SHOP PRODUCTS
Houzz Logo Print
friedag

Showing off poems

friedag
9 years ago

My brother, age 71, a former teacher, and I, age 64, were talking with our various offspring recently about poems we memorized at school or when we were kids just because we wanted to. Although DB and I can reel off dozens of poems or bits of poetry, we were amazed (dismayed) that many of our progeny have missed this pleasure. Even our brother, age 66, who is not really a literary sort, knows at least a half-dozen poems and many other fragments.

We were showing off to the kiddos -- some now in their early forties -- who claim they were not required to memorize any poems in school. Gosh! I didn't know -- can't believe -- that poetry has been so out of favor as a learning assignment.

As late as my college years (late 1960s, early 1970s), my Shakespeare professor assigned me to learn Sonnet 14 and the first sixty-four lines of 'Richard III'; other classmates learned other sonnets and lines. I don't hold any grudge against Dr. MacNamee for it!

What about you? What poems do you know by heart 'cause you were coerced into memorizing them? I'm sure some RPers who love poetry didn't need to be bribed. Right? :-)

Please supply titles and authors, or even post entire poems if you wish. From your memory is fine or copy and paste from an Internet site. I probably can't memorize poems as easily as I once did, but I might want to try some.

Comments (85)

  • annpan
    9 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Vee, I was given second hand Rupert Bear Annuals (any book was very welcome in WW2 days of paper shortages!) and they had little couplets describing the action under the pictures. There was writing at the bottom of the pages but for some reason, I thought it was advertising material and it was some time before I realised that it was the story!

  • friedag
    Original Author
    9 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Vee, I think Lawson Wood's illustrations were in the Mother Goose book I had as a child. They look familiar. My granddaughter's book has different artwork that appears out of kilter to me. Funny how we grow attached to certain illustrations.

    Annpan, you got me off on skipping/jumping rope rhymes, so I searched for other examples. They have an interesting history and developed much the same way as nursery and folk rhymes. I didn't realize that there are professional folklorists who have researched and documented the variations.

    While reading those I ran across the Ring-a-ring o' roses association with the Plague, as you and woodnymph mentioned. I had heard that too, but folklorists say that explanation can only be documented back to 1951 and is an example of folk derivation, after the fact. Too bad! The story seems to fit the rhyme so well.

  • Related Discussions

    2nd Annual - Ludi Shows off His Orchids . . . Show

    Q

    Comments (8)
    Very nice indeed Ludi. As someone who manages to keep a single orchid alive, I appreciate your collection. Mine is a simple phalaenopsis that wasn't my usual fail-and-toss-it. I particularly like the ikebana look that 'Bob Henley' has. Thanks for posting them. tj
    ...See More

    Formica Sea Pearl - Show off your kitchen!

    Q

    Comments (3)
    I can't remember the last time I ever saw someone post a plastic laminate countertop on this forum. The success with using this large-scale pattern will be based on how well your fabricator lays out the countertop and how seams are handled if required.
    ...See More

    HOUSE TOUR: Former Ralph Lauren Stylist Shows off New York Apartment

    Q

    Comments (13)
    I loved both videos!! I love British and Scottish decor, especially tartan plaids. I am a retired US Air Force Captain, and was stationed in Lakenheath England for several years. I acquired quite a few items from England, including a set of 4 hand carved chairs, antique fireplace tiles, and miniature porcelain buildings that I treasure. I love Ralph Lauren too and have several pieces of clothing from his line. These videos remind me of my priceless time spent living in the United Kingdom! Gizmo: I enjoy all your posts!!
    ...See More

    Water Heater off / showe faucet leaking

    Q

    Comments (2)
    If the tub faucet is single handle/knob,move the handle. If tub faucet is two handle "AND THERE ISN'T A SINGLE HANDLE ELSEWHERE IN HOUSE" turn hot water supply to laundry washing machine off. Report back please. :)
    ...See More
  • veer
    9 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Frieda, you have probably come across the work of Peter and Iona Opie or read The Lore and Language of School Children which they wrote quite a few years ago.
    At the site below you can hear, sometimes with difficulty, their taped interviews with children they met in the street. "I'm just wandering around looking for some children to talk to . . ." says Iona in her best RP English . . . she would be arrested for it today!

    Yes the plague story and Ring-a-Ring o' Roses is one of those self-perpetuating myths.

    Here is a link that might be useful: Some of the Opie's collection on tape.

  • woodnymph2_gw
    9 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    The Lawson Wood illustrations are exactly the ones I recall from the Mother Goose that I had. I really love them.

  • friedag
    Original Author
    9 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Vee, I'll have to find the Opies' book and spend more time listening to the recordings. I can understand Iona well enough, but the children are harder for me.

    I finally remembered to look up this poem:
    If I Were In Charge of the World

    If I were in charge of the world
    I'd cancel oatmeal,
    Monday mornings,
    Allergy shots, and also Sara Steinberg.

    If I were in charge of the world
    There'd be brighter night lights,
    Healthier hamsters, and
    Basketball baskets forty eight inches lower.

    If I were in charge of the world
    You wouldn't have lonely.
    You wouldn't have clean.
    You wouldn't have bedtimes.
    Or "Don't punch your sister."
    You wouldn't even have sisters.

    If I were in charge of the world
    A chocolate sundae with whipped cream and nuts would be a vegetable
    All 007 movies would be G,
    And a person who sometimes forgot to brush,
    And sometimes forgot to flush,
    Would still be allowed to be
    In charge of the world.

    Judith Viorst I bet we could all plug in what we would like to cancel if we were 'in charge of the world' -- instead of oatmeal, I would cancel wasabi. I found a lesson plan for teaching Viorst's poem to middle schoolers (6th through 8th grades, ages about 11-14) which includes memorizing it. That's encouraging, I think.

  • veer
    9 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Frieda, I think the 'poem' above would be quite difficult to learn, but it might make a good jumping-off point for kids to write their own world-changing ideas!
    Some poems with a good tumpty-tum rhythm are those by Hilaire Belloc, especially his 'Cautionary Tales' about children who meet nasty ends. Jim who is eaten by a lion, Henry King who dies from eating string. Matilda who tells lies and is burnt to death. Gruesome, but kids love them. Are you familiar with these in the US?

    Here is a link that might be useful: Jim

  • annpan
    9 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Oh, I don't buy that Folk derivation explanation for Ring a ring of Roses! Just because it was only documented in 1951. So What!
    A lot of stories, poems etc have been around orally for centuries before someone actually wrote them down.
    I will go with it being the " Black Death Rhyme" until it is proven wrong!

  • friedag
    Original Author
    9 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Vee, I'm not sure that 'If I Were in Charge of the World' would be especially difficult for children/adolescents to learn, especially if they substitute their own phrases; e.g. instead of sister/sisters in Viorst's original they could say, '"Don't punch your brother." / You wouldn't even have brothers.' I have had several people (those usually born in the 1970s and 1980s) mention that this was one of their favorite poems they learned during their school years.

    As for Hilaire Belloc's poems: They aren't unknown in the U.S. but they probably aren't as popular here as they are in the UK and France. My sons were not particularly receptive to them, although there was one about a white mare (named Isabelle?) that they quite liked. I only have a hazy recollection of it.

    Annpan, maybe some folklorist will eventually find older documentation. Here's hoping! ;-)

    Until then, I won't state that explanation of the rhyme as fact; it's legend.

  • woodnymph2_gw
    9 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Ann, I am with you. Several history professors I have had mentioned the "Ring around the rosie" text as being an ancient rhyme going back to the Middle Ages which, in fact, was a naive interpretation of the Black Plague. Many old poems and songs have survived for centuries, after all.

    By the way, where is everybody???

  • carolyn_ky
    9 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Frieda, on thinking further about the IL/KY reference in In Hardin County 1809, perhaps it was meant as a further link with the future since the new Kentucky baby Lincoln would move to Illinois.

    I am another who is enamored with the plague reference to what we called Ring Around the Rosy. A lot of those nursery rhymes were based on historical events, too, weren't they?

  • friedag
    Original Author
    9 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Carolyn, that makes perfect sense to me! Thanks for thinking about it some more, because you've explained it best. I just love the dialogue between the hunters -- "...bring the gals and Hepsy, too..."

    I didn't expect such an emotional reaction to the revelation that 'Ring-a-ring o' roses' might not be about the Plague after all. I read some more about the history of the rhyme, and there does seem to be a lot of reasons for the folklorists to doubt it. They even got physicians involved to see if the symptom description in the rhyme fits the Plague. The physicians say no because the skin manifestations of the Bubonic/pneumonic/septicemic plague are very different from a 'rosy' rash. They say the 'ring-a-ring o' roses' might best describe smallpox, though, another awful disease that was epidemic during the Middle Ages.

    All interesting stuff! Right now, there's no way to prove what the original meaning of the rhyme was. The earliest written accounts, however, give no indication that it had anything to do with the Plague or any other disease. If you're interested, read about the controversy -- there are lots of Internet sites to compare quickly the various theories. I like a good controversy. However, I realize that many people don't. :-)

  • woodnymph2_gw
    9 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Related to this topic, I've read several studies that state the old Pied Piper of Hamlin tale is based upon the Childrens' Crusade in the Middle Ages.

  • annpan
    9 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Frieda, I will have to bow to the scientists who cannot match the symptoms to a known plague but wonder if there was some other disease that got referred to as a plague and caused the red spots to appear!
    I did go into the Mayo Clinic website for a few seconds on the subject and decided it was too grim for breakfast time on a lovely Saturday Spring morning here!
    "Summer is a-coming in
    Loud sing cuckoo"
    No cuckoos excepting for a neighbour's clock sounding the hours but the magpies carol in my garden early in the morning.

  • friedag
    Original Author
    9 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Woodnymph, I, too, heard or read that about the Pied Piper and the Children's Crusade. I recall that it was presented as the children being lured into joining the crusade, but when the few that did return to Hamelin (Hameln) arrived there, they, of course, were no longer children (age-wise and experience-wise). Thus, all the children of that cohort were considered 'lost'.

    I didn't remember enough about it and had to do a quick search. Well, the whole story is much more complicated than what I ever knew. More controversy! Some of the historians say the crusade part never happened. Some say the 'youth' probably migrated to Poland and Transylvania. The folktale and Browning's poem are probably conflations of several events, including a rat-catching episode. At any rate, something happened in the 13th century to the youth of Hamelin.

    What interpretations did you read, Mary? As I understand it, it seems to be mostly legend. There's nothing wrong with legend -- it's historical tradition that cannot be authenticated, that's all, same as the 'Ring-a-ring o' roses' situation.

    Annpan, enjoy your lovely spring day! I'm in southeast Texas right now where it's butt-numbing cold at 35F, unusual for this semi-tropical area. My tropically acclimated bones are protesting.

    I love that rota, 'Sumer is icumen in'. I used to know it in Middle English, but I probably can longer say it correctly.

  • friedag
    Original Author
    9 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Thanks to everyone who contributed to this thread! I have been stimulated, as always, by your nuggets to learn things that I somehow missed or hadn't thought about in a long time.

    One observation that I can't resist making: we seem to have more British poems in common than non-British ones. I know, Vee, that you don't like that term British but I'm being inclusive, short speak-wise. :-)
    I have the feeling that American students study more British poems/poets than the other way round. I'm not making a value judgment, although I suspect those educators who bother to teach poetry are of the opinion that British poetry is superior, perhaps because there is so much more of it and has been around a lot longer.

    So for the upcoming holiday season, here are my best wishes to you all. I probably won't be posting much again until 2015. Hope to talk to you then!

  • annpan
    9 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Frieda, you have made me think! I shall ask my family what Australian poetry is taught in schools here now. I know my late Australian husband knew the works of Banjo Paterson and other well known writers of classic poems that were taught in school in the 1940s and 50s. It would be almost Un-Australian not to be able to say the opening lines of "The Man From Snowy River"!
    Kath might have some knowledge about later poets.

  • netla
    9 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Arriving late to the discussion as often before...

    I used to know any number of poems/verses, mostly Icelandic ones I learned in school, but also a handful of ones in English, including a couple of Shakespeare's sonnets and all of Hamlet's 'To be or not to be' soliloquy, The Raven by Poe and a few others.

    For some reason I find verses easier to remember if they can be sung to a tune, and I know any number of song lyrics.

    These days I consider myself lucky to remember a handful of four-line verses known as stökur (singles) and ferskeytlur (four-liners) in Icelandic. Here's one that was composed in English to show how the Icelandic rules for writing such verses can be applied to English, including internal rhymes and all:

    Written by the Rev. Sigurður Norland (1885-1971) about his favourite riding mare, it goes like this:

    She is fine as morn in May
    Mild, divine and clever
    Like a shining summer day
    She’ll be mine forever

  • Kath
    9 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Late to the topic as usual :)

    Ann, I don't think I studied any Australian poetry at school. I did English right up to matriculation level (it wasn't compulsory) but most of the poetry we studied was English. In my final year we had a war theme and Wilfred Owen was the main poet we studied, but we weren't required to learn whole poems.
    As a child, my mother used to make me recite, with actions, the following:

    I wish I were a crow's egg
    A way up in a tree.
    I wish I were a crow's egg
    As bad as bad can be.
    For when some naughty thieving boy
    Came climbing up my tree
    To steal me from my little nest
    Well, you see ..
    I'd watch him climb and climb and climb
    And shake myself with glee
    Then break my shell with horrid smell
    And cover him with me.

    Another childhood favourite was Going on an Errand which begins:
    "A pound of tea at one and three, a pot of raspberry jam"

    For my personal satisfaction I memorised Ozymandias, lots of Shakespeare's speeches (but not any sonnets) and large chunks of The HIghwayman by Alfred Noyes and The Lady of Shallott.

    However, the poem that is probably my all time favourite is Clancy of the Overflow by the Australian poet Andrew Barton Paterson, better known as Banjo, who also wrote Waltzing Matilda.

    I had written him a letter which I had, for want of better
    Knowledge, sent to where I met him down the Lachlan, years ago,
    He was shearing when I knew him, so I sent the letter to him,
    Just `on spec', addressed as follows, `Clancy, of The Overflow'.

    And an answer came directed in a writing unexpected,
    (And I think the same was written with a thumb-nail dipped in tar)
    'Twas his shearing mate who wrote it, and verbatim I will quote it:
    `Clancy's gone to Queensland droving, and we don't know where he are.'

    In my wild erratic fancy visions come to me of Clancy
    Gone a-droving `down the Cooper' where the Western drovers go;
    As the stock are slowly stringing, Clancy rides behind them singing,
    For the drover's life has pleasures that the townsfolk never know.

    And the bush hath friends to meet him, and their kindly voices greet him
    In the murmur of the breezes and the river on its bars,
    And he sees the vision splendid of the sunlit plains extended,
    And at night the wond'rous glory of the everlasting stars.

    I am sitting in my dingy little office, where a stingy
    Ray of sunlight struggles feebly down between the houses tall,
    And the foetid air and gritty of the dusty, dirty city
    Through the open window floating, spreads its foulness over all

    And in place of lowing cattle, I can hear the fiendish rattle
    Of the tramways and the 'buses making hurry down the street,
    And the language uninviting of the gutter children fighting,
    Comes fitfully and faintly through the ceaseless tramp of feet.

    And the hurrying people daunt me, and their pallid faces haunt me
    As they shoulder one another in their rush and nervous haste,
    With their eager eyes and greedy, and their stunted forms and weedy,
    For townsfolk have no time to grow, they have no time to waste.

    And I somehow rather fancy that I'd like to change with Clancy,
    Like to take a turn at droving where the seasons come and go,
    While he faced the round eternal of the cash-book and the journal --
    But I doubt he'd suit the office, Clancy, of `The Overflow'.

  • annpan
    9 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    I love that poem too, Kath, especially the bit about the glory of the everlasting stars. It reminds me of the time my husband drove us into the darkness of the countryside in Western Australia and there were no lights for many miles around. We got out of the car and the stars were so thick and hung so low that you felt they were almost close enough to touch.
    It was Nature's brilliant show and I shall never forget it.

  • friedag
    Original Author
    9 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Something told me to check in here at RP today before I get so far out of the pocket that I won't have another chance for a while. I'm glad that you -- Annpan, Netla, Kath -- have continued to post.

    Netla, I also remember poetry best if there's a tune attached. I suspect that's why so many great poems are turned into songs -- for example, 'America the Beautiful' by Katharine Lee Bates that many Americans think would be a much better national anthem than 'The Defence of Fort McHenry' (better known as the song titled 'The Star-Spangled Banner'). Francis Scott Key's poem is rousing to Americans but impossible for most Americans to sing because the tune was written for London's Anacreontic Society which celebrated 'wine, women, and song' along with the inebriation that gave the members the audacity to sing such voice-breaking octaves.

    I enjoyed the Rev. Norland's 'four-liner' about his mare. It's quite an elegant package in English as it must also be in Icelandic. To be able to write poetry in two languages is awe-inspiring, I think.

    Kath, I don't know either of your childhood poems, 'The Crow's Egg' or 'Going on an Errand'.

    I recall you mentioning 'Clancy of the Overflow' in one of our earlier poetry or song threads. I read it then and immediately liked it, too. Many Americans know 'The Man from Snowy River' and, of course, 'Waltzing Matilda' but Australian poetry has probably not been well represented in our studies. It's a shame. I like that Dorothea Mackellar poem 'My Country', the one with the line "I love a sunburnt country" that you also posted about. Then there's her 'Colour' which I think is sublime, except in context of colours an Australian friend once told me that Uluru looks like a huge liver that was left to desiccate in the sun. I can't seem to lose that thought!

    Oh, I almost forgot to ask: Is the 'Ern Malley' hoax still talked about in university settings? If I remember correctly, there was some connection to Adelaide. I ran across the poems somehow and not knowing exactly what they represented, I at first thought they were hooey -- as I think a lot of modernist poetry is/was -- but then I reevaluated them and decided that some of them are not half bad! :-)

  • Kath
    9 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Frieda, I have to admit to not knowing a great deal about the Ern Malley hoax, despite being a South Australian. I don't know if it is talked about much any more (my degree is long behind me and in any case, it was a science degree, not English *g*). Certainly Max Harris, the person at the centre of the hoax, was from SA and for many years ran the Mary Martin bookshop here and wrote for the local newspaper.

    I've never thought of Uluru as like liver - but I have never seen the real thing, only photos, which usually show it as ochre or red.

    I think you will like Going on an Errand

    A pound of tea at one and three
    And a pot of raspberry jam,
    Two new laid eggs, and a dozen pegs
    And a pound of rashers of ham.

    I'll say it over all the way
    And then I'm sure not to forget
    For if I chance to bring things wrong
    My mother gets in such a pet.

    A pound of tea at one and three
    And a pot of raspberry jam,
    Two new laid eggs and a dozen pegs
    And a pound of rashers of ham.

    There in the hay the children play -
    They're having such jolly fun;
    I'll go there too, that's what I'll do,
    As soon as my errands are done.

    A pound of tea at one and three,
    A pot of - er - new laid jam.
    Two raspberry eggs, with a dozen pegs
    And a pound of rashers of ham.

    Now here's the shop, outside I'll stop
    And run through my orders again;
    I haven't forgot - no, ne'er a jot -
    It shows I'm pretty cute, that's plain.

    A pound of three at one and tea,
    A dozen of raspberry ham,
    A pot of eggs, with a dozen pegs,
    And a rasher of new laid jam.

    I thought this quite hilarious as a child. I had it in a book which came from my father, published in 1935 and titled The Children's Treasure House, and treasure it I did.
    I have it on my knee at the moment, and it has stories and poems in it including The Highwayman by Alfred Noyes, For the Fallen by Laurence Binyon (Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn. At the going down of the sun, and in the morning We will remember them), The Daffodils by Wordsworth and Ode to Autumn by Keats.
    The stories include excerpts from Louisa Alcott, R L Stevenson, Charles Kingsley and Charles and Mary Lamb, and several of Hans Christian Anderson's stories. I remember reading The Little Match Girl and crying for ages. It's a wonderful book and worth many times whatever was paid for it.

    Post script: I just Googled it and it appears it cost 5 shillings with one shilling postage and was published by the Australian Women's Weekly, an Australian magazine still published, although now it comes out monthly (they didn't change the name for obvious reasons!)

    Here is a link that might be useful: The Children's Treasure House

  • annpan
    9 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    I have flown over Uluru and from the air it looks like a mud pie!
    I believe though that it is magical with the sun rising and setting. Oprah went there, rather reluctantly as she heard about the hordes of bush flies, and said it was a wonderful experience.
    it is a sacred place and if you are spiritual you can pick up vibes from the Earth in the Australian bush.

  • carolyn_ky
    9 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Kath, your father's book reminded me of my mother's enormous college textbook called Children's Literature. As I've said, she was an elementary school teacher and kept some of her textbooks, as I did from my English and American Lit courses.

    Anyway, this one had lots of poems from nursery rhymes up to the Sherwood one I quoted above and Hiawatha, etc., and also had sections on fiction and myths and legends. It had excerpts from many children's novels and is the source of my love of the antics of the Greek and Norse gods. The only drawback was that as a country mouse I didn't have access to a library to read the entire books it drew from.

  • Kath
    9 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Carolyn, it sounds wonderful, and just makes you wonder if the amazing things children can access now with technology really compare.

  • friedag
    Original Author
    9 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Kath, you're right! I am delighted with 'Going on an Errand' now as an adult; but, unlike you, I as a child probably wouldn't have completely understood certain things in the poem.

    I can imagine myself repeating "A pound of tea at one and three," getting a crease in my forehead and asking, "One and three what? At one o'clock and three o'clock, maybe."

    Same with "And a pound of rashers of ham." I wouldn't have been familiar with rashers.

    I still don't know what pegs are!

    But I think I would've got the point that the errand-runner was getting all mixed up and thought that was funny. I think of the child going on the errands as a girl, but maybe that's because I was a girl. There's no real indication which gender the child is.

    Your father's book is truly a treasure! Everything you mentioned being in it would be something that I would want to include if I were the compiler of an anthology. The trouble with my anthology, though, would be that it would wind up being thousands of pages, even bigger than Carolyn's mother's textbook!

    I do have several anthologies of poetry and short stories geared toward youthful readers. I like the older ones best, but today's kids might not appreciate them as much. The old has to make way for the new, so I'm told. Just think what has been left out in newer editions to make room for all the stuff created in the decades since. I notice that Kipling has mostly disappeared, which dismays me because I have such fond memories of my brothers and me reciting in unison:
    By the livin' Gawd that made you,
    You're a better man than I am, Gunga Din!
    Or:"What are the bugles blowin' for?" said Files-on-Parade.
    "To turn you, to turn you out," the Color-Sergeant said.
    "What makes you look so white, so white?" said Files-on-Parade.
    "For I'm dreadin' what I've got to watch," the Color-Sergeant said...
    ...they're hangin' Danny Deever in the mornin'.
    -- Danny Deever

    Carolyn, I wish I had had your mother's textbook for the Greek and Norse mythology parts. If I had been introduced to those earlier, I might not have had so much trouble later in school keeping the pantheons straight. By the time I was in my early teens, I was such a realist and literalist that I had no patience to learn about a whole slew of gods that acted too much like ordinary mortals. What I thought of as absurdity sunk me. ;-(

    What sort of things were covered in your American Lit textbooks, Carolyn? I took a course that was in two parts: 'American Literature up to 1865' and 'American Literature since 1865'. I have to admit that I was mostly bored out of my tree with the pre-1865 offerings. I didn't save my textbooks, but since you did, yours must have been better.

  • Kath
    9 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Frieda, pegs are clothes pins (the joys of being a transPacific speaker *g*).
    And I did find it funny as a child, so obviously understood it, although here we only buy bacon in rashers, not ham.

    With regard to Gunga Din, I know that last line, and have been known to quote it, but I don't think I knew it was Kipling. I think I got it from my father.

  • veer
    9 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Frieda, as you will know by now 'one and three' is one shilling and thru'pence in old money about seven pence? in 'new money' . . . and almost worthless!
    I think the writer must have used the word 'rasher' with 'ham' to make the line scan. As Kath says 'rasher' is used for bacon; ham comes in slices.
    I think they call clothes 'pegs' pins in Scotland
    Kipling was still very much part of the childhood reading scene when I was young and we listened to /read 'The Jungle Book' 'Rikki Tikki Tavi' 'The Just So Stories' at school.
    These days the powers that be seem to think that Kipling smacks of Empire Building and is therefore a Bad Thing, that we are no longer a great power (and who can argue with that) and that RK's work demeans the peoples of the old colonial countries.
    So his oft-quoted poem 'If' has too-little resonance today but still worth an airing.

    IF

    If you can keep your head when all about you
    Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
    If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
    But make allowance for their doubting too;
    If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
    Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
    Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
    And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

    If you can dream and not make dreams your master;
    If you can think and not make thoughts your aim;
    If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
    And treat those two impostors just the same;
    If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
    Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
    Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
    And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

    If you can make one heap of all your winnings
    And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
    And lose, and start again at your beginnings
    And never breathe a word about your loss;
    If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
    To serve your turn long after they are gone,
    And so hold on when there is nothing in you
    Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

    If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
    Or walk with Kings nor lose the common touch,
    If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
    If all men count with you, but none too much;
    If you can fill the unforgiving minute
    With sixty seconds worth of distance run,
    Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
    And, which is more, you’ll be a Man, my son!

  • annpan
    9 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Friedag, perhaps not understanding words when a child wouldn't have mattered if you liked the sound rather than the meaning. I often recited poems and didn't always understand what I was saying but it sounded good! Which is why children can make some funny mistakes like the famous "Gladly, my cross-eyed bear"! My mistake was to think that "the green hill far away without a city wall" meant that the city didn't have a wall rather than the hill was outside the city.

    I was thinking of how clothes pegs have changed. During WW2 ours were wooden "dolls" made by gypsies who sold them door to door carried in baskets. Then came the wooden ones with a spring clip and now I have plastic ones which don't last long in the hot sun and snap under my fingers!

  • friedag
    Original Author
    9 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Ach! Of course pegs are clothes pegs/pins. I was thinking they are some sort of food as that's what the other things are in the context of the poem. We had clothes pegs when I was a child, but they were my brothers' and my toys (we called them "soldiers") as they were nearly useless in Iowa wind for actually anchoring items on the clothes lines.

    Yes, Annpan, I learned a lot of poems, etc., just because I liked the sound of the words strung together while not really understanding them. I memorized 'The Corpus Christi Carol' for that reason, although I only had the vaguest notion what it was really about...and I'm still not sure that I completely understand it, but it doesn't matter.

    I misunderstood the hymn 'Bringing in the sheaves' as 'Bringing in the sheets'. Many people say they thought it was 'Bringing in the sheep'. I didn't have much knowledge of sheep, but I did have plenty of experience with bringing in sheets. The funny thing, though: I knew about sheaves of wheat and other grains because Iowa was, and still is, a great grain-growing part of the U.S. and harvesting has always been a big event. I don't know why I didn't make the connection sooner.

    Vee, I think 'If' has survived in the U.S. because it's so inspirational and there's not too much in it the PC-police would like to suppress. Is 'Little Black Sambo' still recognized in the UK? It's been buried and forgotten in the U.S. except when someone wants to bring up how racist it was. Many ignorant Americans thought/still think? that Sambo was a black African child, not a 'coloured' child from the south of India or Ceylon (Sri Lanka) where the natives' skin is usually much darker than the natives' of other parts of the subcontinent.

    The 'Uncle Remus' stories (with Br'er Rabbit, Br'er Bear, and the Tar Baby) have been similarly put down. PC idiots (sorry, that's what I think most of them are) think this collection of African-American folktales is inherently racist because the compiler was a white writer who attempted to convey the Southern black dialect, which I think in the case of 'Uncle Remus' was Gullah. I'm not big on animal fables, but I loved Uncle Remus, probably because I found the language so fascinating.

    Vachel Lindsay's 'The Congo' is seldom anthologized these days, but I adored the rhythm of it as a child:
    Fat black bucks in a wine-barrel room,
    Barrel-house kings, with feet unstable,
    Sagged and reeled and pounded on the
    table,
    Pounded on the table,
    Beat an empty barrel with the handle of a
    broom,
    Hard as they were able,
    Boom, boom, Boom,
    With a silk umbrella and the handle of a
    broom,
    Boomlay, boomlay, boomlay, Boom.
    I'm sure there are other examples of un-PC poems that children probably shouldn't be exposed to too young. Part of me, though, wants to expose them anyway. Knowledge is fruitful. Maybe sometimes it's hurtful. But so is ignorance.

    This post was edited by friedag on Fri, Nov 28, 14 at 9:09

  • woodnymph2_gw
    9 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    I grew up with the older wooden clothes pins, and I remember well how clever folk used to make dolls out of these. And Xmas decorations!

    I am with you, Frieda, re the banning of good art/literature for PC reasons. I hate that the old Walt Disney movie "Song of the South" is now verbohten! I saw it as a child and Uncle Remus was revered when I was a girl. The author's former home was still there in another part of my home city, Atlanta.

    I recall when I was in the former Soviet Union in the early 60's, some of the Intourist guides, hoping to provoke us Americans, brought up "Little Black Sambo" as an example of how bad life was in the US for Blacks. I was speechless, as a Southerner.

    I grew up with Kipling, too. My first husband's favorite poem, it was, and we recited it so many times that I once knew it by heart. I still like its message!

  • veer
    9 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    This isn't Little Black Sambo but will probably be considered very much worse by your 'PC' brigade, Frieda. If a deathly silence follows I will know that I have been drummed off this site.
    The photo is of John, his sister and their Mother and was taken in about 1949/50, by his Father a 'serious' amateur photographer. J can remember it being taken, the donning of the pyjamas, the setting up of the studio lights, the hair combed etc. In all about half-an-hour's posing.
    DH said, back in those innocent days, it was one of their favourite books

  • carolyn_ky
    9 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Vee, we had the poem IF in ninth grade and memorized the first and last stanzas. I, too, remember it but only can quote the last line these days.

    Frieda, I had to go get my American Lit books. I took the two courses back-to-back during a night-college summer term. The first volume begins with The Puritan Culture. First up was William Bradford (1590-1657) and last was Pioneer of a New Poetry, Walt Whitman (1819-1892). The second volume begins where the first left off with Walt Whitman and ends with Recent Fiction, last author Joyce Carol Oates (1938- ). They are 1800+ pages each; and, of course, we didn't read nearly all the material in the shortened time of summer sessions, which is partly why I kept the books. Good intentions of further reading, you know?

  • friedag
    Original Author
    9 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Okay, Vee. Well, hmmm. That title is jarring, to say the least. But, gee, John's a handsome young fella!

    In the seventies, one of the first things I noticed when I arrived in the UK was how loose people were about using that term. Some years later I was astonished while watching Dennis Potter's 'Lipstick on Your Collar' when the civil servants (or whatever those characters were supposed to be in the London office) began telling n- jokes. That would never have flown on U.S. television, at that time, no matter how true to the period the dialogue was supposed to be.

    The UK title of one of Agatha Christie's books was something similar. For the U.S. it was changed to Ten Little Indians, but that didn't last long. The final U.S. title was And Then There Were None.

    There's some complaint about black rappers using the n-word, but others defend it as their prerogative.

    I do think there is legitimate context for its use, though not for children -- whether historically as in Huckleberry Finn, which is NOT a children's book although many people have the mistaken notion it is -- or in modern settings where bathroom and gutter invective is, unfortunately, a fact in realistic modern dialogue. The PC people in the U.S., though, get all wound up about that word more than any other.

  • friedag
    Original Author
    9 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Carolyn: Whew! 1800+ pages each for summer courses! I know you are a diligent reader and student, but I don't blame you for not reading everything. I bet you were thrilled to see Joyce Carol Oates, 'cause I know how much you love her writing. ;-)

  • J C
    9 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    The Little Turtle

    There was a little turtle.
    He lived in a box.
    He swam in a puddle.
    He climbed on the rocks.

    He snapped at a mosquito.
    He snapped at a flea.
    He snapped at a minnow.
    And he snapped at me.

    He caught the mosquito.
    He caught the flea.
    He caught the minnow.
    But he didn't catch me.

    - Vachel Lindsay

    My mother had all of us, myself included, memorizing poems even before we could talk. She would recite to us and encourage us to try to say the words ourselves. This is the first one I remember learning.

    This one came a bit later -

    He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven

    Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
    Enwrought with golden and silver light,
    The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
    Of night and light and the half light,
    I would spread the cloths under your feet:
    But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
    I have spread my dreams under your feet;
    Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

    - William Butler Yeats

  • carolyn_ky
    9 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Ha, Frieda. No, the entire books were not assigned, just samples from each unit.

    I also had two regular semesters of huge books for English Lit. beginning with Beowulf and the Green Man. I've kept them, too, with the same "sometime" reading plan.

  • veer
    9 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Frieda, I think the difference in our use of the 'n' word back in pre-PC days was that it wasn't used in a derogatory/insulting way; it was just an ordinary word presumable picked up from the US. I must say I have never heard it used in the last thirty-forty years.
    The big PC word over here has been about the rag-doll known as a Golliwog. Many children owned such a doll, as I did, and we loved them to bits but . . .the Guardianistas claimed them to be demeaning and unsuitable toys.
    An extreme eg of this thinking/mindset happened a few years ago at a posh function to do with an up-market TV station.
    One guest was overheard telling someone that a certain tennis player had the wild-looking hair of a golliwog. The 'overhearer', who had not been part of the conversation, reported this to High Authority resulting in the 'golliwog' speaker being banned from the TV channel.
    The irony of it was that the alleged 'informer' is a successful stand-up comedienne who's jokes have often crawled out of a dark and fetid sewer.

  • friedag
    Original Author
    9 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Thank you, Siobhan, for posting the poems you memorized as a child. I'm going to introduce 'The Little Turtle' to my granddaughter when I see her next week as I think she will be tickled and can easily learn it.

    It's a coincidence, no doubt, that Vachel Lindsay, whom I haven't thought of in years, came up in two postings in one day on this thread. Similarly, I was trying to think of the last two lines of the Yeats poem recently but they eluded me until you presented them to me, out of the blue so to speak. I love when things like that happen!

    Vee, we had those 'golliwog' rag dolls, too, but I don't think we called them golliwogs although I can't recall our name for them. I also had a 'mammy' rag doll with her red dress, white pinafore, and tignon, probably based on Hattie McDaniel's character of 'Mammy' in the film of Gone With the Wind. Mammies were beloved figures in American imagination and until recently have been tolerated in their stereotypical presentation...same with 'Aunt Jemima' figures. But the PC do-gooders have done their damnedest to rub out mammies and aunties, even trying to shame the Aunt Jemima pancake and syrup producers to abandon her as their logo. Grrrr! That is just one example of the current madness.

  • annpan
    9 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Vee, I tracked down the "golliwog hair" story. I also looked up a story that blew up in 2010 in Australia over a KFC advert for fried chicken being offerred to a West Indian cricket team that got pulled, not because of Australian objections, but in case it caused offence to other non-Australian viewers here!
    I don't think Golly dolls were common in Australia but I bought a beautiful handknitted one for a Great GD which was displayed in a craft shop. I have seen them in toy shops too but the preference is for other dolls, I notice.

  • woodnymph2_gw
    9 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Not only did we have the "Mammy" dolls when I was growing up as a girl in Atlanta. We also had the sort of binary doll that you could flip over: the one was white and blond, and when you turned it upside down, it was a black "mammy" stereotype. Now, I understand that these dolls are collectors items and much sought after.

  • friedag
    Original Author
    9 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Mary, the binary dolls remind me how much 'mammy' was iconic in American culture at one time. My grandmother had a porcelain cookie jar in the shape of Mammy that she kept on top of her refrigerator. We grandkids were lifted up to Mammy, whose top half had been removed, to retrieve a cookie or two. Then her top was put back on and we were told to kiss Mammy and thank her for the cookies. We duly did so. There was also a drippings-catcher in the shape of Mammy on the shelf above the stove. Mammy was always something nourishing or nurturing, it seems. Why that is considered demeaning nowadays beats me.

    Vee, did you and your brothers read any of the weeklies aimed at adolescents? I just reread George Orwell's essay titled Boys' Weeklies. He wrote that these publications were more influential in forming taste than most adults ever imagined. Yet adults didn't object to this reading material as they did to comics, 'Yank mags', and the so-called 'dreadfuls' of an earlier time. There were American publications with adolescents as the intended audience, but after reading a few of the UK versions, I really am not sure that there ever was a direct American equivalent, at least not ones where school stories were the central focus. I understand that these tales eventually lost some of their appeal but they were still creaking along as late as the 1980s. Are they dead now?

    I remember getting a kick out of receiving and reading Grit, a weekly newspaper, that was so lowbrow in its chipperness that anyone of any pretentions of sophistication sneered at it. Yep, it was cornball and sappy with sentimentality, but it was FUN, too. I suppose I had no pretentions whatsoever in private or with my girlfriends because I read things like True Confessions and True Romance that had lurid enticements on the covers, such as 'I Sold My Body to Keep My Soul' and 'I Was Seventeen and Already Divorced Twice'. Disillusionment set in pretty quickly, however, because the stories were usually of the bait-and-switch type and extremely silly. I think it was the illicitness of reading such tripe that was the true appeal to my adolescent self. Did you read this kind of stuff? Aw, come on and admit it, if you did. :-)

  • annpan
    9 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Frieda, I was an avid cinema fan and when I started work had a free pass given me which meant that I use it to go to the local pictures once a week. As there wasn't a TV where I lodged, I went 3-4 times during the week. The TV was at my parents home where I spent the weekend.
    My magazine, which I had on order every week, was a cinema fan magazine which gave details of new releases and gossip. It was proudly paid for out of my own earnings. My three best friends were only children and their parents bought their comics and other popular reading material. Lucky ducks!

  • veer
    9 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Frieda, you ask about reading young people's/children's mags.
    I haven't read the article by Orwell but think probably from the date he would have been writing he may have been talking about The Children's Newspaper founded by journalist Arthur Mee. I know it was eagerly read by my late Mother and her brother. Mee also went on to edit the Children's Encyclopaedia full of 'useful' information though rather condescending and worthy in tone.
    In those far-off days there were also lots of general children's comics . . . from the stuff for the very young . . . I enjoyed 'Tiny Tots' and 'Chicks Own' . . . to what you in the US call the PreTeen mags. The girl's ones I read were School Friend and Girl's Chrystal lots of school-based stories, enjoyable as they didn't represent 'real' school life at all and, of course, sex never reared its ugly head. Boys read Roy of the Rovers and similar foorball-related comics.
    A good quality read was for boys The Eagle and less-so its 'sister' mag Girl.
    The cheap (2d) but cheerful and funny ones were 'The Beano' and 'The Dandy' both Scottish publications; nothing uplifting or improving in either! Minnie-the-Minx, Desperate Dan, Little Plum (Your Redskin Chum), the Bash Street Kids . . . all in strip-cartoon mode.
    I was never into the adolescent mags (and would never have been allowed them!) nor did anyone I knew read them . . . so I could never have borrowed one . . . are they still printed I wonder?
    My daughter used to read Smash Hits all the latest on the Pop scene. SO sophisticated by the '80's.

    Here is a link that might be useful: Beano characters

  • woodnymph2_gw
    9 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Re childrens' movies: when I was growing up, there was a neighborhood school that each Saturday for 25 cents would show Shirley Temple films and others of that ilk. These were quite popular.

    I remember both comic books and juvenile magazines. The latter I recall because there was a tale of a frightful Russian witch named Babi Yaga, who traveled about in a "mortar." That story frightened me and the pictures have stayed with me through the years. I have never come across any other reference to Babi Yaga.

    I was a voracious reader, as an only child, and we had no television. I can recall taking stacks of comic books on trips and reading them in the back seat of the car. My cousins and I used to trade our comic books, the way we did trading cards. (Does anyone else remember trading cards? I used to collect ships).

  • friedag
    Original Author
    9 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Vee, Beano was quite popular in the U.S. from about the mid-sixties -- maybe before but I didn't become aware of it until that John Mayall and the Blues Breakers album came out with Eric Clapton on the cover holding a copy of Beano. Circa 1970 in Lubbock, TX -- of all places! -- there was a shop named Beano's (if I remember correctly, the full name was Buffalo Beano's but I don't know why) a couple of streets over from the Texas Tech campus. It was ostensibly a tobacconist's selling Prince Albert in tins, Zig-Zag rolling papers, imported cigarettes, etc., but it also carried such exotica as bongs, roach clips, hash pipes, and leather-fringed stash bags. No illegal stuff, however. The literature offered at Beano's included the namesake comic, prominently displayed. I don't know how long Beano's stayed in business. It was still there when I left Lubbock during the summer of 1972.

    Do you mean, Vee, that you never had a rebellious streak? or wanted to take a sneak peek? ;-)

    Annpan, those movie fan magazines were the most popular reading material at hairdresser's shops (beauty salons, as we called them) in the U.S. I remember one hairdresser fulminating, though, about the "lies, lies, lies" printed in the biographical pieces about the stars. She was right, of course, but nobody besides her was too worried about it.

    Mary, I attended many Saturday "matinees", as they were called but actually started at 9:00 a.m., at our town's lesser movie theatre that were solely for children's attendance -- no self-respecting adult ever tried to actually watch a movie during that time because the place was a zoo. I can't recall the title of a single film I saw there, but I think most of them were Westerns, maybe some Three Stooges and Abbott & Costello. I remember trading cards as well, but mainly only the sports ones. My brothers foisted the unpopular duds on me because I didn't know any better.

  • veer
    9 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Over here films for kids were also shown on a Saturday morning. I never went and I know my brothers wanted to go but it was considered unsuitable for nicely brought-up children and even my Father, not as worried about 'correct' behaviour as my Mother, forbade it. From what I understand these shows were as Frieda describes a 'zoo' with much shouting, fighting and general hubbub. Often the film had to be stopped while the manager tried to restore order.
    "Trading cards"? Over here cigarette cards (one in each pack) used to be popular especially among boys. Small pictures of football/cricket stars, cars, ships, boats, butterflies, wildflowers. You could get an album to stick them in.
    We don't use the term 'trading' we call it 'swapping'.
    Frieda, me have a rebellious streak?! We were so held-down as children it is amazing we didn't become drop-outs. You know, no jobs, hair down to our waists, no shoes, never washing, smoking substances, drinking gallons of booze.
    I remember one 'loud' discussion' between my father and brother. Brother had casually remarked he thought he would get a shirt similar to one his friend was wearing. This garment had the faintest/palest of check pattern, the sort of thing worn 'in the country' today; by gentlemen not lumbar jacks. Dad nearly blew a gasket and said a son of his would always were either a grey (school uniform) or a white shirt. Quite unreasonable and pointless but that was Dad. My brothers spent much of their spare time out of our house in the homes of friends and reported back that other families sat about chatting and having 'normal' conversations.
    Me . . . I kept my head down! Going back to boarding school, though equally strict, but where I was one of many, was a relief.
    I do know that once we were more-or-less grown up and I was away from home, we never told our parents anything personal. We might say we had been/were going to a film, show, whatever but never 'who with'. No details about our private lives were shared . . . or asked for.
    The folks were probably quite surprised when J and I got married as I had told them almost nothing about him. :-)

  • friedag
    Original Author
    9 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Vee, how involved were your parents with your and your brothers' schoolwork? I assume because you went to boarding schools, they must have approved of the curricula. But if ever they didn't approve of something, when they got wind of it would they have said, "What is this you are spouting? Where did you learn that?" Say, suddenly some member of the faculty decided to enlighten the pupils about the differences between and relative merits of communism, totalitarianism, socialism, and fascism (perhaps unlikely but I'm using something extreme as illustration), would they have demanded an explanation from the teacher and/or the administration?

    I ask because my parents were pretty much hands-off in their attitude toward what we were taught in our State of Iowa-run public education. The state had a good reputation in education with high graduation/low drop-out rates and the number of students who went on to colleges and universities. In fact, the Iowa education standard was used as an exemplar and adopted by other states. For many years the 'Iowa Achievement Test' was given to students every year to see how much they have learned since they were last tested. Most normal kids loathed the achievement tests, but I adored them because to me it was like solving a very detailed puzzle. In other words, I wasn't normal; but I was a dandy test-taker. :-)

    Anyway, getting back to the point I'm trying to make: My parents left it to the state as to what we were taught in school, which they supplemented at home and in church, etc. But if we came home and started talking about weird things, they would say that sounded like a lot of baloney, yet they probably wouldn't have been bothered enough to confront the powers that be. They probably went years without having a thing to do with any of our instructors.

    Now jump forward two, three, and four decades: One of the biggest complaints in U.S. education is uninvolved parents. When my sons were in school, their teachers nearly drove me crazy by keeping me informed of everything -- and I mean everything -- the boys were learning and doing. They wanted me to attend weekly conferences, which I did because I didn't want to be accused of being uninvolved. But I didn't understand the fuss if the boys were behaving, doing their work, and learning something. Because of my laidback attitude, the teachers disapprovingly wrote me off eventually.

    Recently some parents in the U.S. have become very vocal about their dissatisfaction with their kids' schooling.

    What was your parents' reaction to your marks? Did they give you the third-degree if you didn't get what you should?

    Anyone else who wants to weigh in, please do!

  • veer
    9 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Luckily, for us, neither of my parents were 'into' education and didn't give us a hard time. Dad only ever enquired as to the quality of the school food! My father, despite sending and paying for my brothers to go to a good school, made both of them leave at 16 to start working for him in his business. Of course, at that age, they were quite happy to leave, but found 'real work' starting at the bottom not quite so exciting as they had expected, plus they had very little money to spend and were still living at home.
    I had friends who dreaded the day the school reports were sent home (through the mail in those days). Some parents questioned every mark/result and teacher's comment.
    'Parents Evenings' are very much more common now, sometimes termly; every week sounds way too much.
    These days by secondary school age (your High School) every pupil has a 'homework diary' which the parent has to sign each week as does the form teacher. It used to drive DH mad back in the day.
    Apparently individual teachers now phone parents to talk about Little Tommy. .. which may be necessary if Tommy has flushed someone's head down the loo, or keeps stealing Mary's lunch money. J remembers when a quiet boy, in his form, was bullied repeatedly. During break/lunch times he had to have the boy physically with him to 'protect' him; no senior staff would get involved. In the end he told the parents to call the police . .. which they did. That certainly stirred the Powers that Be out of their cosy offices.
    Is it the case that in the US your school boards and those that run them are elected by the community or something similar?
    This doesn't happen in the UK. Our systems are Govt led. The Dept for Education in Whitehall are the top dogs, the next layers are the County Councils and their Education committees who are elected County Councillors or Local Authority members . . . these people are not elected to a particular council job . . .these are probably done by the toss of a coin in a back-room . . .
    Neither do we elect our dog wardens, fire chiefs, head teachers/Principals or rat catchers. Perhaps if we did they would be more 'answerable' for their actions.

  • J C
    9 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Indeed, most if not all school boards are elected, although I am sure that others here know a lot more about this subject, so I will keep quiet.

    I asked my mom about school, us, and her role. She said she is continually amazed by what she currently sees and hears. All of us without exception (and there were a LOT of us children) did well in school, did not get into trouble, brought home good marks, had lots of friends, did our homework without being told, and went on to university without much fuss. People sometimes ask her for advice on this seemingly unbelievable chain of events, but she has no advice to give. It just happened, in her view. And for what it's worth, in my view as well. It never occurred to me to do anything differently. My sisters and brother have reported the same. Perhaps we were products of our environment?

  • annpan
    9 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    I don't recall any interference by my parents in our education. My "middle" sister and I passed the Scholarship exam so at age 11 went to the Grammar School and left aged 16 to go to work, both as trainee library workers and we both left that to go into the Civil (Public) service.
    My mother was uncomfortable with anyone in authority (she usually called these people "Them") so she had little to do with teaching staff after the Interview with the Head Mistress before we started at the Grammar School. As we behaved she rarely communicated with "Them" unless by letter or she sent my father!

    I did much the same thing with my children, not because of the same reasons but I felt that a hands off was better. The teachers seemed to do what they wanted anyway.
    We had to speak to the Headmaster about a male teacher once as my daughter said that he was being sarcastic to her because my husband had been appointed to the Local Council and he had lost the election.

    Vee, Saturday Morning Pictures wasn't a Zoo at our local cinema. I was made a Monitor and got in free. Bliss!