There's nothing wrong with an "old fashioned" education

I WAS talking to a woman at the bus stop last week. She was concerned about the amount of homework her eight-year-old granddaughter had been given. “Homework? She’s eight – surely she doesn’t have homework?” I queried. And after a bewildering five minutes of key stage this, and Ofsted that, I discovered just how far primary schooling has moved on since I left Dale School, Derby, in 1980.
I was fortunate to have benefited from what even people of my age would consider an old-fashioned education. Our school in Normanton was run under the auspices of the always immaculately turned-out Miss Clarke. She was petite and ladylike and ruled the school with an iron, if perfectly manicured, hand.
While other school heads were embracing modernity, Miss Clarke made sure her boys and girls were brought up the classical way. No trendy educational ideas for her. From the moment the old school handbell was rung on the playground outside, and the chattering crocodiles of more than 500 children filed inside, we were taught on traditional, if occasionally quirky, lines.
Each morning the school, divided into infants and juniors, attended assembly. We entered the halls to the strains of classical music. The composer of the day was clearly displayed at the front, and woe betide anyone who could not read or pronounce his name. From Tchaikovsky and Brahms to Schubert and Liszt, we learned to recognise a huge range of music. Among Miss Clarke’s favourites were loud or stirring pieces, like Grieg’s Morning or Delibes’ Coppelia. It was all about instilling in us enthusiasm, energy and get-up-and-go. And it worked.
And each day there would be a poem to listen to – like Keats’ To Autumn – and always read with an almost fevered relish by Miss Clarke’s ever-jolly colleague, Mrs Smith, her foot tapping out the rhythm of the words. She read all manner of poems from writers as diverse as John Masefield, Edward Lear and Lewis Carroll. We started each morning with a hymn and a prayer, of course, and to my shame my primary school self never questioned what my non-Christian schoolmates thought of that. But I loved it, and I’ve always valued hymns and prayers for their use of language and poetry, as much as for their spiritual content. There was also the element of everyone doing something together, which just seemed to set us up right for the day.
PE lessons at Dale also had an interesting twist. Confined for most of the year to the concrete playgrounds on either side of the school, or in the assembly halls, our sports curriculum relied upon the equipment we had inherited from earlier generations. Indoors there was the usual gym apparatus with poles to twizzle on and rope frames to climb up, monkey bars to swing on and a range of aged benches on which to balance, all of which bore the marks of 75 years of children’s feet bashing and rubbing on them.
When it came to fresh air fun, there was a more exotic choice. Nestled among the skittles and canes, beanbags and hula-hoops were a set of ancient shinty clubs. Now, unless you went to Dale, or lived in the Scottish Highlands, you’re unlikely ever to have encountered that particular sport. It was a forceful and violent Gaelic forerunner to hockey and quite what this set of clubs, which resembled upturned and flattened out walking sticks, were doing in the PE cupboard of a Derbyshire primary school, no-one seemed to know, but under our teachers’ guidance we would, gently of course, tap a plastic ball up and down the playground around the obstacles laid out before us. It probably owed very little to the archaic sport, but it was utterly engrossing nonetheless.
But I think the most valuable lesson that Dale School taught us was the how to mark the passing seasons and seize the moment to appreciate the world around us. No matter how important the lesson we were having, there was always time to abandon it for a morning spent outside studying a frost-encrusted spider’s web, or a bird’s nest. Then it was back inside to write stories and poems inspired by them. It was fun, but it was learning too, and it never seemed like hard work.
I wonder, with all the emphasis, in today’s schools, on homework and breakfast clubs; with lessons in citizenship and technology; with ICT rooms and interactive white boards in most school; with websites, newsletters and class councils to keep pace with - all the undoubtedly wonderful and essential components of modern education – is there still time for our youngsters to experience the more esoteric aspects of life? It would be an awful pity if, amid all that technology and financial investment, they were literally missing out on smelling the roses.

I'm sure Wagon Wheels are getting smaller ...

SOMETHING’S been bothering me for a while now: whatever happened to white eggs? In any box of six, when I was a little girl, there would be one brown speckled egg and five of the purest white. But it’s not so much the eggs as the question that troubles me. Because I’m asking other questions too, like: “Why don’t they make fizzy Spangles any more?” and: “Are Wagon Wheels getting smaller?”
Worringly, they’re the kind of questions my parents’ generation ask. Does this mean I’m getting old? They say you know you’re getting old when the policemen start looking young, or you “remember when it was all fields around here”. And, while I haven’t yet reached that stage, I know I’m not a young girl any more.
I’m from that generation without a name: the offspring of the War Babies and the Baby Boomers, those who were born before Neil Armstrong set foot on the Moon (albeit, in my case, by only four months). And now I’m wondering: “Are the Lunar Generation turning into their parents?”

Then along comes Life On Mars to make the 1970s cool again. And many elements of 1970s family entertainment are back in fashion. Basil Brush and Bruce Forsyth have made comebacks. And what was Britain’s Got Talent mean to be if not 2007’s Seaside Special? And best of all, Doctor Who, is back in its rightful place on Saturday teatime telly. It’s the same scary family entertainment it always was – only now I watch from in front, rather than behind, the settee.
They say you can tell someone’s age by their favourite Doctor. Well, mine’s David Tennant, although that particular warm fuzzy feeling has nothing to do with nostalgia. Seriously, “my” Doctor was Tom Baker and I think I wanted to be him. For my eighth birthday my best friend’s mum knitted me an enormously long multi-coloured scarf, just like the one he wore. I can remember wrapping it six or seven times around my neck and waiting for it to get cold. Games of Doctor Who were considered more suitable for boys: girls (and yes, I was guilty of participating in this particular playground gender stereotype) were more happy playing Charlie’s Angels because it involved being pretty and swishing our imaginary long hair about. I did, however, own a toy gun: bought for me by my ever-rebellious Nana so I could be Purdy in The New Avengers.
And there I am again: remembering the “good old days”. I try to remind myself that I‘m reasonably “switched on”. I know how to text (admittedly a triumph of determination over manual dexterity); I use online forums; I can operate Sky Plus; and do most of my shopping via the internet. But just as I congratulate myself for establishing my virtual persona in the online world of Second Life, I find myself having to explain the concepts of the test card and wooden escalators to the impossibly young stylist shampooing my hair.
Then again, while it’s shocking to realise that I was at school with girls who have sons older than Giles Barnes, I’m happy I can remember when all yoghurt was Ski; when potatoes came in three varieties (old, new and red); and when olive oil was just for treating ear wax.
If you too are in your mid to late 30s, I’ll bet you agree that it was nice when mums had Tupperware parties and made cheesecake; when the Eurovision Song Contest was about music not politics; and when Brownies wore dresses and bobble hats and three-quarter length socks.
In Derby on a Saturday night, there are youngsters so full of alcohol that they’re incapable even of vouching for their own safety, and I’m glad I’m too old to join in. I yearn for the days when experimenting was limited to adding lime cordial to your lager, or Malibu to your pineapple.
I no longer get irritated by cute children on TV; don’t worry about making an idiot of myself at the panto; and couldn’t care less that I can barely tell my Arctic Monkeys from my Snow Patrol. I’m not embarrassed to tear up at the first sight of a Nativity play; I realise life’s just not fair; and I already know exactly which elements of the 1980s fashion revival are going to cause the most embarrassment in 20 years’ time.
Still, when I listen to my parents reminiscing about Al Read and Ted Ray, my instinct is to push aside my own thoughts of Crackerjack and the Disney films of Jodie Foster. Then I realise that all I’m doing is remembering. It’s nostalgia I feel, not age. I’m not getting old, just older. And that’s just fine.