Auckland Grammar School: Third Year

1948 was a memorable year, not for what I learned, but for the weeks I had to study at home by correspondence.

This was a result of the nationwide poliomyelitis epidemic, which caused the closing of all schools from the beginning of February until after Easter, and then again for a couple of weeks in the second term.

So for that period we all had to do our schoolwork at home, and send it in to the school for marking and comments.

We had to stay away from large gatherings as well, like cinemas and concerts.

Nowadays there is a vaccine for polio, which prevents such outbreaks, so that most people don't know what the disease is like.

When classes did eventually resume, I met my Fifth Form teachers. Henry Ingram continued to teach us Latin, but otherwise we had different masters: Henry Cooper for French, "Pongo" La Roche for Elec and mag, and "Mousy" Bishop for English. Most noticeable was "the Colonel", Joe Russell, another who was remembered by my father from his schooldays.

Joe Russell had a unique teaching style: He dictated a list of topics at the beginning of the year, which we were expected to write summaries of from the textbook. Two or three times a term he would appear to check our work, the rest of the time he was absent, busy, no doubt, with his duties as Deputy Headmaster.

We "covered" the School Certificate syllabus in this way.

I do not remember even that much about the English classes. Mousy Bishop's classroom was one my Dad had worked in as a boy, and he had several stories about how his class had played tricks on the teacher there. The one thing I do remember is that Mousy would read a verse or two of a poem and expect us to guess the poet's name. Occasionally it turned out to be himself. I'm afraid very few of us knew enough to tell the difference!

My experience in Elec and Mag was marred by one event: one day Pongo was trying to show us an experiment with static electricity, but it didn't work.  When it failed to work for about the third time, I could not suppress a titter, so I was hauled out and caned on the spot.

I remember Henry Cooper as a pretty competent teacher for those days:  he certainly added useful skills to our knowledge of French, on top of the good work done by George Marshall the year before.

In November, we were given a week to revise and then we had to sit our five three-hour School Cert exams.  My marks ranged from excellent for Latin to very mediocre in French, but considering how unreliable marking was in those days, I don't think we should take them too seriously at either end of the scale!

During the year a new teacher arrived back from the war: Owen Lewis. He was given responsibility for the School Magazine, and set about establishing a School Magazine Committee. The Magazine for 1948 includes my name as a member. This was later to develop into a very good learning experience, which helped me many times in my adult life, although my memory of  1948 is hazy.

Getting my driving licence at School Cert time was much more important than anything else as a sign of maturity! We had to answer five questions from the Road Code, drive round the block and start the car on a hill. I don't remember having to reverse park. And in those days there was no "Learner" or "Restricted"; we went straight to a full licence at 15.