as well as university grants..Graduating debt free is now a pipe dream for most kids.
ReplyDeleteKen - I take you up on one point. Could be time was a healer, or mebbe Doncaster was a bit more acceptable to change. But I came from Highfield Crescent (not the best of addresses) in Thorne, plus I was up at the sharp end of the change when I started in 1942. Mates of mine, street footie, cricket agst an air raid shelter wall etc just went. I had got a cap and a satchel. I had crossed the line between bosses and workers. I had to punch my way out to school and cor blimey, punch my way back in again. That was just the kids. The teachers had similar difficulties managing the change. Uncles and Aunts thought my mother was mental.
ReplyDeleteBe happy Allan
This could be dismissed as a minor point but with solid brick and mortar the grace and dignity of the buildings which housed the Grammar Schools contributed as much towards the effort and aspirations of the working class pupil as the traditional teaching therein where polished wood and gleaming tiles displayed craftmanship and honest toil
ReplyDeleteblack gowns demanded good manners and a degree of respect.
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Anything but a minor point. It exuded that, as long as you had a desire to learn, then they could deliver. A huge contrast from the Thorne Fieldside Junior Mixed environment of bow windows, open hearth solid fuel heating, gas lighting, no hall, a bit of a concrete playground and outside toilets. In fact it made my day, 18 months ago, to see it was closed and in process of demolition. It's only virtue was with such a whopping great fire, there was no fear of the frozen milk bottles not getting thawed out by Playtime. Mind, I was not the best at evaluating my conditions in those days. For example, I looked down on Miss Kitchen because she lived with her mother in a terraced house on Lower Kenyon Street. I really expected teachers to live up to their reputation by living on some spiritual Nob Hill, and be spirited into work. (The only other teacher I knew was Beatrice, Trixie, Fish and she had a detached multi roomed residence.)
ReplyDeleteBe happy Allan
Well, if you didn't see the programmes, I'm sorry to say it's too late. The BBC has now removed them from the iPlayer, which is a pity because now it is no longer possible to check precisely what the programmes said. I had intended to go back to check the precise statistics given in the second programme.
ReplyDeleteBut I was impressed by the fact that the producers tried to present a fair and balanced case. It is undoubtedly true that the demise of the grammar schools removed some very impressive educational institutions, some of which long pre-dated the introduction of state funded secondary education, where the educational skills and traditions had been developed over many decades if not centuries. And that is to be regretted.
But the programmes also made the point that only about 25% of the population overall (less in many places but more in South Wales) benefitted from the existence of the state funded Grammar Schools, and that the selection processes were not (and could never be) perfect and were therefore unjust. They also took a disproportionate amount of the education budget to benefit those who were most able, and who were therefore most likely to "succeed" without extra financial provision (and where is the equity or morality in such a system, I ask?). The result was that a large proportion of the population felt stigmatised as failures, demotivated and resentful. We saw evidence of that in the second programme. It also created social division. Allan has provided ample evidence of that in his first contribution above.
You can argue that the most academically able should be favoured in this way, because the rest of society benefits from their ultimate greater success (i.e. their greater economic contribution), but you can only use that justification if you are a dyed in the wool leftie (like me), who sees the individual as the pawn of the state, to be used to further the interests of "society". But if you are a believer in individual liberty and the values espoused by people such as Hume, Burke, Adam Smith (and Eric and Allan), you can only support such a system for the benefit it brings you and the other fortunate few as individuals, while knowing that it does so at the expense of others with equal or greater need.
Surely in all honesty, we should decry the hypocrisy and immorality of such a system.
Keith - you are putting words in my mouth putting me amongst the Eric's and Adams' etc of this world. I went to T.G.S. because I wanted to, but with very little idea of where it would or could lead. The others in the Crescent were also going where they wanted to be - either by freedom of choice, or parental guidance. Their path of tradesman, labourer, miner etc suited them. Plus the joy they had of getting to 14 years old, out of school and into work, and then having pound notes to wave under my nose. These "stigmatised failures" were 7 yrs ahead of us in the money game. You must have heard of kids who passed the County Minor and their parents turning it down. The black/white (or should we call it red and blue) political divide was nothing like so strong in those days as it is now. Plus it was the left wing W.R.C.C. who fast forwarded in time the County Minor, for people like us in the first place. So you'd better add Clegg to yr hit list.
ReplyDeleteAllan
I find these comments a bit confusing but I didn't see the programme so my views may be irrelevant.
ReplyDeleteAllan says "the others...were all going where they wanted to go"- I don't believe it. I think they were mostly shoved into the local industry.whether they liked it or not,like their fathers before them.
As for the solidity,grace and dignity of TGS giving rise to aspirations, some of us just found the attendantr 19th century values distasteful but after the initial shock and awe most of us developed a vigorous,liberating cynicism and that is what we feel gratitude to TGS for today,.
We had moved up,playing rugby and wearing whites for cricket,wore an old school tie and learned a silly bombastic school song ( in Latin!!) but except for a few casualties on the way,victims of intimidation- induced despair or social brainwashing, we survived, and reverted,in our essence, to our roots.
Ron - I just cannot see eye to eye with anything you are saying. Taking it off the top, I don't think you understand parochial attitudes or the demographics of those days. KIds went looking for work locally. I include the good rail connection which allowed access to Brough (aircraft manufacture), Goole (docks and mixed economy) and Donny (steam trains/nylon et alia). Kids were not shoved. There was a reasonable choice within their limited ambitions. Some of us realised early on that there was no outlet locally for our ambitions so were forced into leaving home early on. Just analyse the professional people on this site alone. Most of us had to up sticks and leave to find a suitable job. Until you come to Education. The local opportunities existed, so the greater majority of them stayed put. Now look at yr local population. I guess you lived in a street of pit houses, occupied by miners, and they possibly had very strong ideas abt their children's first jobs. To mine or not to mine. Most of them would be immigrant. Either disillusioned by leaving Wales, Ireland, Derbyshire etc, or chuffed to beanz to have a wage. But, you see, my street was much more mixed. Say 5% miners and the rest mixed labourers, tradesmen, shopworkers, signing on, etc. A reasonable mix of woodworking, ship building, roads, farm labouring and mining opportunities. Housing was not a major issue. You got wed and lodged in yr family's front room for a year or two, and by then a Council house emerged.
ReplyDeleteBut we are even further apart with T.G.S. I stick with Shirl. It smelt of money. Money for Allan. And while I am on this gravy train they offered the bonus of Rugby, Cricket, Cross Country, Athletics. (As regards ties. My brother left school to do a clerical job on the Council. My mother wore a grin from ear to ear. He'd a job with a pension, AND wore a tie.) Foreign travel to Barnsley, Wath and Silcoates. Character forming there. You'll love this Shirl. I was Capt of cricket 2nds at Silcoates. They'd made a decent score. Then it was our turn. Gary was in giving it some welly, (not coached by an ex international like them, but a good eye and upper body strength), and I overheard, "Reversed the batting order?" In some posh accent. I called the boys over and let them know. Plus, "Look we beat these ******* *****, if it's the last thing we ever ****** do." We did.
Allan............xxx
Social brainwashing rejected by the cynic
ReplyDeleteSocial influence acknowledged by the cognisant
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Well,I only wanted to suggest a bit of analysis of the non-material effects of spending 6 or 7 years at TGS. The material ones are evident.Now thank we all our Gaff, and especially the revolutionaries on the West Riding Council.
ReplyDeleteBut was there,concealed in the enlightenment, a soupcon of a subtle poison being poured in our ear?
Allan, wrapped up in his amiable semi-coherent splutter, has given us an illuminating insight into the varied life and opportunities offered by Thorne.
Broadway was,fortunately, not a one-way street.
From the commentary box; Allan's delivery was straight down the wicket Ron pitched a googly and he of the good eye and upper body strength bowled me over.
ReplyDelete.
Nice one Shirl. Gary played a blinder that day, and set up the win.
ReplyDeleteAnd Ron, you've been out in the sun too long. Cannot think of any prejudices I came out with, other than those I took in. I had no idea of the major changes in life and life style the system would set up for me, but help me to cope with. I just had a huge trust it would see me right. And I think it did. Maybe I had more to gain than most on this site, which I admit would skew my perspective a bit more. But that was my personal battle.
Be happy Allan
P.S. Sentence structure please you? Started 4 sentences with a conjunction and finished one with a preposition. Not easy to do.
Alan,
ReplyDeleteLet’s get back to the point of this thread. It was not intended as yet another medium for self indulgent personal image promotion. Arguing from the particular to the general gets us nowhere.
I apologise if you think I misrepresented your views (your message of 21 Jan). I had suggested you were a lover of liberty in the Grand Whig tradition – but if you think not, so be it. I was also very impressed by your words:
" I had got a cap and a satchel. I had crossed the line between bosses and workers. I had to punch my way out to school and cor blimey, punch my way back in again. That was just the kids.... etc"
That seemed to me to be a graphic, indeed almost poetic description of what the TV programme called "social division". They were your words, not mine. Am I now to understand that in fact, like most of us, you just got along with your old junior school mates, but they eventually went their way and you went yours, and there was no problem with the grown-ups?
I agree that the left wing WRCC anticipated the 11+ with the County Minor. Ron B, my brother and your brother benefited in the 1930s, and Eileen, you and I followed in 1942. Three years later the 11+ replaced the County Minor as one result of the 1944 Butler Education Act. Alec Clegg arrived in the West Riding in 1945, and had nothing to do with introducing the WRCC's "advanced thinking" County Minor.
Do you recall the start of term ritual in our day that required the fee payers to go to the Secretary's Office at TGS to pay their three guineas school fee. Sometimes the form teacher collected the funds in a start of term form meeting. All that stopped at TGS with the Butler Education Act, and the people who had entered as fee payers were allowed to complete their Grammar School education for free. Some people entered as fee payers in September 1944 and got their Grammar School education for the price of one term's school fees.
Fee paying as a means of entry ceased in all LEA funded Grammar Schools in 1945, although it continued in the "Direct Grant" Grammar Schools. In those schools a quarter of the places were directly funded by central government with the rest of the places attracting fees, some of which came from LEA's, but overall about 50% of the places were funded by private fees like the public schools.
When Margaret Thatcher came to power in 1979 there was a common presumption that she would reinstate the selective Grammar School system from which she had benefitted. Simon Jenkins (of the Times) maintains that the reason she didn’t was that as Education Secretary in Heath's government she had been pressured by too many Tory voters who were appalled to find that their kids would not pass the 11+, but were deprived of the alternative access to cheap Grammar School education that they themselves had enjoyed. So they actually supported the idea of dropping the 11+ and the introduction of Comprehensives.
Eric asks why it has become acceptable to talk about resurrecting the Grammar Schools. I believe that there is an element in the Tory party that is now promoting the resurrection of the Grammar School in its pre 1945 version, or at least in its Direct Grant version, to provide State supported fee paying education for those who find the best public (private) schools beyond their means. It would help some now 'plunged into that struggle to find a decent secondary place'. The intention is to blur the distinction between the public and private sectors. It mirrors what is now happening in the NHS, and comes from the same political thinking. Now, when I ring the doctors’ surgery that I have used as an NHS patient for the last 43 years, I hear a recorded, button pressing menu that includes the option to ask for a private rather than an NHS appointment. Watch out for similar options when you phone to enquire about your children’s educational alternatives.
It's a good thing that we have someone with knowledge of history to bring us back to what we intend to be talking about and put a sock in the squabbling.As for the "self indulgent personal image promotiion",perhaps that's what too many of us belong to this site for, proclaiming Et Ego in Arkadia!
ReplyDeleteOne could of course go on grumbling(for grumbling's
sake)that someone who has been hiding away in a south Welsh valley for ages must be a bit disconnected with what happened to TGS leavers long ago, and it could be said that someone who has spend no more than a few months in UK in the whole of his adult life... well, if I were'nt me, I would say he has a damn cheek.
......this debate, internet forum, disdussion. blog. brought to order
ReplyDeleteI followed three siblings into the Grammar school my brother entered with a scholarship at just 9 years old
one of my sisters entered by transfer from the Secondary Modern where she had already been given a good grounding in Domestic Science, her chosen profession.
Living in the school house, I had a close association with the newly built (1937?) Secondary Modern School.
Wood work/metal work/ cookery/needle work/general science/art room gymnasium and library were well equipped.A good playing field for sport/athletics football and
lacrosse.
Subjects taught history geography maths english.
Plus a large vegetable/fruit trees &greenhouse to maintain.
There were Evening classes for the community offering a variety of subjects.
My school friend went to the Technical school in Doncaster where she developed her office skills
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The Triparte system worked well. Bring it back.
Shirl,
ReplyDeleteI hoped that we could get away from arguing from the particular to the general - a common logical fallacy. For every example that you can cite, I can cite another, and neither of us proves our case. I think the logicians refer to it as statistical insufficiency.
Whatever provision was made in Stainforth (and remember that I actually taught in Stainforth Senior Boys school for a brief period in the 50s) it was not as lavish or as extended as the provision made for us at TGS. The staff were not of the same calibre, and their pay level reflected this. The pupil/staff ratio was higher. I don't have the precise figure, but bearing in mind that most of us were able to remain in full time education for from two to five years longer than they were I guess that our secondary education cost the nation at least twice as much as the education of those boys in Stainforth.
Please tell me what makes you think that you were worth so much more to society than those boys and girls in the secondary schools in Stainforth at that time.
Bereft of statistical sufficiency not out to prove a case:
ReplyDeleteA form of test determines the skills/attributes of the pupil
A system of education nutures the requirements of the pupil
I believe those requirements were met
I believe the costs were appropriate
I believe the legend of the 'socially stigmatised' is a myth
As witness and product of that period of education
I am no less worthy than the Secondary Modern pupil
Each to his/her own strengths
Is that good enough keith?
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Shirl,
ReplyDeleteI'm sorry, it isn't good enough.
The whole point of my objection is that the system didn't "determine the skills/attributes of the pupil" for the rest of his/her school career. It purported to measure his/her intelligence (a claim which no serious pundit has supported for more than 50 years) and his/her competence in some routine academic skills like reading and writing, as they existed during a two hour period on one day in his/her life.
Tough if you had an off day, or missed the bus to the exam, or were chronically ill that year, or had parents that demotivated you through their attitude to higher education, or the idea that the costs of Grammar School education were too much for the family budget, or if you had a school teacher who did not react when home or the system had failed you, and give you encouragement and coaching for the transfer exam. I read once that the Department of Education accepted that the system was subject to a 6% error rate, though how they could measure that was not explained.
But apart from all that, there are many more attributes that contribute to academic success that were not measured, and cannot be measured in a two hour period at the age of 11. And despite the fact that we all spend a similar period in gestation, we don't all develop at the same rate and die at the same age. Development is determined by biological and environmental circumstances that differ from pupil to pupil.
The only publicly financed education system that is both equitable and efficient is one that recognises those differences, and provides the maximum opportunity for pupils to take advantage of the most appropriate facilities available to all, at any time, irrespective of his/her performance in earlier years. You don't achieve that by filtering pupils into different, specialised, disproportionately funded institutions at the age of 11. That results in a “Brave New World” in the Aldous Huxley idiom. You get closest to the ideal in the best Comprehensive schools using flexible setting arrangements. The vast majority of the Western world recognised that years ago.
And don't tell me that "socially stigmatised is a myth". I have friends, relatives and acquaintances that still feel stigmatised by so called academic failure at 11, or 16, or 18, or 21, despite their subsequent life success.
I agree entirely that you are "no less worthy than the Secondary Modern pupil". My question is why were you treated as more worthy, and why should we return to such an unfair and inefficient system.
Transferred here from a second blog on the same topic:
ReplyDeleteEric Stables wrote on Jan 19:
Interesting to see how all of a sudden it has become possible to wonder out loud if the scrapping of grammar schools was such a wise thing after all. And even to propose the creation of new ones. I recorded the first of the two programmes on BBC4, but fell asleep in my armchair whilst waiting for the second to begin and so had to use the I-Player. (I've been meaning for years to learn how to use the timer on the recorder. Still time for a New Year resolution?).
I enjoyed the programmes and thought they presented a fair and balanced discussion. It was interesting to learn a little about the social origins and experiences of public figures such as David Attenborough, who I had always thought was a public schoolboy, and also to hear from men and women who either had disliked their grammar school or who had not passed the eleven plus but had done well in life nonetheless.
My conclusion at the end of the two programmes was the same as that of Michael Portillo - essentially that the grammar schools that existed should have been kept, and the other secondary schools brought up to their standard, instead of turning both into slightly improved secondary moderns. I myself spent almost two years in Stainforth secondary modern before being rescued by the transfer scholarship, my own four children went to North London comprehensive schools which were not as good as TGS, and they are now plunged into the struggle to find a decent secondary place for their own offspring. I am aware that this lays me open to the sin of elitism ( mea maxima culpa), so go ahead and open fire.
grahamaldred wrote on Jan 19:
Couldn't agree more. Out of three miner's kids who went to TGS, elder brother is a retired research chemist, sister a Headmistress in N London, I run my own business, just completed a pat time MA and going for a PhD. I winder if that would have happened without TGS?
sbeal wrote on Jan 19:
Many of the really oldies on this board did well out of TGS and I am sure received a decent education. Congratulations.
Some of us never got that opportunity. As did several of the boys and girls who went to Thorne Boys or Moorends girls School. If you were at school in the 70/80' 90s I am not convinced you would all have done as well!
Cream rises to the top and all that??
peterbp wrote on Jan 23:
Similar to Graham Aldred: We are 4 kids from an Armthorpe Mining/farming family. 2 of us went to TGS and ended up with a B.Sc. and a Doctorate. Hardly possible without TGS. Of the other 2 one got a B.A. and the other ended up a Vice-head, but this is not relevant to TGS.