Week 37 - Back to School
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| N.J. Gleeson and wife Gwynne at his graduation with M.A from the University of Sydney 1952 |
My father started school in about 1920
and began his career as a teacher in a small two-teacher school in 1935. When he retired from teaching in 1973 he was
the Principal of a large High School in country NSW. Writing some reminiscences of his childhood,
he recalled the first Headmaster he encountered, the man in charge of South
Lismore Primary School in the 1920s.
The Headmaster of South Lismore Primary School
was B.J Reilly, whose name I believe was Bernard, but who was always “Ben” to
the pupils of South. Ben was an old-style disciplinarian. In other words, he
wielded the cane with gusto, appearing to take pleasure, like so many of his
kind, of small boys (the oldest, after all, would have been twelve or thirteen,
fourteen at the outside) cowering before him.
He was, I suppose, the sort of disciplinarian remembered fondly by
lovers of the “good old days” when they lament the decline of “discipline” in
today’s schools. Such advocated of the
“Spare the rod and spoil the child” school of thought are wont to recall with
pleasure the thought that a good hiding never harmed anyone, with implication
that their own sterling characters are the result of such treatment. One wonders if, in fact, they were ever the
recipients of such treatment and, if so, whether they were so enthusiastic
about its benefits at the time. For my
money, far from being a model of perfect discipline, Ben was a sadist who might
have made an interesting study for a psychologist.
Dad had not really wanted to become a
teacher but as a bright boy of poor parents had few options. For many years, the NSW Department of
Education offered scholarships for teacher training at either University or
Teachers’ College. For Dad, and later
for his children, this was the only affordable way to get a University degree.
He wrote:
It seems to me that many of the
teachers that I have known in the course of my career did the very same thing
and, having committed themselves to several years of training, followed by several more years of being bonded
to the Department of Education, came to accept it and even to like it, as they
did it to the best of their ability, feeling, as I did, that the rewards –
certainly not financial – outweighed the disappointments and frustrations. Many talked of leaving and trying some other
career but became finally hooked when, in the words of Bacon, they had “given
hostages to fortune” by marrying and having children. Some never reconciled themselves and simply
became bad teachers, who never could get along with children, who had
never-ending problems with classroom discipline and for whom, every day they
spent in the classroom must been sheer purgatory. Those who finally made the grade were, first,
those who had a genuine vocation and really loved teaching and second, those
who made a determined effort to do it as well as they could. It helped to recognise that you would never
really be much good unless you really liked children and unless you recognised
also that the teacher had an important part to play in preparing the next generation
to take its place in society. It was
important, too, to acknowledge that teaching was a professional skill and that
it could not be done “off the cuff” without serious preparation and an
assiduous attention to its basic principles.
Dad used to say that people who did
not like children should not be teachers.
That seems obvious, but people become teachers for many reasons and all
of us have encountered the teachers who speak down to children, who don’t
believe them or trust them, and who judge too harshly.
An incident in my childhood comes to
mind. I was kicked out of a class for
giggling – by a teacher who was notoriously short-tempered and was struggling to find a way to deal with a group of giggly 10-year old
girls. Sent to the Mistress in charge of
Girls (of whom all of us were terrified), I dawdled my way to her office and
was hugely relieved when she wasn’t in.
As I wandered back, wondering what I was going to say, I encountered the
Headmaster who was watering the garden.
This Headmaster was a kind and
courteous man, always beautifully turned-out in three-piece suit, who was loved
by his students and his staff. He was a
keen gardener, who did nearly all the school gardening and won prizes for
it. He invited me to walk around with
him and extracted the story from me. We
chatted until the bell went, and he sent me off, happy and relieved, to my next
class.
The antithesis of Dad’s first
Headmaster was the man who was the Principal of the High School to which he was
sent in the early 1950s. This man was a
huge influence in my father’s life, and in the kind of Principal he became
himself.
Dad
wrote: “Frank was an object lesson in how to treat children. He loved children and treated them with
enormous compassion. To see him worming
the truth out of a child who had done something wrong was an education in
itself. It was made easier for him
because the child knew that he was not going to be punished by being caned or
deprived of anything…he was convinced that children could not be taught by
being hit.
(In an era
when the cane was routinely used by teachers to discipline or punish even minor
infractions, a school where it was banned was an anomaly).
“He also used to say, even of hulking
18-year olds, “They’re only little boys” (he had done most of his teaching in
boys’ schools) and “I’m a teacher and it is my job to teach them what is right
and what is wrong.”
Dad is remembered by his pupils and
colleagues as a man of compassion and fairness.
He always thought of Frank as the most interesting person he had ever
met. When he became a Principal himself, he often asked himself, “What would
Frank do?” when faced with a problem or a difficult person.
Two of my sisters and I became
teachers and I think we all tried to bring to our classrooms our memories of
the kind of teacher our father was, and the lessons he had learned from Frank,
which were often the subject of dinner time discussions when we were growing
up. While there have been many changes
in schools and in teaching practices in the years since 1935, the essential
role doesn’t change and the qualities needed to do a good job and have a
positive influence remain the same.
I so enjoyed your post as I can relate very well to the teachers who didn't actually like children, and those teachers that made a difference!
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