Looking back

[englishangel]

Personal choice. She may have been left-handed and just found it easier to do on that side. I know Ailsa was left-handed but she could do most things right-handed as well. She had beautiful hand-writing and her writing with her right hand was better than mine.

[Alexandra Thrift]

Happy New Year everyone.

Hi Pixie, Lovely to see you here, especially as I wasn't sure if you were still in the land of the living ! ( must have muddled you with someone else ).

My A level results were bad as well although I did manage to pass them all. I'm not sure that it was the teachers fault although I think the geography teaching was a little old fashioned by then....we had the chance to go on a field course and Miss Wilson was horrified by the idea of PRACTICAL geogo and didn't take that option. I would have loved it and was very disappointed.I think the school didn't move on with the times. Do you think the marking for London Board was just very harsh that year ? Not that I think I should have done well as I used to study everything but my A level syllabi ( is that right Queenie?).

I am still very much in touch with Jacquie T. and Penny Manning from our year and your house and I know that Jaq. stays in touch with Pussy.( you know who I mean...just a nickname ! ).

I also thought I was going to Mallory Towers ( I remember Munch writing the same) but in some ways CH was more like that awful place in Jane Eyre ! I had the same difficulty leaving. I was quite terrified. It's called "institutionalisation". In those days nothing like that was understood. We had no help. Counselling hadn't been invented yet. Many of us came from underprivileged and/or dysfunctional families...nobody asked where we were going or what we were going to do. We just left after seven years of almost every decision having been made for us ( about the everyday practicalities of life) and that was that.

I have only good memories of you Pixie especially GSOH !

Re: the marching St Matthews Day Photo. That is Bun ( Judith Points next) to me. We had our hair loose because for some reason DR decided we should and allowed it by decree. The decree also stated that our blazers should be unbuttoned ( Mary V. being disobedient as ever )

[englishangel]

Happy New Year everyone.

Hi Pixie, Lovely to see you here, especially as I wasn't sure if you were still in the land of the living ! ( must have muddled you with someone else ).

I have only good memories of you Pixie especially GSOH !

Re: the marching St Matthews Day Photo. That is Bun ( Judith Points next) to me. We had our hair loose because for some reason DR decided we should and allowed it by decree. The decree also stated that our blazers should be unbuttoned ( Mary V. being disobedient as ever )

Nicely put Alex. Yes, I had heard the same.

Re the St Matt's Day photo, I remember about the hair, but not about the blazers. For the people who don't know, I was the original 'most obedient girl in the school'. Until Sixth form anyway, and my previous good behaviour meant I could get away with a lot more than those who had a 'history'. Didn't realise I would be caught on camera being disobedient.

[Pixie]

Hello Alex, I remember you well. It's disconcerting that you and englishangel thought that I was no longer in the land of the living. Where did you hear that? I think you mixed me up with Joanna Moodie (Hulme) who was also in our year and in 3's. Sadly she died in November 2005 from cancer after a very brave fight.

As for the teachers Alex, not all of them were bad but the science teachers were hopeless. If the physics teacher (Mrs Joiner) wasn't off sick she was reading from the text book as if it were a bedtime story instead of explaining anything to us. I worked really hard in the 6th form but realised how little I knew when it came to the exams. DR sent me a letter of apology with my A level results as I lost my place at medical school. I went to a crammer college in London for the next year, studied 2 years worth of all 3 science subjects in 1 year with brilliant teachers and came out with far better grades.

I'm still in touch with Ailsa, Maureen Murray, Jennie Kirk and met up with Cathy (Pussy) at Jennie's about 3 years ago. I bumped into Penny Manning many years ago in Norwich in the castle museum.

[englishangel]

Carol, it was definitely you as I had already contacted you through FRU, but I can't for the life of me remember who told me. Well obviously it wan't you, but I was told it was.

I think Mary was the only one of us who passed Physics A Level. I was in too much of a hurry and couldn't afford to retake anyway, so when I only got two A levels I was all set to go into the RAF when I got offered a clearing place to do Combined Honours, Biology and Chemistry.

[sejintenej]

As for the teachers Alex, not all of them were bad but the science teachers were hopeless. If the physics teacher (Mrs Joiner) wasn't off sick she was reading from the text book as if it were a bedtime story instead of explaining anything to us. I worked really hard in the 6th form but realised how little I knew when it came to the exams. .

Hi, Pixie and welcome.

At Horsham we were lucky in physics. We had to do everything ourselves with only basic background; there was a list of about 30 experiments which we had top perform. Afterwards there would be discussion to compare how we had done the experiment and how it had originally been done. Often we had to make parts of our equipment ourselves - we were taught how tp blow, bend and join glass tubing for example. That teacher usually had 100% passes at A level; the exam was easy by comparison with the school work!
In Chemistry there was a fair amount of teaching but also masses of experimental work which did not always go as expected. Of course 17 year olds making 30N Sodium Hydroxide (caustic soda) and aqua viva (??) would not be permitted these days; I seriously wonder whether current young teachers are as competent in the lab as we became. Again I think Mr Potts had at least close to 100% passes at A level

[Angela Woodford]

For the people who don't know, I was the original 'most obedient girl in the school'.

Now, Mary! We've been through this before.

In two words

Valerie.

Williams.

Doesn't it seem completely loony that DR ("Hair must not touch the collar") should suddenly allow you to have loose hair and unbuttoned jackets for the St Matthew's Day marching, when you, blown about in the open air, would then look less than Totally Tidy?

I was brought low by a comment from Caroline recently, who remembers encouragement from various mistresses in the line of "no such word as can't".

"No, You Can't" is one of the mantras I remember most from Hertford. I mustn't get started!

[englishangel]

I don't know about the others but I got a B for the practical in Physics, that was easy, it was the written I bombed out on.

Moments aaaarrrggghhhh.

[Katharine]

My Physics teacher was Mrs Johnson - also known as Widow Twankey - don't even know if she was a widow! How long did she stay after 1965? She was a very thorough teacher but ... not very good at completing the syllabus on time. We didn't cover sound at all, perhaps she didn't like teaching it. Her most memorable attribute was ambidexterity, when writing on the blackboard she would first write with her left hand then pass the chalk to her right one and continue. We never really got used to it!

[midget]

The lousy science teaching at Hertford goes back a long way! Miss Pye-Smith taught Biology reasonably well, except that any mention of sex sent her into fits of blushes. She much preferred botany, and was annoyed when I insisted on doing Zoology for S level in the 3rd year VIth.
Miss Bruce was the Chemistry teacher, and appeared to be not too bad,BUT had the habit of wandering into the inner lab and rummaging in cupboards while continuing to lecture, so we had to try to make a coherent whole from the different bits that each had managed to get down. When she finally retired(not before time!) in 1951, Miss Wootton took over. She spent the first lesson I had with her going over the syllabus, and was horrified at the number of things we had not been taught, and was not durprised at the poor results in previous years.

Physics was hit and Miss. I seem to remember that we had a number of different teachers, many of whom were not physics specialists. Mrs Tuckett (part time, living a normal family life off-site) stayed for a couple of years,until Miss Bushell (young and enthusiastic) arrived a couple years before I left. I don't know how long she was there.

The science sixth always had far fewer people than the arts group. I think that in the year ahead of mine only 2 took Chemistry and Biology, and they must have been pretty bad because neither got the chemostry prize.

[englishangel]

The aforementioned Mrs Joiner was incredibly clever and was doing an external degree (Masters?) in Astrophysics at London while we were trying to do our A Levels, she had a very monotonous voice and I used to have great difficulty staying awake in her classes.

I always feel that if I took Physics now I would do very well.

[anniexf]

From all the posts both here and elsewhere it seems shocking now that a school which sought out the brightest girls in the country should fail them so miserably. Many of the staff couldn't possibly have obtained teaching jobs elsewhere, they were too old, outdated and unprofessional in terms of teaching skills; the others got out as soon as they realised the situation.
Staff turnover among the "other ranks" was high, so continuity was always a problem. I could number on the fingers of one hand the staff who could actually teach their subject.

[Jo]

The aforementioned Mrs Joiner was incredibly clever and was doing an external degree (Masters?) in Astrophysics at London while we were trying to do our A Levels, she had a very monotonous voice and I used to have great difficulty staying awake in her classes.

I always feel that if I took Physics now I would do very well.

I remember being very impressed that Mrs Joiner had handled a piece of moon rock at the university where she was doing her masters (or possibly doctorate). I enjoyed her lessons because I wasn't very good at physics but I got good marks when she taught me. I would have liked to do O level but it was timetabled against history, which I really wanted to do, so I took biology instead.

We had several biology teachers and I can't remember which one it was, but there was one of them, a youngish, newly married woman, who couldn't have been much older than us, who surprisingly also got very embarrassed by mention of anything of a personal nature. She actually turned round and wrote "period" on the blackboard rather than have to face us when she said it

[anniexf]

She actually turned round and wrote "period" on the blackboard rather than have to face us when she said it

Such a dreadful word wouldn't even have been in Miss Pye-Smith's vocabulary!

[Kim2s70-77]

I took Physics , Chemistry and Biology for A Level - as I wanted to read Medicine - but had the WORST personality clash with the Physics teacher. It was such a bad time that, to this day, I could tell you next to nothing about who she was, or what was going on. I made the decision, at the end of Lower VI, to transfer to Geography from Physics. Thanks to Ms Wilson's attention to detail, all I had to do was copy out someone's Lower VI notebook and then carry on in Upper VI as though I'd been there all the time. Obviously, Medicine was out of the question - so I ended up at Imperial College reading Microbiology and thinking what the heck am I going to do now. I floundered and ended up dropping out after the first year , until I'd figured myself out a little. Definitely not prepared for uni at that time!! (especially a male dominated environment!)