Teachers, Tyrants, Tawse: my primary school days

My memories of teachers are varied. There were many I feared, few I liked, but most I respected - sort of!

My first 'teacher' was Mrs Tucker who ran a kindergarten at her home in Luanshya. I loved playing in the sand pit. And, although I have no actual memory of the lady herself, I 'loved' Mrs Tucker. In all probability she had little or no qualifications, but was a mother-figure.

My first year teacher was in Dundee at Harris Academy. Again, I have no recollection of her, but I do recall enjoying the singing lessons - Early One Morning, My Little Pear Tree or The King of Spain's Daughter, All Through The Night, Bonnie Dundee (of course!).

Back in Luanshya, I had a teacher I liked but again  can't recall anything else about her. I iked playing with plasticine and drinking flavoured milk - and listening to records on a wind-up, megaphoned His Master's Voice (I remember the picture of the dog listening) gramaphone.

My next teacher was Miss Palm. She seemed tall (to me) and she had straight black hair - and I didn't like her - and she didn't like me. Her report card has me as below average in Reading and generally Lazy. I recall her saying to me on one occasion that was a 'smart Alec' - and I replied that I didn't think she was very nice to speak to me like that 'cos my father was called 'Alec'! Sh'ee wrote a letter to my parents which she gave to me to give to them. Instead, I showed t to my brother, Donald, who kept it - and blackmailed me into doing all sorts of 'errands' for him - like cleaning the sweaty dust from between  his toes when we got back from school! How long this went on for,  forget, but I know that I had to tell Miss Palm day after day that I had given the letter to my parents and that they hadn't yet given me a reply for her. 

Eventually, my mother found the letter in the pocket of Donald's school shorts (we all wore a kind of khaki uniform like boy scouts). Se was very angry with us both - me because of Miss Palm's comments and Donald because he had kept the letter.  Mum told us to wait in our room until our father came home. It was an anxious wait, the expectation of a thrashing with a leather belt. We listened as our mother told father about our misdeeds. He then came into the room and closed the door. He had a large belt in his hands - the kind used to wrap around suitcases and the like. He spoke loudly to us, telling us off, before he winked and held a finger to his lips. He then whispered that we were to yell as if being beaten - and he proceeded to whack a bed with the belt. He then told us to stay in the room until our 'tears were dried' - and then come out and apologise to him and our mother. 

It was a relief to leave school in 1953 to return to the UK as I continued to have Miss Palm as my teacher - and I'm sure she would have 'poisoned' the rest of the staff against me.

The remainder of 1953 and 1954, I was in and out of many schools before spending a term or so at Ormiston Primary where I won my first playground fight (probably because as we tussled and fell, I was able to push - and keep pushing - the other boy's head into the bars of te fence that surrounded the playground - anyway, I was never challenged again there). I had a few weeks at Pathhead Primary School where I was mocked because I could not yet 'do' Long Division. Years later, when I was at Edinburgh University, one of my classmates from those days said to me, 'Ye ken, Angus, how did you get to university? Because at skill (school) you were sae donnert (so dumb).' I replied, 'Billy, it is a mystery to me, too.'

Then in September 1954, I started at George Watson's Boys College, a Merchant Company school in Edinburgh. In my interview, I met Mr Rattray, the Head of the Junior School. One question he asked me - and I failed to answer - was 'What are 6 7s? then on my first day at my new school as my class lined up for Assembly, Mr Rattray swept passed and called out, 'Edmonds, what are 6 7s?' I was taken aback and flustered and mind a blank. It was not a good beginning - and my relationship with Mr Rattray went from bad to worse.

George Watson's College

The Junior School covered the last three years of primary education and each year was divided into three classes by ability: J1, J2, J3  for that 5th year of primary; J4, J5, J6 for the next year, and finally J7, J9, J9; with J3, J6, and J9 being the class for the brightest pupils. Despite, my failure to answer Mr Rattray's Arithmetic question, I was placed in the mid-range class, J2. My class teacher was a woman. We didn't get on. Somehow  never felt I fitted in, and that was made worse in April or May 1955 as the General Election of that year approached. 

'Miss' organised a class 'mock' election. There were two candidates: one for the Conservatives and another for Labour. I had no idea about either of these parties, but it was clear that the vast majority were supporting the Conservative candidate. The Labour candidate was one of the cleverest and most able in the class, a fellow called David Tweedie. We had had very little to do with each other, but I admired his pluck in standing against the majority view and when the vote came - by raising a hand - I and one other voted for Tweedie (and therefore Labour). I sensed immediately, my teacher's approbation. I'm not blaming that prejudice for my failure - that was caused by my own laziness and my total inability to get the hang of Maths (well, Arithmetic really) - as again I was the only one who couldn't 'do' Long Division (and I again suffered the taunts and jeers of my peers until finally, but not very well, I was able to 'do' Long Division too). My nervousness about anything Arithmetical stayed with me throughout my schooling so much so that although I gained 'Higher' Mathematics (Algebra, Geometry, Trigonometry and the like) I failed my 'Lower' Arithmetic! (My Maths teacher in my final year of school told me, when the results came out, that he had never heard of such an odd result in all his years of teaching.)

I ended up bottom or next to bottom of the class and moved up year but down to J4 with class teacher, Mr Smith, a very tall, thin youngish man, always very well dressed with sharp collars and a neat conservative tie, navy or maroon mostly. He seemed rather prissy to me. I had a couple of run-ins with him that had me sent up to my nemesis, Mr Rattray for punishment. 

I continued to see quite a bit of Mr Rattray's office in the following year. I recall clearly he had a print of Bruegel's Hunters in the snow and his Census in Bethlehem on his office wall just inside the doorway. Although, given that I regarded Mr Rattray as something of a tyrant, Bruegel's Massacre of the Innocents may have been more approprate! Punishment came in two forms: a long lecture on my shortcomings followed by two or more of the strap (or tawse, but I don't recall Mr Rattray using that Scottish expression) administered with some force on my hands held together (making in harder for the hand receiving the strap to fall away with the blow). 

The saving grace was that it was a longish walk back to the classroom in the Junior School wing as Mr Rattray's office was in the main building at the front of Watson's College. It meant I had time to recover somewhat before presenting in class where all the boys (if not the teacher) would be watching to see if I had tears in my eyes or how badly my hands were shaking.

My visits to Mr Rattray's office continued in my final year of Junior School despite the fact that I quite liked my new teacher - whose name I've forgotten but it was a 'strong' sounding name, like Mr Savage or similar. He was a big man, tall and well built, with a bald pate and a trimmed short moustache. I think he must have been under instruction from Mr Rattray to send me up to see him if I 'erred' in any way.

I had a couple of friends, both like me apparently academic dullards, but nice guys. One was very small with blonde hair. He was a doctor's son but suffered very badly from asthma - and had missed many days of school. The other was a ginger haired lad, with a jovial smile. He was a member of the Magic Circle and clearly, at that time learning and performing magic tricks took precedence over his studies.

Apart from my two friends, I was probably considered a bit of an odd-ball, an outsider. I certainly never felt that I 'fitted in' at Watson's - and in some ways I didn't help my cause by taking on authority, that is in speaking back to teachers if I though they had 'wronged' me in some way. I recall one occasion that led to a visit to Mr Rattray. 

I could not fully, and without hesitation, recite a piece of poetry that had been set as homework (in my day learning passages of Scripture and poems by heart was de rigeur). It might have been King Arthur's final speech from the barge in Morte D'Arthur by Lord Tennyson - about how 'God renews the world in many ways, lest one good custom should corrupt the world' (lines I have recited in part many times throughout my life). Anyway, I was told that the teacher was 'sick of me not doing my homework,' and I replied by saying something like, 'I did do my home work - and I can prove it!' 


I then explained that my father had listened not only to my recitation of Morte D'Arthur but to my Latin homework too - the declension of the future tense of Amare, to love, the third person plural of which is 'amabunt' (they will love). I tied to explain that my father and I thought it oddly funny as it sounded like 'I'm a munt' ('munt' being a common but also somewhat derogatory word for 'an African' - from muntu the singular of Bantu, meaning 'people' or 'humans,' and also the ethnicity and language of the native peoples of central (and indeed eastern and southern Africa). 'Enough! I'm tired of your insolence/excuses/whatever... you can go and report to Mr Rattray!'

We had three teachers other than our class teacher. One was the Assistant Music Master, a Mr Telfer, a very pleasant man (More about him in the post 'My early encounters with Scottish Nationalism'). The head of music. the Music Master was Mr Hyde, or to give him his nickname: Pongo Hyde. He was a very rotund and pompous man who fancied himself as a conductor. I only knew him when I joined the all-school Watson's College Choir as a boy soprano for a performance of Handel's Messiah, including the Hallelujah Chorus. It was planned, or so we were told, to make a record of this work, but that never materialised. Nonetheless, I thoroughly enjoyed the rehearsals and the final performance.

The biggest bully in the whole school as the head of Physical Education, 'Butcher' Watson, a sadist who was eventually, many years later, jailed for his cruel treatment of pupils. His pet punishment was to apply the 'slipper,' a large rubber sand-shoe plimsole  to the backside of whoever was last out of the changing room - no matter how quickly we got changed for 'gym.' 

It was always a race from our classroom to the changing room to try to be first or as close to first in line. When Mr Watson opened the door we rushed in and undressed making sue that our clothes were carefully attached to the peg and our school shoes and socks neatly placed below - because 'Butcher' would equally punish any boy whose clothing was not properly stowed. My brother had been a boarder in Mr Watson's school boarding house where one of his favourite punishments was to make a boy crawl from one end of the long dining table to the other while all the boys sitting on either side of the table kicked out at the boy as he crawled passed. Any boy who was suspected of not kicking hard enough would be subjected to the same punishment.

The third teacher was the Latin master, Mr Alexander MacKenzie, or 'Sandy Mac' as he was known, an eccentric alcoholic and inveterate smoker. The smell of whisky and tobacco hung about him constantly. I have more so say about him in the post entitled, How the study of Latin... sort of... set me up for academic success!

My days at Watson's thankfully came to an end after that final year in Junior School. How this came about is in the post From primary scool 'hell' to high school 'heaven.'