Primary School Discoveries

At St Andrew’s Rochester, the one school I loved, I found real joy in learning. My favourite subject at the time was probably History. I was an avid collector of Ladybird Books but only the history ones. I remember, particularly, a fascination with Horatio Nelson and the Battle of Trafalgar. As I mentioned in a recent blog I produced a 4 page newspaper about the event complete with adverts for a school project! One of the benefits at that time was that the Tudors were not taught every other year as they seemed to be during my children’s school days. I did very early on develop a dislike for Henry VIII and that has hardened since those days. He was one of the most unpleasant people ever to be in charge of the country and the way he became a folk hero never sat well with me. Instead of him, we learnt about Victoria, the Romans and Boadecia as she was then referred to and Explorers across the ages.

Geography was another subject that I enjoyed because it was focused on facts about countries. We had a slide show once in class that showed the journey from cocoa bean to chocolate and I was absolutely fascinated by the journey from primary source to end product and the work of the women (almost exclusively) who picked, sorted and began processing the cocoa beans. It gave me a whole new appreciation of the bars of chocolate I ate, an appreciation that has continued to this day.

Looking back, I remember Arithmetic as we called it in those days. I was interested in numbers and I proved to be a natural at mental arithmetic. We used to have very long times table tests which I loved and did very well at, and to this day I can calculate numbers in my head for fun!

I have written about Singing Together at length in three blog posts and if you want to take a look at them I have linked to the main one above. In addition there are two Christmas themed entries that you can take a look at with the second link reflecting my St Andrew’s experience.

All of these subjects were taught in an engaging way, by excellent teachers in a supportive environment. My enthusiasm for these areas of learning did not, however, survive my move to Secondary school where anything other than surviving the day intact was the furthest thing from my mind. I wonder how common that was and still is?