Fifth year at AGS

At the end of 1949 I sat eight papers for the University Scholarships Exam: two in English, two in Latin, two in French, one in History and one in Zoology. Along with half of my class, I ended up with what was called a Credit pass. The best of the second-year students gained scholarships, about four of them.

1950 was a repeat of 1949, expect for the English programme. Instead of starting with a Shakespeare play, Owen Lewis introduced us to Chaucer's Prologue to the Canterbury Tales. I was captivated by this guy so long ago who could write so well in verse about the people he met and their foibles. "Canterbury Tales" was destined to be a significant work in my life from then on.

The novel in 1950 was "The Great Gatsby", by Scott Fitzgerald, although I found it far too sophisticated for me at that age. I enjoyed much more the selection of poets we had to study that year. By the end of 1950 I knew that English and French were the subjects I wanted to concentrate on, although I left myself a second possibility by enrolling for Law as well as Arts when the time for University arrived.

I must have made progress in subjects like French and Latin that year as well, and very much enjoyed the classes in History. We had the pleasure of being taken for History by Tommy Lanigan, who actually worked through the text-book with us and discussed each topic as we came to it. This was a great improvement on what we had had the two previous years!  It was from this course that I laid the foundations of my later study of history: we had to know British history from 1485 to 1914, and European History from 1715 to 1914. History in those days ended with the Great War. Not a skerrick about New Zealand, or America!

Owen Ingram had taught me for Latin for four years, and now I was able to pick the brains of another Latin teacher: Ken Treacher. Again this was a pleasant change; not that Ken was any better as a teacher than Owen; they were both fine, but any change is as good as a rest.

As you can see, every teacher at AGS had a nick-name. For the ordinary mortals the given Christian name would do, but for special people, some chance event had pinned a different nick-name, and that stuck for generations of schoolboys: "Two-gun" Adams, "Pansy" Napier, "Screwy" Lewis, "Streak" Nicholls (he was tall and thin after all), "Mousy" Bishop, "Pongo" La Roche, and so on.

We were given a week to study before the exams, and my Uncle Jack (Bigelow), who was then Head of Ruawai District High School, invited me to stay with them for some peace and quiet for my revision. He and Auntie Josie showed me a bit of Northland at the same time, which was kind of them, and I enjoyed their family's company for those few days.

The exams went well for me; along with three others from my class, I made the scholarship list, though not as high up as the school would have wished I imagine, and we had the usual dozen or so credit passes. And that was my last Hurrah at what was then the leading secondary school in Auckland.

We were only the second class to come through the education system under the 1944 Education Act, designed by Peter Fraser and Dr Beeby to provide a more modern and egalitarian education than what had been common before.