Back To School
I hated school milk - those little third of a pint bottles, always lukewarm, but apparently ‘good for us’ all in the 1950’s. But I soon wised up. I used to get Anthony to drink it when Miss wasn’t looking, or else get Pauline to knock it over.
Nonetheless, I always loved school. Talking to friends, I think generally boys enjoyed school more than girls. Now that may reflect the sexist view of education still prevalent in the 50’s and 60’s. Why educate girls when they were only going to become wives and mothers?
Or it may be that schools pander to that male instinct to hunt with the pack; to be one of the lads; to jostle for position in the petty hierarchies of the classroom - form captain, class villain, milk monitor, flunky to the villain, teachers pet, best friend of the soccer star, boy who can wiggle his ears independently…
Probably I liked school because I had great teachers - many of them fine Christians. Is it just my rose-tinted memory that thinks that many more teachers used to be wise as well as knowledgeable?
One of the 70’s Christian singers, Larry Norman, put it this way: “You can go to your college, you can go to your school, but if you aint got Jesus, you’s an educated fool.”
Or if you prefer Orlando Gibbons, the seventeenth century writer of The Silver Swan: “More geese than swans now live, more fools than wise.”
Who will teach this generation Wisdom?
Woman Alive monthy column
