teaching | John Knifton

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by jfwknifton | July 13, 2014 · 5:23 pm

End-of-Year Hootenanny

Recently, I was invited by members of staff to attend the end-of-year buffet. After serving thirty eight years hard labour at the school, I could hardly refuse. Given my disabilities, though, I thought it best to treat it as a pop concert. There should be a continuous medical presence, preferably with pessimistic posters…

These are the people who really run the place. Today they will judge the acts…

You will need a fabulous sound system and an expert to run it…

And will you need reliable security…

The first two acts were real blasts from the past…

A critical audience prepared their ammunition…

Expectations were high, after that wonderful food and the odd snifter, all on offer at prices to suit the teachers’ pocket….

First, a familiar warm-up act…

…introduced the most cultured man I have ever met…

He spoke wise words for those with power over education at a national level…

By now, a slight shuffling feet of the audience betrayed their desire for something a little lighter, perhaps. A country-and-western singer?

Or perhaps a stand-up comedian?

Reactions were varied. Some seemed not to really like that kind of thing…

Others were even more disapproving…

Simon’s disappearing microphone trick was completely lost without trace…

But thank goodness, though, not before he remembered to introduce, in the most moving terms, Jim, one of nature’s true gentlemen, and a man who lives up to his faith every single second of the day…

Finally found the microphone though…

Just in time to bring on the star turn, Old Whispering Jim…

The inventor of the paper aeroplane…

“Order!! Order!! Order!! Quieten down please!! You’ve all seen a paper aeroplane before!!

And then the familiar music echoed forth, as we awaited some death defying stunt…

Next it was Paul, with the prototype of his recently invented self-camouflaging tie…

An Everton supporter then suddenly rushed on stage, trying to re-enact the events of the 1966 F.A.Cup Final, attempting vainly to gate-crash the whole event…..

The jury were by now ready for the “Best Dressed” contest. Their empty flying bottles of Budweiser, however, would not be allowed to affect the result…

Would it be the same winner for the previous six years?? A lucky seventh triumph?? And would she want a croquet set as first prize??

But no, controversy then ensued! Professor Major’s hat took all the votes, but should he have been wearing it inside in the first place??

Still, at least Everton Mcgibbon can give us a song…

It hasn’t been easy to turn all these different photographs into a coherent story. I hope nobody has been offended. Let’s finish with a slide show of the others that didn’t quite make the cut. There were quite a few suggestions to explain away the occasional blurring. A room that was surprisingly dark for photography? A lens which had to be open for as long as one eighth of a second? Or just a camera with beer goggles?

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Happy retirement, everybody. You have more than earned it.

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Filed under Nottingham, Personal, The High School

Tagged as education, friends, hootenanny, microphone, partay, party, Personal, photos, teachers, teaching

by jfwknifton | July 10, 2014 · 6:12 pm

Brahms and Liszt

I adore History, but most of all, I adore the bright, vivid, and O so human figures who populate those dusty days of yesteryear. One such was Mr Sparey, who, with his friend Mr Hewson, burned like blazing comic meteors across the drab High School skies of the middle years of the nineteenth century. This, of course, was when the old Free School was in Stoney Street in the Broadmarsh area of the city, ten or fifteen years before it moved to its present location.

Mr Sparey taught just one class, which was in one of the two downstairs classrooms. He was a “splendid writer, and a fair arithmetician and grammarian, but a rather rough man with a love for the cane.” He was ably assisted by Mr Hewson, “…a teacher of a more patient temper”. Mr Hewson taught not just English but also French, teaching grammar, setting exercises and marking them.
In late 1854, the pair of them caused great scandal in the town when they decided one Saturday evening to seek prolonged and alcoholic refreshment together in a local tavern on Long Row. It may have been near here…

Or it may have been further down…

Over the course of a spectacular evening, Messrs Sparey and Hewson grew progressively more and more drunk, and eventually managed thoroughly, and publicly, to disgrace themselves.

This was an escapade, though, which they might well have got away with, had it not been for the fact that their appalling behaviour coincided more or less exactly with the arrival of a Government Inspector, who had recently come to the town. He soon found out about this debauched episode, and, as might be imagined, a great deal of embarrassment was caused for the school.
Mr Sparey was told that if the offence was ever repeated, he would be instantly dismissed. Mr Hewson fared even worse. A witness in the subsequent inquiry actually said of him that “…I do not send my boys to this School. I should not like to so long as a character like Hewson’s taught there.” Hewson was then forced to resign.
In 1858, after almost five years of, hopefully, temperance and model behaviour, Mr Sparey, the remaining member of the Long Row Two, himself resigned. No reason was ever given for his departure.
It was not, however, as if Mr Sparey was unused to criticism. Two years earlier, the Headmaster had written to the Governors about “Mr Sparey’s bad English”, and when, later that same year, it was suggested that no member of staff should ever be allowed to keep a public house, for some unrecorded reason, it was Mr Sparey’s name that happened to crop up. The Writing Master countered this foul accusation by saying that that the inn was in actual fact not his, but was held in the name of his wife’s sister.
History is such, of course, that the fate of the Long Row Two remains unknown. But just for a moment they must have lit up a dreary, provincial town in a wonderfully spectacular way.