Telling Tales out of School

Teachers of academic subjects taught pupils from both sections of the school. Most of them started each class by putting the day's work on the board, and then went up and down the aisles to check each student's progress, and, often, to confirm that they had done the assigned homework. A teacher who wished to include any additional information as part of the lesson, delivered it in the form of a lecture while standing at the front of the room. The walls of the classroom tended to be very bare, with just the blackboards and a picture of the King and Queen. Where the teachers at the city's Collegiate Institute were very formal, and called students by their last name, at "Tech" the teachers used students' first names.

Not every teacher followed this plan; the English teachers in particular tended to employ a different teaching style, inviting class discussions, which sometimes led to "pretty hot arguments" (Walsh). Even in this case, most of the teaching came from the front of room, though one particular teacher preferred to move to the back of her room.

Students in English class spent a lot of time reading out loud or reciting memorized passages. One teacher encouraged his students to further immerse themselves in Shakespeare's plays, to the point of having some of the boys fence with yardsticks at the front of the room. other teachers had difficulty dealing with this form of pedagogy; one, a "very nervous man," had his students read parts from a play and then "raced up and down the aisles," before grabbing a handful of aspirins and chewing them. If his supply ran out, he would send one of his students to a nearby drugstore for more (Carter; Pruss).

Students in every course took physical training, though classes did not take place as frequently as for other subjects. Students would change into a gym outfit, with shorts and sometimes a change of tops. Most p.t. classes were spent either in floor games (like basketball) or, more frequently, in gymnastic exercises - doing exercises, running, tumbling or using various pieces of equipment. One student recalled:

Our gym teacher... was an ex-Royal Navy man... He had a cane - a bamboo cane - he called his 'persuader.'... Now they had ropes tied to the roof of the gym, and you went up them hand over hand. He'd always demonstrate it first, and then you were expected to go up those ropes. Eventually, [you were expected] to get up there at the same time as he could, and if you didn't make it, he'd let you go so far and then you'd get a whack across the rump with the 'persuader' (Kennedy).

The day's round of classes was broken by the lunch hour, the physical arrangements for which changed frequently, with students eating at times in designated classrooms, in special lunchrooms, in the auditorium, or in one of the gyms. Some years saw the boys and girls separated, while other years saw them mixed together. This provided other experiences too; if a boy and a girl sat together at the back of the auditorium, it meant they were exploring a relationship - often a whole new world. Only a few couples would be brave enough to do this, as the other kids in the hall "... would be thinking that it just wasn't the proper thing to do" (M.F.). After completing their meals, students left the school building and mixed with their friends, often walking the streets of downtown London for an hour or so.

Administrators at the school considered discipline to be enforceable in the classroom, and between classes, as well as before and after school; ultimately, though, individual teachers had their own definitions of appropriate behaviour, and their own means of providing censure. Students who failed to pay proper deference to school rules might receive extra homework, one or more detentions, or (in the case of gym classes) be made to run laps or do extra calisthenics. Others found themselves sent to the principal's office, where they might face the strap, or receive detentions along with a lecture on proper behaviour (making the principal primarily a figure of discipline for many students).

Only major misdemeanours had expulsion from the school, and they had to be major - destroying property or equipment or something, malicious damage, or an incorrigible person, who they couldn't discipline... Fighting, swearing, vulgarity and smoking were all sort of medium misdemeanours. You might get up to a week's detention or two weeks' detention if it was really something horrible, or something you repeated (Cushman).

Discipline extended beyond the classroom walls. As the students moved through the halls in single file, teachers would come out to ensure that order was maintained, and that no one was speaking. One of the perennial monitors brought his yardstick with him to enforce his power, though the other teachers refused to follow his example. Students caught speaking in the line between classes would be pulled from the line, either silently or with much commotion - depending on the teacher - and sent for punishment.

At times discipline reached even further. As one former student recalled:

It was a no-smoking school; after school you had to be at least two blocks from the school [before you could smoke]. How they built in these kinds of restrictions... But that was life as it was then; nobody seemed to think this was a hardship. That's just what the rules were (Cushman).