I’ve been a long time away from here. Sorry! Things happen.

I was thinking recently about the way we were taught when I was in school. Here are some random musings.

A lot of our teaching was very good. We learned the times tables and even now, anyone who is a liitle older can answer instantly a question like ‘What is 9 X 6?’.

We also had to learn poems off by heart. A love of poetry is a great thing to encourage. To learn what a poem is saying is so much more important than learning a given poem by rote. There even used to be poem recital competitions in school. I’m sure they put most pupils off poetry rather than instilling a love of poems.

When I was approaching the 11+, British readers of a certain age will remember this, we had to learn how to work out simple and compound interest. We were completely unaware what this meant in real life. We just knew how to work out the £%+- etc. I only realised about 20 years later what it was about.

One part of our English (now called literacy) lessons involved learning well known sayings and proverbs. For example, we had to fill in the blanks in

All that – – – – – – – – is not – – – – .

Too many – – – – – spoil the – – – – – .

This now seems quite odd as children today are encouraged to be creative and to write descriptively rather than to use learned phrases.

Any form of games or PE was virtually non-existent. Very occasionally, on a warm sunny day, our two teachers would take us out on the playground with rubber rings, bean bags and quoits. We probably got more exercise playing together at break times! Sometimes, on a fine day, we were all taken for a ‘nature ramble’. It consisted of our two teachers taking all of us, 25/ 30 children from 4 – 11, for a walk along the lanes around our school. Hardly any traffic so it was quite safe! We picked things, were occasionally given the names of plants – and we loved it!

Music was basic and traditional. We sang hymns in both Welsh and English. We also sang patriotic songs like Hearts of Oak and The Skye Boat Song without the faintest idea what they were about. I still have my recorder and my fingers still remember how to play the Skye Boat Song.

History was also traditional and consisted mainly of learning about famous people, mostly heroes and heroines. People like Florence Nightingale, Walter Raleigh and Captain Cook.

Here are two of my books from when I was a child. The one on the left is called A Nursery History of England (note, not Britain!) and has lovely coloured illustrations of which I’ve shown two.