my mother always made great ply of the fact that she was ‘born in a library’ literally in the flat aove the workington town library; my maternal grandfather was town librarian and on the carnegie trust that opened up scores of libraries in the nort of england;
she was always too exhausted after moving to slough, wth two young boys to feed and raise on her own, and her escape was a) the radio - in which we joined (dick barton special agent etc) which fired our imaginations and led me into comics (from which i did learn cartooning which stayed with me all my life), which then led to illustrated comics of the classics -treasure island etc so the seeds of reading were sown very early on, but not in any formal way; her other escape was mills & boon books which were not for young boys; first ‘proper’ books were the saint, followed by dennis wheatley ‘roger brook’ series and a massive delve over time into the monthly issued heron books collections - and onwards;
as i have mentioned before my own personal collection of hardback books are fact books - mainly history oriented, and novels and penguin special subjects, plus collected editions notably dickens, sherlock holmes, oscar wilde etc;
over the years my books have been my most constant of friends and companions - mercifully unaffected by the deafness! twice i have decided on a 'clear out, and twice i have found it impossible; that will remain for my wife after i am gone; i am far too emotionally attached to them;
as ever apologies for the typos!
I’m not sure there’s much to tell. Very ordinary working-class childhood, though poor even by the standards of the time. Older folks here will remember it, but I think I’m one of the few people of my age to remember the ‘night cart’ coming round to empty the toilets - ie. not only did we not have an indoor toilet, we didn’t have a flush toilet; we had, indeed, only one tap in the house - the cold tap over the kitchen sink, although I remember, when I was about 5 I think, my Dad fitting the ‘geyser’ next to it, for hot water (otherwise it was the kettle, or ‘the copper’ for bath nights). There was a council estate in the village where most of my friends lived - in relative luxury. I also remember my Mum frequently choosing to have ‘bread and dripping’ for tea - at the time, we thought, because she liked it so much - only when we grew up did we realise she was actually leaving what better food there was for us children. And that’s the point really: we had no money, but it was not a ‘disadvantaged’ childhood, because our parents loved us.
My Dad was a milkman, and my Mum a farmer’s eldest daughter who continued to rotate between looking after his farmhouse and her much younger brothers, work on the land, and her own house and young family. It was a childhood almost without books - just a treasured few - but you’re right Peter, I was taken up by a teacher that somehow saw something in me not evident even to myself, and who started in the gentlest way feeding me books - “Can you read this for me Geof and see if it’s any good…”
Please don’t go Do you really need me to apologise again for my typing… on us like the determinedly single-minded and of commendably fixed intent paper-saviour @anon65742194 Pigney!
Your typing is fine just as it, and you come across loud, clear and entertaining as ever. Very nostalgic too, you clever, friendly, sentimental old drip. 
Block-headed paper-saviour? Just how does that insult apply to me and why @Peter_Goble ?
To revert to the topic, are we talking about what is happening in the UK or what is happening in our adopted country France?
I suspect “paper-saviour” jokingly relates to the wording about not-printing/saving paper… which used to appear at the end of most of your posts…
Might be worth quoting a comment on the following article in the context of this discussion:
I teach hardcore STEM at a university in the UK, and I see firsthand what this system is doing. My students “study” by memorizing old exam papers. If you give them a challenging problem to solve- one that requires creativity, judgement- the first thing they do is to ask for example problems with worked solutions. Some come prepared with little mnemonic tricks that allow you to solve formulaic problems without actually understanding them. This isn’t education- it’s exam training. There’s a big difference.
It was also prevalent in the professional sphere. In the 1990s I took up the lead role in a School of Nursing for psychiatric and mental handicap nursing students in the South East if England.
I inherited a dispirited and subdued student body who nonetheless had very commendable (written) examination results, but the success was substantially achieved by drilling students through remorseless catechising of learners using old examination papers. These were in themselves wedded or even ‘welded’ to formulaic principles of psychiatric treatment and custodial care; and to provisions of the Mental Health Act (which in practice hinges mainly on involuntary detention of the mentally ill [“sectioning”].
The nurses developed a risk-averse, suspicious, authoritarian and controlling practique, and this subserved IMO a tick-box behavioural regime based on stratified reward or punishment theory, with a thin gloss of ‘respect’ and ‘rights’, honored more often in the breach than in the observance (to quote the Bard of Avon, bless his Tudor socks) 
For my pains, in introducing adult methods of cooperative enquiry, and experiential learning with somatic, personal involvement in addressing emotional and cognitive states, I soon gained a reputation as a hippy freak, and a Hospital Chaplain (who never met me or discussed my work with me) reported me to management for teaching heathen ritual (mindfulness meditation) and encouraging (at a minimum) the use of herbal substances (we sometimes used joss sticks for relaxation procedures) ; even drumming and chanting figured in lesson, some of which were held in the lovely fields around the asylum, barefoot on the warm grass.
But my career soared, and I eventually rose to senior lecturer in an Essex University, bringing similar approaches to the teaching of nurses, midwives, counsellors, and social workers.
But the educational world has once more reverted to unapologetic labour-market slot-filling, with a commensurate collapse in teacher-student relations, and a mercenary ideology on the rapid slide.
I doubt change will occur. Only “those who can afford it” (The Brightest And The Best) will leap-frog over Boris and reach the heights to which the gilded elite are destined to rule over us, by right. And Dei Gratia.
A footnote:
I escaped the rat race in 1993 age 55, early retirement on an enhanced pension, paid up by my University to age 65, and a peripatetic consultancy that I took to Africa. My professional qualifications ensured my return to full and/or part-time work, paid and unpaid, for a further 18 years, so we were able to weather a series of stormy events In the years that followed. But that era is over. Full stop, for working people anyway.
As with so many other aspects of UK life now, I believe the rot started to set in with the wrong political turn the country took in 1979 - in this case, specifically, the introduction of ‘NVQs’ in the 1980s - a rigid ‘competence based’ approach to learning that left little room for exploration, inspiration or creativity.
It was, in part, a conservative reaction to the ‘hippy’ educational idealism of the 60s - which much of the conventional business world feared precisely because it only wanted ‘competence’ (ie. to externalise the costs of training) - what it definitely didn’t want was really educated young people who would think for themselves, and see through the poor management that was endemic in UK business.
Thatcherism has never been fully reversed in the UK, even during the long ‘New Labour’ years, and the conception of education as little more than job-or-exam-training, with a bit of British Empire propaganda thrown in by the likes of Gove, has continued to strangle the country.
Your view of education seems to be more than a bit uninformed. A lot of education has been a long way from exam focused work, too many teachers refused to allow that to happen.
I agree David - as the ‘Big Education’ link I shared and Peter’s testimony show, education is - like most things - an arena for negotiation and conflict between competing approaches. Many teachers are fighting for the values of ‘liberal education’ - personal exploration and growth, critical thinking and independence, imagination, creativity, etc… But against these are ranged the Gradgrinds… “Now, what I want is Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts…” (Dickens’ Hard Times, by the way - well worth a read.)
Phew… I went to 2 different Junior and 3 different Senior Schools… due to family moves.
As I recall, the teachers were strict on behaviour, but they made their subjects interesting/enjoyable …
hopefully, that is still the same today…
You must have been around for the start of Project 2000 Peter, do you think making nurse education university based was a good move? Or should the old system merely have been tweaked?
It is.
i dontseem to have a direct sf account any more - so just checking if this works
What do you mean Norman? Are you having SF issues? Can I help?
thanks!
I trained in 1956 under the traditional system which was a three year hospital-based apprenticeship. It was very well structured like most skill-oriented trades of that mist-shrouded era (for some 
). Close supervision and blocks of progressively more clinical and specialised instruction throughout, at the bedside, in Casualty (before A&E was invented!), in theatres, and in the morgue and post-mortem theatre, where some of us learned to suture 
).
The training cohort of about 30 students (3 intakes per year) was very close knit and all students lived “over the shop” in hostels with free bed, board, laundry and uniforms. Discipline was strict, curfew at 10 pm and no anky panky (men were outnumbered 10-1, but a Senior Home Sister guarded the sex-segregated hostels and locked the doors). 
Most doctors up to Consultant level taught nurses who showed aptitude and the astute ones were singled out for added tuition on the job (no innuendo there at all) but basic entry level was 2 GCE ‘0’ levels including English and Maths, so some just became good obedient hand-servants and practical bedside nurses who stuck to procedures and showed no developed clinical acumen or much creative or imaginative talent.
But the hospital community had deep allegiance to its staff and looked after us like a family would. I hiked to London for initial interview for a place in training and was interviewed on my vocation by the Deputy Matron who raised an eyebrow at my hiking boots, thick socks and rucksack. She asked me how I was getting home. And when I set off for Birmingham a kitchen hand gave me a parcel containing four iced buns and an apple. “Miss Varden (the Deputy Matron) has put them up for your journey home”, she said.
All that was knocked into a cocked hat by Project 2000 and by the University involvement. I think it was perhaps politically inevitable as a way of funding universities and managing the educational aspirations of young people, notably young women. Hospital placements were random and geographically diversified and became unmanageable for hospitals and for students, and the old local allegiances shrivelled and died. Students became an encumbrance to overworked ward and departmental staff. Paperwork and assessment processes proliferated and became unintelligible and jargon-ridden chores for busy clinicians.
Lots of students I knew outsourced their final dissertations to “dissertation mills” to gain a degree, and this was given a nod and a wink by faculties in the interests of academic performance tables, and continued recruitment and funding. I could go on, but you can see why I was happy to retire early (and why my Faculty was happy to stuff my pension with gold and see me off 
… perhaps?)
Going to primary school in France was hard work compared to my English primary school. One of the things I am grateful for was learning good handwriting skills, I do not remember that being taught in England. The hardest part was having to learn poems off by heart in one evening and having to stand up and recite them “par coeur” the next day !
I expect we all have different memories of our school days…
I am old enough to have had the challenge of using steel-nibs and ink bottles at school. 