Figure 1.--.
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Figure 1.--. |
At most schools different teachers often had different attitudes and approaches to discipline. This was something the children quickly noted.
Mr Clayton has always been a very strict Form Master. So when I groaned when he told the class to get out their English text books, he sent me out of the Form Room amidst the jeers and laughter of my classmates, and told ne to pick up the litter on the front field before lunch, otherwise I should miss the heats for Sports Day.
I walked to the field, pass the groundsman's bonfire, and sat on a tree-stump to view the scene before me.
The field was littered with crisp bags, sweet papers, and soggy paper darts. I started half-heartedly picking up the odd crisp bag, but soon gave up the task as hopeless. Just then the boys started to spill out of their classrooms for morning break. A rather dullwitted boy, Perkins, came up to me and said, 'Enjoying your work, Hartley?'
I replied, 'Ah you call it work, but there again, you don't know.'
'I don't know what?'
'What a pleasure it gives me.'
'You enjoy work?'
'You haven't realised on the back of each of these crisp bags is a cupon for an offer -- collect twelve of these "Fangs" coupons, and receive a free soccer skills wall-chart.'
Perkins immediately dived for the ground and collected roughly twenty crisp bags and ran off gleefully with an arm-full, telling other boys as he went.
Five minutes later any member of staff looking out on the front field would have seen boys ranging from 5 years old to fifteen all crawling on the grass, picking up crisp bags.
Within minutes the fiekd was stripped of bags. Now I had to get rid of the sweet papers. Whilst thinking over the problem, I remembered the groundman's bonfire and tossed a handful into the flames. They burnt with cracks and sizzles and made the flames a greenish color.
Seeing the flanes and hearing the sizzling noises, small noys ran backwards and forewards throwing paper onto the fire; the flames leapt up and soon the bulk of the paper was consumed and all that was left was the paper darts.
To collect these I obtained a pointed stick and speared the darts with it. Soon the idea caught on and I 'rented' my stick out to boys. By the end of break I had a marble, the large transpaent kind, two gobstoppers, a broken catapult, and old key, and a cat's eye.
With my task completed by the third lesson I told Mr. Clayton, who stared at me in disbelief, then gaped at the wide expanse of lush, green grass.
Richard Hartley, Form CES, The Wheasheaf (Pownall Hall), 1980.
For a retiring master,
Roses are red
Violets are blue
I used to like messing around
But not when I got sent to you!
Simon Cross, Great Walstead Magazine 1987.
