The greatest impact in my learning years occurred on the day I realized there were specialist teachers. Up until year eight I had only experienced single teacher tuition, with one teacher per class room, at a private school.
The private school also used the scrap or the cane as a disciplinary measure. The headmaster at one school, whose name was Marsden and who insisted that he be known as ‘Headmaster’, had a range of canes to suit the ‘crime’. These canes were displayed on a ‘gun rack’ type exhibition above the fire place in his office as a reminder of what was to come. Interestingly, early Australian European history has an Englishman by the same name who also had a problem with discipline. Reverend Samuel Marsden was well known for his execution of public floggings carried out on convicts, indigenous Australians, wayward early settlers and any other person who did not fit the Marsden mould.
When I was a boy, corporal punishment was still the norm in many homes as well as many schools. Many a belting was handed out in my home to me, the boy in particular, to the extent that on several occasions I ran away from home only to ring my parents to negotiate my return, so long as I was not going to be hit with the electric cord.
It was a great relief to me on shifting to a Government school to find there were no demeaning or physical punishment practices. This school, Brighton High School, had been built as a showplace for the future, with the war babies and baby boomers now reaching high school age. Most of the teachers were idealists.
Graeme Wilson was the first of the outstanding teachers I met at Brighton High School. One of the specialist teachers I spoke about at the start of this essay, Graeme specialized in Geography. He left us in doubt that there was a reason for everything geographically. I still remember how to read the weather map and how to calculate the wind’s speed according to the Beaufort Scale. I remember the day he brought the Earth globe into class to show how the wind travels faster at the horse* latitudes. Another specialist teacher was Eric Meehan, who left a prestigious position at Melbourne High School to try to teach us limited students the joys of English literature.
All this helped make me the teacher I became. Although sadistic tendencies still prevailed in many profession, including education, in my twelve years of teaching I do not recall having a cross word with the staff or the students.
I would presume that all the conflict I had been brought up in meant that I would not follow that example. My experiences and role models at Brighton High School left me open to teaching studies and enabled me to better negotiate my way through the maze of life and to come out at the other end a different person to my early school teachers and parents.
Godfrey Marple
May 2016
The private school also used the scrap or the cane as a disciplinary measure. The headmaster at one school, whose name was Marsden and who insisted that he be known as ‘Headmaster’, had a range of canes to suit the ‘crime’. These canes were displayed on a ‘gun rack’ type exhibition above the fire place in his office as a reminder of what was to come. Interestingly, early Australian European history has an Englishman by the same name who also had a problem with discipline. Reverend Samuel Marsden was well known for his execution of public floggings carried out on convicts, indigenous Australians, wayward early settlers and any other person who did not fit the Marsden mould.
When I was a boy, corporal punishment was still the norm in many homes as well as many schools. Many a belting was handed out in my home to me, the boy in particular, to the extent that on several occasions I ran away from home only to ring my parents to negotiate my return, so long as I was not going to be hit with the electric cord.
It was a great relief to me on shifting to a Government school to find there were no demeaning or physical punishment practices. This school, Brighton High School, had been built as a showplace for the future, with the war babies and baby boomers now reaching high school age. Most of the teachers were idealists.
Graeme Wilson was the first of the outstanding teachers I met at Brighton High School. One of the specialist teachers I spoke about at the start of this essay, Graeme specialized in Geography. He left us in doubt that there was a reason for everything geographically. I still remember how to read the weather map and how to calculate the wind’s speed according to the Beaufort Scale. I remember the day he brought the Earth globe into class to show how the wind travels faster at the horse* latitudes. Another specialist teacher was Eric Meehan, who left a prestigious position at Melbourne High School to try to teach us limited students the joys of English literature.
All this helped make me the teacher I became. Although sadistic tendencies still prevailed in many profession, including education, in my twelve years of teaching I do not recall having a cross word with the staff or the students.
I would presume that all the conflict I had been brought up in meant that I would not follow that example. My experiences and role models at Brighton High School left me open to teaching studies and enabled me to better negotiate my way through the maze of life and to come out at the other end a different person to my early school teachers and parents.
Godfrey Marple
May 2016
*Note - horse latitudes are located at about 30 degrees north and south of the equator.
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