Nostalgia, schooltime

The world was simple once. No one had smartphones. If you wanted to find something out you either looked it up in a book at home, in the library or looked in an encyclopedia at school. I’m remembering my school now.

Lessons were many and varied. We had a choice of Art, Biology, Human Biology, Chemistry, Physics, Mathematics, History, Pottery, Woodwork, Domestic science, Technical drawing, Sewing (can’t remember what it was called), Geography, French, German, Spanish, Music, Sport science, English language, English Literature. At “O” level or CSE.

These were the days when Comprehensive schools had recently been created and our school had been amalgamated from two other senior schools. I found out later that our area was well thought of and the money used gave us standards equivalent to London and Edinburgh! We had an orchestra and other clubs. Computing was just coming in but I never used one. We still had exercise books and biros and pencils.

The school had a swimming bath, sports hall, science and art blocks and a music block later on.

We were just normal council house kids, we were really lucky to have a wonderful school. I remember my time there with mostly joy.

Teach more art

What would you change about modern society?

So many schools seem to concentrate on “worthwhile” subjects, Sciences, Mathematics, English. The old fashioned three R’s reading, ‘righting and ‘rithmeric…

But we need creative thought as well as producing drones that do productive work.

If you learnt technical drawing you could design cars, create architecture, produce blue prints for engineering. Yes it’s all at the press of a button now, AI does so much, but artistic ability can help with innovation and ingenuity.

Art helped our understanding of medicine, Leonardo DaVinci undertook studies of anatomy that were well before other medicine caught up. Look at his drawings of dissections to understand his fantastic knowledge.

Art is in advertising, illustration, magazines, books, clothing, wallpaper design, surface pattern, product design, ceramics. That worthless degree that our government might close down could be the next big digital game, the shape of rotor blades that save energy for planes or wind turbines. Even a more readable font for someone who is dyslexic.

So art really should be a big part of modern society. Without it there would be no fashion, no special effects for TV and film, no beautiful make up for theatre or other creative productions.

Life is not just bean counting, it’s about passion and beauty. Otherwise we might as well all be clones, in grey jumpsuits, working 9 hours a day, sleeping when we are told and not attempting to be any different than anyone else.