How to improve the curriculum: Ken Gibbs

THE BEAST OF BODMIN MOOR

Well, glory be ! My all-boys secondary school has come of age some 50 years after I left it.

Having paid to become a life member of the Old Boys’ Union, I found that the magazine was almost completely irrelevant, so I failed to inform them of our various and frequent changes of address. Those were the days when the word, ‘InterNet’ had not been coined and e-mail was a thing of science fiction, so the Union ‘forgot’ about me. Saved them some postage.

Recently, a colleague with whom I had been in Post Matric in 1958, died, and I could not find an obituary for him so wrote to the Union and asked if they had, perhaps, had an obituary in the magazine. They had. They sent it and now I am on their mailing list again. Sigh!

Oh well ! If I get bored with the material, the delete button works just fine. Only, this week, I thought to scan the material to see just how irrelevant it had become and, lo and behold, I found a piece which stopped me in my tracks. Actually, it was a single sentence in the piece that summed up my take on the school for the last 70 years which reads thus:

“The nature of leadership at college during this time (late 1970s) was one where the best sportsman who could read and write was a suitable candidate (for leadership training).”

As I had matriculated in 1957, it was even worse at that time. I remember requesting tennis lessons when I was in Standard 8, and the response I got remains burned into my memory to this day, “We only provide coaching to members of the first team.” By the time that I joined the staff at the school in 1966, nothing appeared to have changed.

So, if I managed to achieve anything in life post-secondary school, it was not because of the training I received there, but despite it. But I suppose that it’s nice to know that some of today’s pupils are benefitting from an enlightened view as to how the school should provide education. . . . .which I only discovered as recently as 2019 when a ‘Fifth Columnist’ told me about a sports mistress at the school who had been sharing her talents with one or two of the senior pupils. It sounded distinctly interesting; so much so that I wrote a couple of lines about it:

There’s a new subject in the curriculum
At that school in Sandown Road
Where Spartan Christian values
On the pupils are bestowed.

That school employed a woman
As a sporting coach, it’s said
But she had some other skills
That helped her get ahead -

Because she used her talents
Well beyond her station
By exploring the many benefits
Of a sexual education.

Naturally, the ‘Sports Coach’ is now sporting her talents elsewhere. Perhaps she should be working exclusively in the ‘services’ section somewhere ?

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