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Greenock Academy - 1855 - 1955 - Booklet 1 Greenock Academy, Nelson Street - 1955

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Souvenir history of Greenock Academy 1855 to 1955.

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Page 1: Greenock Academy - 1855 - 1955 - Booklet

Greenock Academy - 1855 - 1955 - Booklet

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Greenock Academy, Nelson Street - 1955

Page 2: Greenock Academy - 1855 - 1955 - Booklet

Greenock Academy - 1855 - 1955 - Booklet

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Greenock Academy Staff ... 1955

Back Row - Herbert Watson : Agnes Roxburgh : Mairi McEwing : J.H. Cameron Love : Thomas Allan : HaroldMcNeill : Daniel Morrison : Martha Baird : John McIntosh : Hugh McFarlane : Allan Macphail : John Brown : Duncan

Ritchie : Jean Armstrong : Cameron Johnston.Middle Row - Hector Munro : Sarah Hughes : Janet Shedden : Catherine Stoddart : Jean Kirkwood : Margaret

McAuslan : Mary McFadyen : Catherine Macdonald : Marjorie Brown : Georgina Lindsay : Annie Russell : BarbaraMacKechnie : Daisy Russell : Norah Martin : Catherine Milne : George Prevost (Janitor).

Front Row - Mary Johnston : Anne Brown : Mary Cameron : Annie Innes : Charles Perry : Allan Beckett : Isabel Lyle :James W. Chadwin (Rector) : John Niven : Jean Tannock : Ian Macdonald : Margaret Landles : A. Gardner Andrew :

Christina MacGregor : Eva McCuaig.

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FOREWORD

Within the pages of this commemorative booklet will be found the story of Greenock Academy during the hundredyears that have passed since its foundation in 1855. It was the aim of the generous and public-spirited citizens who

commissioned the building of the school to provide educational facilities in Greenock of a quality equal to thoseavailable in any Scottish town of comparable size, and the account of the development of the school will show howadministrators. Rectors and teachers have laboured assiduously and successfully to secure this end. It will show how theschool has kept steadily abreast of every proved advance in educational practice in Scotland and has striven at all timesnot only to achieve the highest standards of scholarship but also to lay the soundest possible foundations for graciousand useful living.

Only the first part of this brochure, however, is devoted to a straight-forward, systematic record of the growth of theschool. There follows a series of articles, specially written by certain former pupils, which give vivacious accounts of lifein the Academy in their time and convey a vivid impression of the school's particular characteristics. I acknowledgewith warm thanks these most acceptable contributions which will give much pleasure to all whoread them.

It is my sincere wish that this brochure may find ready approval among the hundreds of former pupils and teacherswhose thoughts will at this time turn with affection to their old school and I am sure it will be read with particularinterest and pleasure by those who, for one reason or another, may not find it possible to visit Greenock for theCentenary celebrations.

I commend it also, and no less warmly, to the attention and interest of Academy pupils of the present day. May theperusal of these pages quicken their affection for and strengthen their pride in their school and may the wordsof the Psalmist find an echo in their hearts - "The lot is fallen unto me in a fair ground : Yea, I have a goodlyheritage."

JAMES W. CHADWIN, Rector.

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EDUCATION OFFICES,PAISLEY

I have been asked to write a Foreword to this Brochure which has been prepared to mark the Centenary of GreenockAcademy and I am very glad to comply.

A Centenary of any kind is an important occasion: the Centenary of a school is particularly noteworthy. In these timescompetition is keen in all fields of human endeavour and therefore the need for a sound liberal education becomes ofparamount importance.

It has been the aim of all those associated with Greenock Academy during the hundred years that have passed to ensurethat every pupil received such an education. Generations of scholars have passed through the portals of GreenockAcademy and it is true to say that former pupils have attained to prominent positions in many parts of the world.

The school has had a long classical tradition but with the passing of the Education (Scotland) Act, 1918, and theconsequent abolition of School Boards, there emerged a new conception of learning. Education came to be viewedfrom a much wider angle: different techniques were adopted: changes in curricula were introduced: but—and perhapsmost important of all—the needs of the child were at long last given first consideration.

Today then, the Education Committee make provision in Greenock Academy, not only for pupils at the primary schoolstage but on to the fifth and sixth years of the secondary department. Instruction is given in a wide lange of subjects -English; Latin and Greek; French, German and Spanish; History and Geography; Mathematics and Science; Art andMusic; Commercial Subjects, Technical Subjects and Domestic Subjects.

Greenock Academy pupils have acquitted themselves well at the Leaving Certificate Examinations of the ScottishEducation Department during a long number of years and they have also had some specially praiseworthy successes inthe University Bursary Competitions. The tradition of the school is therefore being fully maintained.

The Education Committee, however, are concerned with the condition of the fabric of the Academy, the main buildingof which was erected in the year 1855. According to present-day standards accommodation leaves much to be desired.The possibility of erecting a new building is being seriously considered by the Education Committee but in orderto do so it will be necessary to find a new site of a rather larger area than that on which the Academy at present stands.Negotiations are in progress and while it will be a number of years before new and more up-to-date accommodationcan be provided, I venture to think that in time the hopes that are at present entertained will be realised.

F. L. PATONVice-Chairman,

Renfrewshire Education Committee

The First Hundred Years

It seems, at first sight, as if education was thriving in Greenock during the first half of the nineteenth century. Inaddition to the Grammar School, dating from the early eighteenth century, there were the Mathematical and Englishschools, two Charity schools, several private schools and. during the period of the Napoleonic War. many oppor-tunities of tuition in French from refugees. It seems probable, too. that private lessons in German and Italian could behad more easily than at the present time. But this picture of a plethora of educational facilities is deceptive.Most of them were available only for the well-to-do. The roll in two of the three main schools never exceeded 100 andthat of the Grammar School reached 150 only after the appointment of Mr (later Dr) James Lockhart Brown. Therewas, too. an utter lack of co-ordination and a great wastage of time, for pupils took classes in various schools andprobably, like their modern counterparts in their passage from room to room. dallied away the time. Theoretically, eachof the three chief schools, as their names imply, was restricted to a limited range of subjects, but they poached on oneanother's preserves from the beginning. In the 1760's Alexander Bradfute of the Grammar School, was repri-manded for teaching English by the Town Council which feared that the English schoolmaster would, in his turn teachLatin. Accusations and counter-accusations fly from school to school during the whole period. At the root of this wasthe eagerness of the teachers to seize any opportunity which would promise an addition, in the shape of more fees,to their scanty salaries.

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The Need for an Academy

The need of centralisation was felt as early as 1780, when an attempt was made to unite the Grammar. English andMathematical schools in one Academy. This plan soon fell through and a proposal to the same effect made in theTown Council in 1805. had no better success. In 1810, however, when the Magistrates were promoting a new TownBill in Parliament, they were petitioned in a Memorial, signed by 87 of the principal citizens, including John Gait. tobuild "an Academy or well organised seminary" so that education in Greenock could compare favourably with thatprovided in other towns. The Memorial was approved by the Council but an accompanying suggestion that house-holders paying rents over £10 should be taxed to finance the project understandably met with a very differentreception. This obnoxious clause was dropped when the proposals were incorporated in the Bill, critics having pointedout that in Perth and Dumfries the Academies had been raised by public subscription. Forty-five years, however, wereto pass before the Academy was opened. Severe trade depressions, particularly during the catastrophicperiod of the 1840's, and serious epidemics of cholera and smallpox, consequent upon appalling housing conditions,preoccupied public attention, and there survives from the same period a reference to dissatisfaction among theratepayers that public funds should be used to subsidise a school for the children of the rich. There is no doubt, too.that it was difficult to raise the necessary money: indeed, as will be seen later, the Academy was in financialdifficulties for the first forty years of its existence. It seems clear, also, that masters in schools which were not to be partof the new institution regarded the project with dismay as imperilling their own livelihood and probably did their bestto obstruct it. And in the end. when the decision was taken, very lengthy deliberations preceded its execution.

The long train was laid in 1847. On May 2nd of that year. on the proposal of Provost J. J. Grieve, a committee withpowers to co-opt others, notably ministers of the town, was appointed "to consider the whole subject ofeducation locally, to bring about improvements, and to concentrate all branches of education into a combined systemunder one roof with a uniformity of hours and classes." The report of this committee, largely compiled from thereturns made by Greenock's thirty-five heads ol' schools, revealed a considerable decline in education in the burghduring the previous thirty years. In 1826 one-ninth of the population had attended school, in 1834one-eleventh, and at the date of the Report the number was down to one-thirteenth. These figures applied tu childrenunder fifteen. Only sixteen boys altogether were learning mathematics in Greenock. In the Grammar Schoolonly fifty boys were learning' the Latin language. In other schools Latin grammar was taught incidentally to forty-twoboys. and only twelve young men were learning Greek. "At present", stated the Report, "parents and guardians have noencouragement to retain their children in Greenock: and, seeing the educational institutions of other places to bemuch more advantageous, many families either remove altogether from the town or send away their children at greatsacrifices of money and inclination." It was proposed therefore, that "the two schools at present in connection withthe Town Council, the Grammar School and the Mathematical School, should be incorporated into a new Academy tobe built by public subscription, provided that an arrangement can be made with the masters." BothDr Brown of the Grammar School and Mr (afterwards Dr) Buchanan of the Mathematical School, agreed to transferthen- services to the proposed Academy. Dr Brown died in 1847 and Mr Buchanan was appointed Rector of theAcademy-to-be.

Erection of The Main Building Its Surroundings

Long and tedious negotiations took place before a decision on a suitable site was arrived at. At last, in 1852, at ameeting of subscribers, it was decided to build on a feu of two acres, in a field off Nelson Street, generously offered bySir Michael Robert Shaw Stew-art. Bart. The building was designed by Messrs Hay., Architects, of Liverpool, who hadpreviously designed Wellpark Church in lower Lynedoch Street. It was to be in what was called, not inappropriately, theMonastic Style. Building began in May, 1854 but, even before the work was started, it was discovered - this has afamiliar ring, that the cost would largely exceed the sum at first named - £3,605. The plans were modified to bring thecost within that sum and the architects, this sounds less familiar, regretting their miscalculations, afterwards made adonation of fifty guineas to the fund.

When the Academy was built, it had plenty of open space round about it, space for large playing fields, one must reflectregretfully, but this educational development could hardly have been foreseen at the time. On the oppositeside of Nelson Street was a large field through which wandered the West Burn, a clear stream in 1855 and frequentedby townswomen who there washed and bleached their domestic linen. Later, the burn became filthy and polluted and amenace to public health. Beyond it. in the neighbourhood of the present West Station, was Ferguson's Sugar House.built in 1847 and destroyed by fire ten years later. This sensational occurrence, like a later fire in Brisbane Street, nodoubt caused depleted attendances in the new school. Behind the school stretched a large expanse of fields, with veryfew buildings to be seen. The most conspicuous were Greenbank House - still standing, though divided, Ford

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House, so called presumably because of the ford at one time across the West Burn then much larger - and theObservatory, on the site of the property known today as Towerhill. The West Kirk had been built in the early forties,but its steeple was not completed till 1854 and the bell not erected till 1859. Ardgowan School was notbuilt until 1896. An interesting feature of the landscape, particularly for Academy pupils was an orchard at what is nowthe corner of Inverkip Street and Nelson Street. Academy boys were in the habit of pilfering fruit hereduring the dinner hour. The owner skilfully transferred reprisals by allowing the boys to climb the trees and thenreleasing his watch-dog which kept them there until they had to face the penalty for being late.

In such agreeable and interesting surroundings the Academy was opened on Monday, 3rd September. 1855, in thepresence of Sir Michael Robert Shaw Stewart. the Provost, the Bailies, Members of the Council and Teachers, togetherwith many Ministers and principal inhabitants of the town.

Financial Difficulties

Debt weighed heavily on the school from the beginning and new measures had to be taken to finance the undertakingand provide for further expansion and improvements. In 1864, a new Constitution was drawn up, makingprovision for a capital of £7,000 to be subscribed in shares of £10 each. It is worth noting that among the chiefshareholders were Thomas Fairric and William Macfie, who also gave respectively donations of £100 and £1,100 andwho founded two Academy bursaries, open to boys in the town and still annually competed for.

The annual revenue from the school was to be allocated for payment of rates and taxes, interest on the debt. repairs,salaries, and additions to the buildings. Any surplus was to go towards reducing the principal of the debt.Any sum then remaining, and this is a phrase which throws doubts on the arithmetic of the period, was to be divided

among the shareholders. but only when the debt had been paid off. The shareholders at no time received any-thing. £2,500 had already been borrowed by the Directors and a further £500 was then borrowed. £3.000 beingregarded as the limit of any borrowings. By this time, 1864, the northern wing had been completed and fivehundred pupils were attending the school.

The First Three Rectors

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Dr Buchanan resigned in 1860 and was succeeded by Mr (later Dr) Archibald Montgomerie. another mathematician,but his successor, Mr Edward L. Neilson, who was appointed in 1872, was a classical scholar. This fact was immediatelyreflected in the school Prospectus, where Latin and Greek were put first in the Prize List and Mathematics wasreduced from first to fourth place. Very little information can be obtained about the personalities of the first three

Rectors of the Academy. The Staff, too, are little more than names, but we do know that the Head EnglishMaster, Mr Haye Mure, taught Manners and Cleanliness as an incidental and that Mr John Fraser, the Writing Master,wrote a hand of superlative elegance, specimens of which still survive to astonish us. The following extractfrom the "Greenock Advertiser" of 3rd March, 1860, records a miracle of penmanship - "The Paisley Advertiser"makes the following remark on the Greenock Non-Intrusion Petition being rejected by the House of Commons on theground of its being engraved - We often witness errors and inconvenience flowing from bad penmanship, but it issomething new to hear of difficulties arising from its being too good. Mr Fraser may well congratulate himself onreceiving such a practical acknowledgment of his skill; for a higher compliment was probably never paid topenmanship.'' Mr John Fraser then conducted a private school at 7 West Stewart Street and later became WritingMaster in the Academy.

Short though we are of personal documentation, a good deal can be gleaned about the school itself from theProspectuses which were published from the year of the opening until 1927.

The "Young Ladies" and "Young Gentlemen" of the announcement made in the "Greenock Advertiser" previous tothe opening of the school have become "Boys" and "Girls" in the Prospectus of 1860. But already, in 1856. there are"Young Ladies" and "Girls" on the Prize Lists, and the "Young Gentlemen" have disappeared. In 1870 the "Girls" havereturned to gentility, the boys. presumably, being irredeemable. In 1873 there are "Girls" in Drawing and Latin, but theyare "Young Ladies" in other subjects. By 1875, there are "Girls" in Arithmetic and Singing and in 1876 they are to befound in Writing. In the following year the "Young Ladies" appear for the last time - in English and ModernLanguages. It is interesting to speculate on this lack of a uniform designation. Was it a question of the views held by theteachers, or were the "Girls" only "Young Ladies" in certain classes ?

Throughout the greater part of this period - until 1883, to be exact - the statement, "The Curriculum is notcompulsory," appears regularly. But it is also pointed out that Pupils would do well to keep to recognised courses. Anincrease in numbers and the development of external examinations finally imposed the necessity of abrogating the

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liberty of those early years. There is not much word about school examinations of the modern sort. An account of aPublic Examination of the pupils is given elsewhere in the Brochure and we learn, too, that, from Mr Neilson'saccession, all classes were open for inspection, i.e. by parents and others interested, on Fridays. After 1879 classes couldbe inspected at "all times." No first-hand account of what happened on these occasions is available and we do notknow to what extent, if any, parents took advantage of the offer.

The management of the school was transferred to the Greenock Burgh School Board in 1882. Its reputation and itscurriculum were steadily growing. By 1872 three former pupils had won Snell Exhibitions and one was a SeniorWrangler. In 1879 R. Macfarlan, still very rnuch alive, is recorded as winning a prize for Phonography, i.e. Shorthand.Botany, presumably a girls' class, appears in the Prize Lists in 1885. and Science in 1889. Science was taught by theMathematics staff until 1900, when a separate department was set up under Mr David Baird. In 1889, also, there arePrizes for both Drill and Gymnastics and this continues till 1910 when Drill disappears. Writing figures prominently atall stages and a special prize for Ornamental Writing was awarded till 1889. The utilitarian age is thus ushered in to giveway ultimately to the age of the Biro and illegibility.

In 1887 the curriculum was reorganised "to meet modern requirements." The girls were to receive a "thoroughly soundEnglish Education in all its branches." Special attention was to be paid to French, German, and Music, and Cookerywas introduced. For the boys there was to be a Classical and a Modern Side, alternatively called a University and aCommercial Side - the latter to equip boys thoroughly for "a mercantile career." Emphasis was laid on the value ofPhysical Training for both boys and girls. The girls were to have Drill and the boys Drill. Fencing and Gymnastics.French and German were to be begun earlier and the "Initiatory Classes" - formidable language - were to be "moreconversational than grammatical."

Until the end of this period, and for several years after it, girls' names hardly appear in the Classics and MathematicsPrize Lists. They were, it seems, discouraged from pursuing these studies too far. In Mathematics they seem to havebeen restricted to Arithmetic although, in 1881, a girl appears among the Prizewinners in Algebra for the first time, andgets an "Extra" prize, but there is no girl in the Senior Mathematics Prize List till 1892, In Classics girls appear asprizewinners in the first and second Latin classes as early as 1878 but infrequently thereafter till 1888. In 1893,the year of Mr Gemmell's accession, the Prospectus states firmly: "Parents should note that for subsequentexaminations in English and French some knowledge of Latin is of great service to girls.'' In the same year,Malcolm McCaskill was the first winner of the three principal school prizes, the Brown Prize for Classics, founded in1853 in memory of Dr James L. Brown, Rector of the Grammar School from 1823-1847, the Stewart GoldMedal, awarded to the Dux, instituted in 1856, and the Campbell Prize for Mathematics, dating from 1863. No girl wonthe Brown Prize till 1916 when it was won by one of the first girls to take Greek, but nineteen girls won the StewartPrize before that date, and, starting in 1898, five had won the Campbell Prize, three in succession in the years 1913-15.

Until 1887 the school opened at 9 and closed at 3, younger pupils coming at 10. There was an interval of ten minutesevery hour and a break of half an hour between 11.45 and 12.15. Only those living near the school could run home forlunch: the others had to use the school canteen. There were no organised games, but cricket, football, and prisoners'base were played in the playground, then very much larger than now, extending indeed up to the present Drill Hall. Itmust be remembered. too, that the Academy consisted till 1888 of the "twelve spacious and well-aired classrooms withteachers rooms etc. and a large hall" which made up the original building. The Prospectus of 1887 refers grandly tothe Playground as the Park (it is so designated till 1907), but a former pupil of the period avers positively that there wasvery little grass. However this may be, the Cattle Show and Highland Games took place there annually for several yearsand the former event, held during the term, was a notable cause of truancy.

The Gemmell Era

Mr Neilson retired in 1893, to be succeeded by Mr Alexander Gemmell who became Rector at the early age of twenty-eight and who occupied the post for thirty-seven years.

The first Prospectus of what might be called the Gemmell era is a much fuller, clearer, and more informativepublication than its precursors. While omitting the lists of text-books, it gives more precise information on thecurriculum, dilates on the value of the Leaving Certificate, devotes a page to the Special Prizes, sets forth the Schooltimetables - and the teachers - and, for the first time, includes a number of School Regulations, among them aninjunction that, "Idling about the Playground during School hours will not be permitted." The School, its day now ex-tended to 4 p.m., has become something of the complex unity with which we are familiar.

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During this period also it took its present shape. The development of the school buildings is described in some detailelsewhere but a very brief reference may be made here to the three large additions built during the Rectorship of MrGemmell, the first, in 1894-95 adding to the original structure a Gymnasium, a Science Room, two ArtRooms and a Class-room, the second in 1909-10, being the present Primary building and the third, in 1928, consistingof a workshop, a new Science Lab. and a canteen.

From the full information available on the Staff of the school at this time it is clear that Mr Gemmell had very ablesubordinates. Several of these taught in the Academy during almost the whole period. Notable among them was MissMcWilliam, Infant Mistress from 1896-1929. Many former pupils pay tribute to her enthusiasm, her kindness, and herunderstanding of small children. One reference to her as "rather forbidding to a child of five" is followed by therevealing, "But I was not afraid of her as I was of some teachers." Another teacher in the Infant Departmentwho still takes a great interest in the school and visits it frequently, Miss J. Allison MacGillivray, was a member of theStaff from 1904 to 1948. Miss Marjory Menzies, who taught in the Modern Languages Department, and founded theFrench prize, was a gracious and efficient Lady Superintendent from 1900 to 1924.

Of the English Staff, Mr James Anderson, Head of the Department from 1883 to 1908, is referred to with affection andenthusiasm in three other contributions. His successor, Mr William Braid Taylor. who later succeeded MrGemmell as Rector evokes this tribute: "Mr Taylor was a shy man, whose severity of expression was softened by atwinkle of the eye that brought hope, if not of escape, at least of mercy, to the wrongdoer. He soon showedhimself an excellent teacher. Believing, to the dismay of the lazy, that for genius and dullard alike, hard work was theway to achievement, he assumed that all shared his view and refused to believe that learning was impossible for anyone.Above all. he was interested in his pupils as individuals, and found his happiness in helping them. Teaching the girlshockey, helping with rugby and cricket, or driving in stakes on the eve of the sports, he was completely at home. Andpupils were proud to have his friendship."

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Mr Tait, Assistant in Mathematics from 1893 to 1917 and Head of the department till 1927, is thus described by aformer pupil: "A kindly man, calm of movement and temperament, he gave to all his pupils a sense of security andstrength. Problems were no longer insoluble and the most intractable sums lost their terror under his quiet guidance. Inthe class-room and as umoire on the cricket pitch he inspired the efficient and brought hope and courage to the fearfuland disconsolate." The Science Department as it is today was founded by Mr David Baird who also fostered rugby inthe school. When he left in 1930. to become Headmaster of Johnstone High School. Science was securely establishedas one of the major departments and rugby had reached an exceptional standard for a school with so few "big" boys.Other teachers of the period who gave long and excellent service to the school were Mr W. U. Park, a Colonel in theTerritorials, who taught Arithmetic and put it into practice in surveying exercises from which pupils were inclined todrift away to more congenial pursuits, Mr James Millar, the Writing Master, who was captain of the Greenock GolfClub and Mr David Ramsay, who revolutionised the Art Department. Those Principal Teachers finely maintained theefficiency and reputation of the School during the difficult years of the 1914-18 war. A word must also be said of MrWilliam Downie, school janitor from 1887-1922 who dispensed cocoa and rolls and syrup at ½d each from what hascome to be called the "old staffroom" and Sergeant Sheret, Gymnastics Instructor from 1903-21, a foils champion ofthe army and now church-officer in St. Giles Cathedral.

The last phase in the reorganisation of the school was the appointment of Mr J. L. L. Niven as Principal Teacher ofClassics on the retiral of Mr Gemmell, who had been, like his predecessor, Head of the Classics Departmentas well as Rector. In the same way, Dr Buchanan and Dr Montgomerie, mathematicians, had supervised the work ofthe Mathematics Department. But it was now seen to be no longer possible to combine the business of organising theschool with the headship of a department, without overworking both the Rector and the departmental assistants.

The Development of Games

The references made to Mr Tait and Mr Baird have already indicated that games were being developed in the school.The first Prospectus reference to games in Session 1896-97 states: "There is a Cricket Club and it is hoped there will bea Rugby Club in connection with the School. A Gymnastic Instructor has been chosen, specially qualified to

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superintend the cricket and football." Another development, cut short, alas ! is referred to in the following sentence:"Academy Pupils are admitted to the West End Baths at half-price." The cryptic note also appears that " Pupils whoown bicycles are requested to hand their names to the Rector." This is explained in the following Prospectus whichstates that 'there are in connection with the School a Cricket Club and a Rugby Club" and that "it is hoped there will bea Bicycle Club." The Prospectus goes on as follows: "For a long time the want of a proper field for Cricket andFootball has been very much felt: but hitherto all endeavours to supply this want have proved vain. Those who areinterested in outdoor games will be pleased to learn that the Rector has entered into an agreement with the WanderersFootball Club to share with them the cost of levelling and draining a portion of West Battery Park, so as to adapt it forFootball and Cricket. A sum of about one hundred and fifty pounds will require to be raised by the Academy Clubs andthey look with confidence to old pupils and friends to assist them. The Rector will be glad to receive and acknowledgesubscriptions." The reference to this one hundred and fifty pounds appears for the next year or so but by Session 1900-01 the Prospectus merely states that "There are in connection with the School a Cricket Club and a Rugby Club and theground is at West Battery Park." (As the School was deprived of this ground during the First World War, Sport wasmuch disrupted but Glenpark was made available for school cricket practices and matches.) The GymnasticsInstructor is still stated to be in charge of games' supervision. By 1901 it appears that a bat was being presented to thebest batsman and a ball to the best bowler as ascertained by League Matches. This practice has been discontinued asfostering individualism. The lirst reference to organised sports is to be found in the Prize List attached to theProspectus for 1903-4. but these sports were presumably of much earlier date. We hear no more of the Bicycle Club,but during the years that followed the Academy became a force in rugby and cricket and in the latter game wasable to challenge successfully the chief Glasgow schools. It was not until 1923 that the loss of the Battery Park playingfield was made good by the opening of the ground at Fort Matilda which provided tennis courts as well as rugby andcricket pitches.

The School and its Rector

While the Academy of Mr Gemmell's period begins in several essentials to resemble the school we know, we comeacross many references which place it in a bygone time. In the early part of the period there were still open fires and gaslighting. The Staff had no common Room and the departments lived in dignified isolation meeting only twice a year towrite reports, and each June to arrange the prizes. The daily visits of the Janitor to "take the Roll" and tours ofinspection by the Rector alone established the fact that the school was a whole. Present-day pupils would not envytheir predecessors who, if they wished dancing lessons, had to have them on Saturday forenoons "so that pupils areenabled to avoid late hours in the dark winter nights and so that the classes do not interfere with the ordinary schoollessons." It is rather a surprise to us, too. accustomed as we are to associate strict enforcement of rules with the schoolsof the past, to learn, from the monotonous repetition of the statement, "Boys are expected to wear the Academy Cap,"that the expectation was vain. A repeated reference in the Prospectus to a falling-off in attendance "during the first twoand the last three weeks of the session, immediately before every holiday and on Fridays generally throughout the year"makes sporadic truancy seem a relatively small matter by comparison.

In the later years of Mr Gemmell's Rectorship the curriculum, founded on the learning of the past, was expanded toinclude a wider range of subjects. Spanish was added in 1921, technical subjects were given more attention. and musicwas no longer restricted to singing. This meant a re-adjusting of periods and a curtailment of the time - about tenperiods a week - allotted to Classics, but was a further step towards the realisation of the ideal expressed in the schoolmotto—"Hinc Vera Virtus." During this period, too, the Education Authority took over the school from the SchoolBoard. That this change in administration did not affect its character is a tribute to the Rector's vision and tenacity ofpurpose. His retiral ended an epoch decisive in the life and development of Greenock Academy.

Mr Gemmell was notable as a scholar, a headmaster and a personality. The variety and impressiveness of his gifts werenot more remarkable than the masterly and masterful manner in which he deployed them, whether spectacularly, aswhen, on his own behalf, he conducted, and won. a case in the Court of Session, or less obtrusively as in his vigilant.unremitting attention to the interests of his school. He was a distinguished member of the University Court, taking aprominent part in University administration and keeping a watchful eye on Classical studies, as was to be expected froma President of the Scottish Classical Association. But despite his enthusiasm for the Classics, he was fully aware that thecurriculum had to be changed to meet changing circumstances, and it is to him that the school owes the introduction ofSpanish. His busy and purposeful mind neglected no subject in the curriculum and no school activity. "Hunumi nil a inr

alien-inn puto" might well have been (.me of his mottoes. He constantly insisted on the importance for later educationof a thorough grounding in the Primary School and saw that it was given. The cricket and rugby captains had to reportto him after every match and if the team had lost. a post-mortem took place. The high reputation which the Academyacquired in the worlds of learning, business, and sport was a testimonial to his great abilities. That he had his

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eccentricities and what Dr Johnson might have called his "anfractuosities" there is plenty of evidence: this cannotobscure the fact that the Acadc my was fortunate to be guided into the 20th century and through some of its mostdifficult years by so sure and so skilful a pilot.

Mr Taylor

The retiral of Mr Gemmell after such a long period in office inevitably presented a problem and a challenge to hissuccessor. The impact of a strong personality on a school is evident in all phases of its work, and thewithdrawal of his inspiration may well prove crippling, if not disastrous. The school, however, was fortunate in its newRector. Mr William Braid Taylor.

Mr Taylor, the antithesis of Mr Gemmell in many ways. a quiet, persistent man who shunned the lime-light, had knownthe school intimately for many years and now returned as Rector with the added experience of fiveyears as Headmaster of Johnstone High School.

The School, when Mr Tavlor took office, was growing in numbers, but accommodation was not unduly taxed. Thecurriculum showed little change, and the balance between the Classical and Modern sides was nicely maintained. Underthe quiet but firm stimulus of Mr Taylor school life settled to a steady rhythm which enabled both Staff and pupils togive of their best. Few, if any, periods in the school's history have produced such successes in the Glasgow UniversityBursary Competition. In the period 1931-41 Academy pupils won one first and three second places in the Glasgow-University Bursary Competition. The "annus mirabilis" was 1935 when the Academy had the first, second and ninthplaces. High University honours were also gained by ex-pupils, and yet another Academy boy won the Snell ClassicalExhibition to Oxford In games, too, the school prospered, with special successes in cricket and hockey.

Behind the scenes, meanwhile, changes were taking place. Administration was making ever heavier demands on theRector's time and at last, in 1935, a telephone was installed and. later, a second clerkess was appointed. The increase inthe roll (702 pupils in 1935) emphasised the inadequacy of the accommodation in the school: the one gymnasium couldnot satisfy the requirements of the Education Departmenf for physical training, nor were the full courses in Technicalsubjects and Homecraft possible. Thus there began that pressure upon the authorities for further accommodationwhich was not adequately met until 1950.

The last years of Mr Taylor's Rectorship were clouded by the threat and later bv the outbreak of war. Emergencymeasures, the evacuation to safer areas of some of our puplpils, the requisitioning of the Infant Annexe by the R.A.F.and the call-up of members of the Staff disturbed the work of the school.

The Blitz in May, 1941, left the school materially little damaged, but greatly increased the difficulties of a war-timeregime. That the standard of school-work was to a large extent maintained, so that the percentage of L.C passes wasalmost normal, reflects great credit on the Staff, who in addition to their responibilities in Civil Defence also served onthe various panels for the L.C. examination.

In June, 1941, Mr Taylor retired. Quietiv. as the rigours of wartime demanded but, in all probability, just as he wouldhave preferred, he left the school he had served so devotedly for twenty-eight years. "Semper honos, nomenque tuum,laudesque manebunt."

Mr Dewar

As successor to Mr Taylor the Education Committee chose Mr William McL. Dewar, a First-Class Honours Graduateof Edinburgh University and Principal Teacher of Classics in Dumfries Academy. Mr Dewar. who was only thirty-sixyears of age at the time of his appointment, shouldered his task with enthusiasm and zeal. A less energetic manmight have been content to postpone until the end of hostilities any plans for educational advance but Mr Dewar facedwith boldness and resource the difficulties and limitations imposed by war-time conditions. The problem

of accommodation was temporarily relieved when the classrooms in the Infant Annexe were derequisitioned but withthe rapid rise of the roll to over nine hundred the difficulties again became acute. Nevertheless. Mr Dewar forgedahead with plans to broaden the curriculum and make better prevision for "practical" pursuits. New courses were

devised in Commercial and Technical subjects. There were still no premises or equipment for instruction in Cookeryand Housewifery but Domestic Science courses right up to Leaving Certificate level were nevertheless introduced,

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suitable accommodation having been acquired for this purpose in the Finnart School. Full Leaving Certificate coursesin History and Geography were also organised and placed under the direction of specialist teachers.

Much credit is due to Mr Dewar for his successful efforts to foster training in citizenship, to develop gifts of"leadership" and to strengthen generally the school's "esprit de corps." As a means to this end the Prefect system wasintroduced and the pupils were divided into four "Houses" - Atlantic, Matapan, Narvik and Taranto. By the award ofspecial trophies inter-house rivalry was stimulated in athletics, music and drama, school examinations and - last butnot feast—"service to the school." Every encouragement was given to the development of extra-curricular activitiesincluding the recruitment of a unit of the Women's Junior Air Force and an Army Cadet Force company. It was MrDewar, too. who promoted the formation of the Parents' Association which has done much to foster co-operation between teachers and parents and has contributed in many ways to the welfare of the pupils.

Mr Dewar's record of achievement in six very difficult years was impressive and it came as no surprise when in 1947 hewas chosen for one of the highest posts in Scottish education, the Headmaster-ship of George Henot's Schoolin Edinburgh.

In the years 1941-1945 a number of teachers who had served the school well for many years left on promotion orretirement. In 1941 Mr Dow, Depute Rector and Principal Teacher of English, was promoted to a headmastership. Aman of varied interests and wide-ranging mind, he aroused in his pupils a lively curiosityand interest in his subject, and was a worthy successor to Mr Anderson and Mr Taylor. In this period, also. MissKeddie. the Lady Superintendent. and Miss E. Logic, the Infant Mistress, retired. Miss Keddie in her work inthe Modern Languages Department and in supervising the girls maintained the high tradition established by MissMenzies, while Miss Logic's conduct of her department won the respect of all and ensured a sound founda-tion tor the future educational development of her pupils. To the assistants whose long and devoted service at lastreceived recognition the school owes a debt of gratitude, and pupils will long remember John Thomson, HamishMcKenzie. Robert Morrison and Hugh Craig.

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Mr Chadwin

The vacancy caused by Mr Dewar's resignation was filled by the appointment of Mr James W. Chadwin, M.A., B.A., L-ès-L., Depute Rector and Principal Teacher of Modern Languages in Glasgow High School for Boys. Mr Chadwin, ontaking office, was not faced with a need for drastic reconstruction. He had to consolidate, and here and there to modify,in the light of altered conditions. The acute problem of accommodation was to some extent relieved when the severebuilding restrictions of war-time were relaxed. In the spring and summer of 1950 the Domestic Science Depart-ment was at last adequately housed and a new dining-hall with proper facilities was opened. When the Rector was giventhe option of turning the old one into a library or having it made into another classroom, he had no hesitation inchoosing the library and satisfying a crying need in the school.

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A further step was taken in adjusting the curriculum to conform with modern trends in educational practice. Twoperiods of instruction at the playing fields in games and athletics were provided weekly during school hours forevery class in the school.

One other important matter remains to be recorded. At the end of the First World War money had been raised for aWar Memorial to Former Pupils, and it was decided that the most fitting way to remember them was to use this moneyin helping to provide playing fields for the school. As it was not possible to acquire the exclusive use of a sportsground, the school became a partner in the Fort Matilda Playing Fields Union. After the Second World War a plaquewas erected in the school hall to commemorate the former pupils who had fallen in both wars and a special prize fundwas instituted. The plaque was unveiled in 1950, the ceremony being performed by Miss J. Allison MacGillivray. Thesum of money raised was sufficient to endow War Memorial Prizes throughout the whole school. It is appropriate atthis point to mention that the generosity of the Parents' Association in gathering together a substantial sum as aCentenary Prize Fund will relieve the school of any further responsibility for providing for an adequate number ofprizes.

Finally, mention must be made of several teachers who have left the school in recent years after long and worthyservice. In 1949, Mr Alex. Dunlop. a mathematician of distinction and a teacher of great ability, resigned. The same yearsaw the retiral of Mr Barr Turner. Principal Art Teacher, and of Mr James Gunn, Head of the Handwork Department.These two had been associated with the Academy for twenty-eight and thirty-eight years respectively. In recent monthsthe school has been deprived of the services of Dr Percy Elton from whose notable musicianship it has benefited since1925. A saddening event was the death in 1951 of Mr T. M. Wylie, who had managed the Science Department withoutstanding success since 1930 and had started many brilliant scientists on their careers.

The Academy is a hundred years old and that, in itself, would mean very little if we felt it had outlived its purpose, orthat its character could be radically altered without loss to the community, or that. if it disaupeared. another,any other school, could take its place. A survey of its growth and development leads to opposite conclusions. That.over a century, it has produced, for its size. a surprising number of notable men is some evidence of its scholasticstanding. What is equally important is that its living tradition of service, self-reliance, and a communal spirit hasinfluenced thousands of its pupils to the benefit of their town and of their country. Centenary celebrations are a tributeto our predecessors whose worth we estimate from a vantage point in time: may those who celebrate the bi-centenaryfind a retrospect as rewarding as ours.

MAINLY ARCHITECTURAL

THE story has already been told of how education in Greenock was unified by the building of Greenock Academy.Even although the northern wing was not completed till after 1855, the erection may be considered to be a bargain atthe original building costs. The ground floor opened out by means of arches on to the space which came to be calledthe school garden. It was soon discovered, however, that driving rain and the east wind made conditionsuncomfortable and draughty, and these openings were tilled in with wooden panels and glass. The leaded glass windowswith their diamond panes later gave place to the utilitarian, if less ornamental, plain glass. A relic, however, of theoriginal type of window is still to be seen at the girls' stairway.

The school grounds at first were not completely fenced or walled in. and it was a frequent excuse for late-coming to saythat one had not heard the school bell. This excuse vanished in 1887. Mr Hugh Steel's offer to build the walls ofGourock stone at Finnart Street and Kelly Street lane was accepted at the lump sum of £500, the lowest offer, andoperations began on the 29th June. Finnart Street at that time had not been properly formed, and when boys enteredthe school precincts by the gate on that side, they incurred the displeasure of Mr Horatio Peile,factor for the Laird. The guardians of education in the early days apparently did not believe in the system of remotecontrol, for a Directors' Room was housed in the school building. In the School Board minutes of 7th July, 1887, it isrecorded that the Directors' Room was to be fitted up as a classroom for the German Master, the German classroombeing allocated to the French Master. Throughout the school's life repeated shortage of accommodation has beenpartially overcome by recourse to division of various rooms. It was not till 1888 that the first addition was made to theschool as originally planned. A one-storey building, as a gymnasium with dressing-room for boys andgirls, was completed on 9th August. Presumably Room 4 was used for drill and the less spectacular forms of physicaltraining prior to this. Juniors 1 and 2 were brought to this large hall on the ground floor in session 1896-97 and Room17 in the upper flat, where the infants had been taught, was divided, the room in the north-west corner. No. 16, beingtaken over for sewing.

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The present Room 8 was the Rector's Room in the early days and the Office was united to Room 7. A bust of ColinLamont, headmaster of the old Mathematical School and a pioneer in the teaching of navigation, benignly surveyed thescene from between the two doors.

No doubt as an echo of the Education Act of 1892. and the proposals of the Secondary Education Committee inRenfrewshire in 1893 to recognise Greenock Academy as one of five major centres in the county, further exten-sions were completed in session 1894-95. These comprised a new gymnasium, two art rooms, two dressing-rooms, ascience lecture room (now Rooms 19 and 19A) and a class room (No. 18). The janitor's house was also com-pleted in 1894 and occupied the south-west corner of the rear playground. By session 1899-1900 the old gymnasiumhad been converted into a chemical laboratory and a second flat was built above to accommodate another laboratory.

At the Jubilee celebrations in late September, 1905, a red carpet decorated the stairs as former pupils made their way tothe new gymnasium for the conversazione, the gentlemen in evening wear, complete with high collars and tight-fittingtrousers, and the ladies, with waists constricted to sixteen inches, wearing feather boas.

The demand for still more accommodation continued relentlessly, and the primary building was completed in session1909-10. This consisted at first of five primary classrooms on the ground floor and. on the upper flat of twoArt rooms and a room for Nature Study, etc. The present music room was then an Art store and the workshoD wasalso on this flat. The former Art rooms were converted into two Science laboratories, and in the same periodlarger dressing-rooms for the gymnasium were fitted up. Session 1910-1911 saw a covered way erected to join theoriginal building to the primary building. The roof of the passage collapsed under a heavy weight of "protective"sandbag's in 1940 just before a large number of primary children were due to cross to the main building.

In a minute of meeting of the property sub-committee of the Education Committee, dated December, 1926, it wasstated: "The Special Sub-Committee had under consideration the whole question of accommodation at GreenockAcademy." As a result, in 1928, the lower chemical laboratory was transformed into an additional classroom forMathematics. This rearrangement permitted provision to be made for an additional room required for the departmentsof Modern Languages and Classics. The sewing room in the old building was converted into a classroom when thesubject found a new home in the former workshop. A new wing at the south end of the existing building was erected toprovide accommodation on the ground floor for a workshop, metal room and store. Above this was the laboratory(Room 24), and adjoining the stairway on the opposite side was a lunch room and its attendant kitchen.

The primary department continued to increase, and in 1931 a wooden annexe for the four infant classes was built in theback playground nearby the lane separating the Drill Hall from the school.

1939 saw the evacuation of many school children to less vulnerable areas, and at Rothesay Academy one could see thecolours of many a school, including the maroon of Greenock Academy. The R.A.F. requisitioned the infant annexe andthe classes were shifted to other parts of the school, chiefly Rooms I5 and 37. Two classes occupied the Hall and twoothers were taught for a period in Ardgowan School, being later transferred to Finnart School.

With the return to peace conditions the rambling collection of buildings was still incomplete, as increased provision hadto be made for lunches in school and for pupils taking Domestic Science, now called Homecraft. Accordingly, pre-fabricated buildings were erected in what was once the pride of the school, the garden. The new domestic block wasbrought into use in March 1950, and the new dining-hall and its accompanying kitchen at the beginning of a newsession, on 28th August, 1950. The former lunch room was taken over as a library in May, 1954, and the old kitchenwas converted into a second staff-room for the men.

The annexes detract from the impressiveness of the Academy frontage, but it must be said, too, that the classroomswhich lie behind the facade of the old building fall far short of modern standards in classroom construction. One day itwill certainly be found necessary. in the interests of health, comfort, and convenience, to make very radical changes inthe solid structure built by our ancestors.

FIRST PUBLIC EXAMINATION IN THE ACADEMYExtract from the "Greenock Advertiser"

THE first examination of the Academy took place within its various class-rooms on Tuesday, the 8th July. 1856. Theparents and friends of the pupils attended in very large numbers, and the whole proceedings gave unbounded

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satisfaction. The examination was confined to a single day for the purpose of concentrating the interest of theexhibition: but while perfectly successful in this respect, as evinced by the crowd which thronged the various rooms,opportunity was necessarily not afforded for the teachers showing in any adequate way the progress made and pro-ficiency acquired by their pupils during the year. This is the less to be regretted, however as satisfactory opportunitiesare offered to parents and guardians visiting the school on fixed days all the year over. It is unnecessaryto record the business of the various classes: but all the visitors were delighted to witness the interest which the scholarsfrom the oldest to the youngest took in their lessons, and the readiness and accuracy with which they answered thevarious questions suggested to show their appreciation of what had formed the subjects of their study. Several of theclasses, especially the more advanced young ladies, were not publicly examined: their success, however, was displayed innumerous tasteful essays and other compositions which they had handed in to the teachers during the year. Thespecimens of plain and ornamental writing were many and beautiful, those of the young ladies being remarkably neatand uniform and those of the boys distinct and business-like. The formidable list of prize-winners in the variousdenartments affords evidence of the zeal and emulation by which the children were inspired.

The very large attendance of visitors interested in the proceedings of the day rendered the hall of the Academyaltogether unfit for the remaining and more public business, and, as the day was very beautiful, a platform was erectedin front of the Academy. A numerous and gay crowd surrounded it at three o'clock, when Provost Hunter took thechair. Mr Oliphant, being called upon by Provost Hunter, said—Although he had no thought of intruding upo-n theirattention, he had the greatest pleasure in accepting the invitation of the Provost to say that he had been greatlydelighted with all he had witnessed that day. He was glad indeed, to see an institution so noble provided by the peopleof Greenock for the education of their sons and daughters, and he would say that their expenditure was not misapplied,for what, had been exhibited that day would stand comparison with the best establishments in the country. He wouldnot detain them by observations on the various classes, but he could not help remarking a feature common to them all,the evident good understanding and feeling that subsisted between the teachers and children. That cordiality affordedground for the highest hopes of the success of thsir efforts, and made their labours a pleasure, not a toil. He hopedthe directors and public of Greenock would have many opportunities of witnessing exhibi- tions as successful as that bywhich their elegant Academy had been that dav augurated. (Great cheering).

Provost Hunter then called upon the Rev Dr M'Culloch. Dr M'Culloch said that after the high and gratifying eulogiumjust pronounced on the examination by an educationist of such experience and authority as Mr Oliphant, it was quiteunnecessary for him to offer any remarks on the admirable manner in which the pupils had acquitted themselves. Hissole purpose in coming forward was to express, in the name of the directors, the unmingled satisfaction which thewhole proceedings had afforded them and to tender the thanks of the directors alike tu the large assembia.ge beforehim for their presence and countenance on the present occasion, and lo the rector and masters for their zealous,unflagging and most efficient labours. He only expressed the unanimous sentiment cf the directors, when he said thatthis was on many accounts a proud day to them. They were proud of the fine building, now happily all but completed,which the liberality of their townsmen had enabled them to dedicate to the cause of education. They were proud of abody of scholars five hundred strong - a number which had far outgone their most sanguine expectations. They wereproud of the good conduct and proficiency of the scholars. They were proud, too, of the confidence which so manyparents had shown in the efficiency and management of the Academy, by placing and continuing their children underits charge and discipline. But they were most of all proud of their teachers - and not merely proud of them, butthankful for them - thankful to the Divine Bestower of every good gift. The Directors were well aware from the firstthat everything depended on their being able to secure the services of a staff of teachers in whom the public couldconfide as first-class men. They knew that if they failed in obtaining the right men. this noble edifice would be only auseless pile of masonry: nay. a monument of educational folly. And they were aware, moreover, that to search for goodteachers was not necessarily to find them - that, to select carefully was one thing, and to select successfully quiteanother thing. It was accordingly w'ith no ordinary solicitude that they set about the task of looking out for suitable

teachers. They felt that. notwithstanding every exertion to choose wisely, they might yet choose wrongly, and therebywithhold from this community, for years to come, an institution which the experience of the last nine months provedto have been a felt want and a prized benefit. All the livelier, therefore, was their thankfulness, that they could pointtoday to a staff of teachers who had already won for themselves a place in the hearts of both parents and children: whohad worked energetically apart and harmoniously together and managed their various departments with such temperand discretion that not a single case of discipline, or even of complaint, had yet called for the interposition of thedirectors.

The private classes, which contained the oldest and most advanced pupils, had today made no sign. The highest Englishclass composed of young ladies well versed in several branches of literature, had declined to make compearance.

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modestly holding back from the public gaze, and hiding its light under a bushel. But when he (Dr M'C) informed hisaudience that the young ladies in question had during the past session studied the principles of composition, masteredtwo books of the "Paradise Lost." gone through a large portion ef the history of British literature, and written, he knewnot how many, essays, and tales, and poems, he was persuaded all would agree with him in thinking that these youngladies might, without fear or shame, have stood the test of any examination, and by their attainments delighted, perhapsinstructed, many of their seniors. In nothing abo-ut the Academy did he rejoice so much as in the means and appliancesit provided for the higher education of young ladies, for their intellectual culture during those years which immediatelyprecede womanhood, those years when their judgment and taste were most susceptible of culture, and when, moreover,their fathers and mothers did not very well know how to employ and occupy them. He rejoiced in the efficiency of eachof the departments in the Academy. He rejoiced that the mathematical department had sus- tained its old and well-earned fame; he rejoiced that the penmanship was so admirable; he rejoiced that the Latin and Greek classes had beenso well attended, and so effectually taught. But he most of all rejoiced that Mr Chalmers had succeeded in attracting tothe study of the English language and of British literature, so large a number of young persons above the age of meregirls. He trusted the highest English class would prosper more and more, and be patronised more and more. Andif young ladies from sixteen to twenty years of age would but take his advice, they would all resolve, as the best andwisest thing they could do, forthwith to ask their parents to allow them to attend that most instructive andattractive class.

REMINISCENCES: 1894-1900

I CAME to the Academy in 1894. after four years in the Highlanders' Academy. My father had been a pupil in an earlierHighlanders' Academy, and I think this influenced him in sending me there. I was put into Senior II. The schoolprospectus was impressive. There was a front view photograuh of the building and there was a little of its history, aswell as details of work and timetables and the teaching staff, and a list of the class prize-winners in the past session. Astatement which appeared in successive years of the prospectus, remains with me - "the drainage system has beenthoroughly overhauled, and the sanitation is perfect."

Mr Gemmell was then beginning the second year of his rectorship. To us. at first, he was just a figure, but I saw muchof him in later years because he took suecial care in the instruction of the boys who were going to the University. Hewas a fine teacher and loved his classical subjects, and his senior boys got a grounding in Greek and Latin which theynever forgot. He interested us in English literature and introduced us to the works of Rudyard Kipling, who was thenbecoming well-known as a poet and story-teller.

In the English department I remember Mr Anderson, who was its head. Mr Millar, and Mr Pollock. Mr Anderson hada passion for Shakespeare and everything connected with the drama. His class examinations were carried o-ut in asimple manner. Fifty questions were asked, ten in each of five subjects, and these were answered in a word or phraseon long slips of foolscap. At the end of the questions each paper was passed along two places and each boy or girlmarked the answers of his next neighbour but one. Everything was finished by the end of the hour. Mr Millar. as wellas instructing us in English, attended to our accents and saw that we did not pronounce "man" as "mahn." Mr Parkwas head of the mathematics department, but it is Mr Tail's admirable teaching of his subject that I specially remember.We liked Mr Comrie, who taught us elementary science as well as mathematics. He became president of theEducational Institute of Scotland. In my last year at school, which was an extra one because of illness, Mr King came tothis department. He was a very good teacher, but nad some difficulty in keeping order becauseof his youthful aopearance and high-pitched voice.

Mr Critchley, whom we liked, an Englishman, was head of the Classical side, though Mr Gemmeli took a small specialsenior class. He became head-master of Waid Academy, Anstruthcr. There was also Mr Cameron and, later. Mr Gillies,Mr Patrick and Mr Bisset. Mr Gillies became Rector of the Royal High School of Edinburgh and Mr Patrick aninspector in the Scottish Education Department. Mr Bisset we never really got to know. He had a method of markingLatin proses which sometimes gave alarming results. You started with a nominal 100% and so many marks werededucted for each mistake. One day a boy got minus 55% for his prose and another minus 65%. Mr McGregor, shortand stout, taught writing and book-keeping, and Mr Milligan drawing. Drawing in all schools in these days was a dulland sterile subject, chiefly the endless copying of geometrical and forms and diagrams from cards. M. Lavallaz (or was itde Lavallaz ?) taught French in a lively manner. The boys said he played the flute in the theatre orchestra, but I do notknow if this was so. Mr Dryden and later Herr Dennler were German Masters, but I did not take this class. Because shewas a family friend I particularly remember old Miss Maclean, the sewing-mistress and lady superintendent who livedwith two sisters in Kilmacolm.

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The gymnasium was an active place, and the instructor was Sergeant-Major Woods. He was succeeded by SergeantMcReynolds, who had been a swordsman in the army. At the annual gymnastic display in the Town Hall in 1897 Iremember his cutting through two lead pipes, which had been placed on end, one after the other, with his sabre. Thisdisplay in 1897 had the unusual feature that one of the boys. Willie Jamieson took the part of a clown and he did it verywell. After the cutting of the lead pipes by the instructor, the clown, with some kind of sword, similarly cut through amuch bigger bar of what looked like white shining metal: but when the pieces fell apart it was seen that it was only a barof soap, covered with silver paper. In 1897 Queen Victoria celebrated her Diamond Jubilee - she had reigned for sixtyyears. It must have been a very wet season, for the clown came on carrying a board with the' words: "Greenock'sRecord Rain, 60 Years". Sergeant McReynolds w'as succeeded by Mr Hughes, who had been trained in Dundee and wasa first-rate gymnast. He went as physical instructor to Glasgow University. The janitor was Mr Downie, tall and thinand white-bearded. He made his one solemn joke quarterly when the treasurer came for a week to collect the fees. Hecame round the class-rooms each morning and announced "The Treasurer's Here." but on Friday he added "This is theLast Day."

The school's playing-field was at Battery Park, where the rugby pitch was shared with Greenock Wanderers. TheAcademy was hardly a match for the bigger Glasgow schools at rugby but in cricket they could hold their own. Aformidable rival in cricket was the team from Mr Graham's private Collegiate School. But what nearly all the Scottishschools needed was coaching, and if some of the senior cricket clubs of the day had taken an interest in school cricketthey would have been rewarded by more young members. The school playground was not very suitable for games, andwas not much used. Indeed there was a great lack in the town of places where young people could play games of anykind. Skating was popular, but was not organized. When the ice was thick enough we were given a skating holiday.There was a small private pond, the West-end Skating Pond on high ground near the golf-course and the top of theLyie Road. and many boys and girls became members of this club for the season. The other place, not so accessible,was the Moss at Kilmacolm which was much bigger and had the advantage of being on higher ground. Skating holidayswere not numerous because the climate of the West of Scotland is too disappointingly mild for much ice: and it alwaysseemed to us that the frost gave way on Friday afternoons.

All boys wore the school cap which was the only piece of academic uniform. It was dark blue and bore a badge whichincorporated the Arms of the town. This was replaced by a maroon-coloured cap with a monogram of G.A. on thebadge and, I think, the motto "Hmc veru virtus." The monogram no doubt stood for "Greenock Academy." but we pre-ferred to believe that both it and the motto referred to the rector, whose initials were A.G.

At the same time a tie for former pupils was introduced. They did not take much to do with school affairs after theyleft, but they had one very popular annual event, a former pupils' dance, which was held in the school. Greenock waswell situated for one of the pleasantest of summer holidays, sailing on the Clyde from Princes Pier in the Glasgow andSouth-Western Railway Steamers. There were about ten of them. and they went to most places on the firth, includingArran every day, Ayr once a week and very occasionally to Stranraer. On one or two days in the Clyde Fortnight aspecial steamer might follow the races. That was the period of the big yachts, including Britannia and the Valkyries; oneof the loveliest sights in the world. When you were under 18 you got this month's sailing for eleven shillings, and if youwere under 14, it cost no more than seven-and-six. These boats had red funnels with a black top. We despisedthe showy cream-funnelled Caledonian fleet which sailed from Gourock, and the economically built and furnishedNorth British steamers which were based at Craigendoran.

Examinations were as important and as big a nuisance as they are today, but there is at any rate one improvement. Thenwe used to sit Leaving Certificate examinations each time they came round, whether we had already passed them or not.I understand things are better now, and that when you pass in a subject that's the end of it, which is sensible.

I write this at the end of a long spell of snowy weather. The impulse of every schoolboy is to throw snowballs atsomebody, an enthusiasm less appreciated by those against whom it is directed. I am sure it was in the interests of thelatter that after a good snowfall the Rector organized a snow-fight between two sides in the garden. After twentyminutes of this conflict the chances of a quiet passage for walkers down Newton Street were sensibly increased.

What the school greatly lacked was a library. This might have contained books of reference for the various departmentsand, in addition, sections on history, general literature and fiction. A subject which should be taught in school, andwhich is not to be found in any prospectus, is the art of reading books. One can't begin too young.

Adam Patrick.

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OVER MORE THAN HALF A CENTURY

TO go back in memory over half a century of storm and stress to schooldays in the Greenock Academy is to senseonce more the feeling of security which surrounded a Victorian childhood which had as its background a happy buthard-up home and as its playground the lovely hills and lochs of the Clyde.

It is true that in my last year at school Victoria died and we patriotically mourned her passing in "blacks" borrowedfrom our elders.

It is true also that the South African war had produced unexpected reverses despite our loudly sung and firm belief inTommy Atkins. But in these days wars were waged in far away countries and mainly by professional soldiers and theAcademy's contribution to the South African war went no further than a series of "Tableaux Vivants" of a peculiarlyharrowing nature staged to raise funds for widows and orphans.

Despite these shadows I imagine that all my contemporaries left school as I did, with the comfortable feeling that. withso large a proportion of the globe coloured a British red. all was well with the world.

A "finishing" year in Germany did something to shake this haopy belief for me, for Germany in 1901 hated us bitterlyand. to a home-sick Scot. the Christmas Sermon in the Lutheran Church in Detmold which thundered against "thatnation across the sea which harries the little peoples of this earth" was a bitter pill.

But the Edwardian Era and the German menace and all that came of it belong to later vears: Victorian Academy daysare the days to be specially remembered in this Centenary Year.

But before I come to talk of the School itself and its personalities, I should like to put on record my belief in a co-educational system, where boys and girls attend the same classes and collaborate in school social activities. The fact thatin the Academy it was taken for granted that boys and girls could work together was of great importance to me when,in the early twenties, I found myself in charge of the Establishment Branch of a Scottish Department of State and hadto help in carrying through the reorganisation of the Civil Service on a mixed basis. At that time and again much later asa member of the first committee which reported on the entry of women into that last stronghold of conservatism. "TheDiplomatic and Consular Service." I found support in my school training for arguing (against the fearful predictions ofservice colleagues) for equality of treatment for men and women, both as regards the educational qualifications forentry to the Service and the work allotted to them in the various Departments of State.

As for the Academy itself, it seems to me now that the building of our day had a greater dignity than any other knownday-school.

The long open corridor with its unglazed arches may have been draughty, but it gave a cloistered look to the buildingand the charm and peace of the garden in front of the School were a joy to us Seniors. It was a setting in which one feltthat learning was a gift worth having.

Of course, as in every school, there were masters who made learning a pleasure for their pupils and others who seemedto have mistaken their vocation, and at least one who ruled by setting "impositions."

The classes were not small and yet our teachers managed to convey to each pupil that he or she was an individual withindividual characteristics to be considered and fostered.

I have always been grateful for the freedom given to us to develop each his or her own personality: that freedom stillseems to be the best gift that any school can bestow on its pupils.

I talk of "masters" because in my time the Academy was almost exclusively staffed by male teachers though MissMcWilliam in the Infant Department and Miss Maclean in the Sewing Room were powers in their owndomains.

One or two of these teachers live more clearly than others in my recollection. There is the faint memory of Mr Neilsonas a scholarly stoooing Rector oacing the corridors and a distinct memory of Mr Gemmell's top-hatted sartorialcorrectness.

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I remember how Mr Anderson, our English master, made the plays of Shakespeare come alive despite the "glossary"which accompanied the text, and how he gave us our first glimpses of great poetry despite the somewhat prosaicmethod of bringing together snatches of our loveliest poems in a book designed to teach us to parse and analyse. Howfar he was successful in teaching us to speak and write good English I am perhaps not competent to judge as the lateryears of my working life were in The Civil Service whose out-pourings, I know, are regarded by the general public andthe popular press as verbose and unintelligible.

I am afraid however, I shall have to admit that the short-lived School Magazine of the day showed no very highstandard of English Composition - George Blake was still in the Junior School !

I have before me as I write a battered copy of that low-brow publication, "The Krugger," which, being hand-written,had a limited and rapid circulation; it was mostly read under desks in a class where alertness was not required.

Then there was Mr Lees, the classical master, who was also a scholar of modern languages and could combine thosedifferent branches of learning in a way which fascinated me and Dr. Clark, the master who taught German and whosefoster-mother in the town of The Piedd Piper gave me a few days' happy release from boarding school and washorrified at the number of German slang phrases I had picked up at a Select Dames' School.

Space forbids mention of other masters or of the Lady Superintendent of later years or even of the kindly Janitor whosupplied a syrup roll and a cup of "bottle coffee" for the princely sum of one penny.

But one more teacher I must name before I end - Mr Macgregor, our writing master, affectionately and irreverentlycalled "Beefie." Most of my correspondents and many of my one-time clerks and typists must have felt that he faileddismally in his duty, for it has to be admitted that my hand-writing shows no sign of the beautiful copperplate in whichMr Macgregor exhorted his pupils to "cast their bread upon the waters." But if he failed to teach me to write a legiblehand I nevertheless owe him a debt of gratitude.

In my last years at schcol women began to be employed as typists and. knowing that I should have to work for myliving, I decided that this was a new and suitable avenue of employment.

I therefore presented myself at Mr Macgregor's Commercial (short-hand) class only to be asked why I had come, to betold plainly that he would not teach me short-hand and to be ordered to go back to non-commercial subjects. I stillremember how small I felt as I rose and left the class. Yet it was because of this kindly action taken in my interest thatmany years later, when I was of a more mature age. I found myself free to choose a career in the Social Services - acareer which has given me a very satisfying, happy, and interesting life.

Much water has run under many bridges since the beginning of the century. War and the threat of war may seem tohave dominated the scene but these dark patches don't tell the whole story. These fifty years have also witnessed apeaceful and complete revolution in the social life of Scotland.

"Social Work" began for me during the depression of 1906-1908 when the Majority and Minority Reports of the RoyalCommission on the Poor Law were being hotly debated, when the employed labourer on the railways earned16/- to 18/- per week, and a vast number of unemployed existed on food-tickets supplied by voluntary" charitableagencies. Little by little, as the public conscience was roused, the scene changed. One after another the StatutorySocial Services, including the Insurance and the National Medical Services, came into operation, until, in 1942. I had thepleasure of watching the plan for the unification of these services come to life under the masterly literarytouch of Sir William Beveridge.

Centenaries are apt to awaken nostalgic memories but though one still hears casual mention of the "good old days," Idoubt if there are many people in 1955 who wish to set the clock back to 1900. Indeed I now suspect that the feeling ofsecurity which was the portion of the Victorian middle-class was brought by an unwillingness to look below the surfaceof things.

I also suspect, however, that my generation may be challenged as having placed too great an emphasis on provision formaterial needs and as having forgotten that man is a composite unsatisfied being who cannot live bybread alone. If we have so erred, is it too much to hope that the balance may lie redressed by our successors''

Muriel Rilson.

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REMEMBERING THINGS PAST

"Fortsitan et haec olim meminisse juvubit . . . " One can still hear the faintly nasal voice of the late AlexanderGemmell. for so many years Rector of Greenock Academy, enunciate the tag in the language he loved better thanEnglish itself.

He was himself a great man for exhortation, was Neddy. He used to burst into the classroom at all hours and exhort usnever to fall into the sin of smoking cigarettes, each one of which would be a nail in our coffins. (My own potentialcoffin is thus now composed entirely of nails). He exhorted us to beware of German military aspirations and to lookout for the coming of der Tug - and how right he was ! Too many of the bright lads under his care went down into thedust of the first conflict. He was specially concerned to exhort us to a mastery of the Latin and Greek tongues.According to Neddy, you never knew when. travelling abroad, you might meet an old man on the top of a high hill andhave the pleasure of conversing with him in one or other of the classical languages.

Neddy was. in fact, one of the "characters." In his early days at the Academy he took exercise by riding a white horse.("Here's Neddy Gemmell on his white-washed charger" the ruder boys of the town cried at his appearance). In laterlife, married, he got himself involved in litigation over a monkey puzzle in his front garden: but whether hewanted to cut it down or refused to have it cut down I cannot now remember. The affair certainly tilled a great deal ofnewspaper space and vastly cheered all his pupils, past and present.

Should we Academicals not be proud to boast that ours is probably the only important school in Scotland that had aRector who rode a white horse and went to law in a public way over a monkey puzzle9 He would probablyhave preferred to call it an araucaria . . .

Neddy's exhortations not infrequently, if the cold truth must be told, occasionally went beyond the strict bounds of hisotherwise copious learning. He used to breeze into our Senior Six room on a darkling November afternoon and. seizingthe chalk from Tommy Tait, proceed to cover the blackboard with his own conception of the Differential Calculus.

When this was done. and he had departed after exhorting us to vote Unionist when we came of age. Tommy Taitwould pick up the duster, wipe out the Rector's hieroglyphs, and say in his dry Aberdonian way. "Now you can forgetall about that."

And now it strikes me, looking back on the rich life of the Academy as I knew it during the first ten years of thiscentury, that I incline to think more of the teachers than of my fellow-sufferers at their hands. Some of ushave done mighty well in life, such as Jack Morison. Sir John to you - and did he ever return my copy of Unuura by R.M. Ballantyne ? There was and is, my oldest friend of that generation, Jack Denholm, at the very whisper of whosename all the shipowners of Great Britain tremble. Of those who were spared the holocausts of the Somme andPasschendaele some became Indian Civil Servants of the highest rank, some professors, some distinguished doctors.Neddy's boys did not let him down, even if they did smoke too many cigarettes.

But we came and we went. We were bubbles on the steady stream of school life. I know not how they look nowadays,but the class-rooms were perdurable, even to the pens stuck in the rafters of the big Writing Room. The Janny of thosedays, whose name was Downie. seemed to have been on the job since the opening in 1855 as. with at least one finger-less hand. he smeared syrup on a barm biscuit, price one ha'penny. But the teachers were, in the view of one small boy,immemorial, as deeply rooted as Longfellow's murmuring pines and hemlock.

It seems probably true that schoolmastering was a more stable profession in those old days than it is now. when thedemand is greater than the supply and a harassed Rector has no sooner got a likely chap placed in charge ofSenior III English than the chap is hareing off to Galashiels or Montrose as Second Master of a Junior Secondary. Myimpression is that our old masters of - Heaven help me ! - 40 years ago were more apt to stay on the job until theywere retired, full of years of honour.

Many of my coevals will remember the case of Mr J. B. Anderson. admittedly a rather special case. Mr Anderson waswhat sentimental writers might call "a dominie of the old school." but the cold fact is that he was nothing of the sort.He could lam parsing and analysis into you as well as the next man, but then he would quite suddenly take on themantle of his natural greatness and have us rolling in the aisles with his rendering of a juicy chunk out of Hamlet orMacbeth, so that the poetry came alive: so much better than the notes of arid dons in our textbooks . . . Old J. B. had his

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frailty, and. the Unco Guid prised him out of his job. It has always pleased me to remember that he lived on hisscrubby pension for fully 20 years after the Upright turned on him.

There was in much the same class James Millar with a quite unmentionable nickname,who professed the arts of writing, phonography, book-keeping and what you will. So far as the memory is of theslightest importance, he regarded my handwriting with some approval, but I got the taste of the real man many yearslater, one summer evening on Greenock's aery Golf Course. Mr Millar was in his day a fine golfer before the Lord. andin his old age he liked to come out and watch us young chaps at play.

On this evening, so long ago. I had lost my match on the 17th green to my opposite number in a team from Gourockor some other obscure location, and Mr Millar was a spectator of the collapse.

"You used to write a nice hand. George," he said, his full lips curling under the thin moustache, "but you can't puttworth a dam." My gentler readers will, of course, know that "a dam" was an almost worthless coin once in circulation inthe Far East.

And who but I can now sing affectionate praise of Bob Pollock, the one and only ! He was always Bob Pollock: justthat; and the rough idea was that he taught English to the late Junior and early Senior classes. Out of all this he quiteunconsciously, quite innocently, created for his pupils a tremendous amount of fun. Bob was not really highlyqualified in the academic sense: the mere notion of aspiring to an Honours degree would have had him fainting by theroadside. The charm. and usefulness, of his teaching lay in the fact that he would innocently confess to us, one decentGreenock man to several others, that he was not himself quite sure what the lesson was all about.

It is one of my most pleasant memories of the Academy that Bob Pollock took us in Geography one year, the specialsubject being for one term Western Australia. It shortly became obvious that Bob, like the rest of us, thought the lay-out of that province to be as boring as it was bewildering: and there came the joyous day w'hen he had, with pointerand wall-map, to indicate to us the respective relative positions of Coolgardie and Kalgoorlie.

In this effort he completely failed, while we cheered him on. At length he turned to us with a grin and confessed: "I'mdashed if I know which is which. You can look it up for yourselves when you get home."

I could go on and on about Bob Pollock, remembering such as the day when he apologised to us for his failure toreturn to us our marked examination papers, saying. "The fact is, the wee chap chewved them up" - and I fancy thatthe wee chap is now an ageing and highly respected member of society.

What a gallery of characters ! Daddy Park, who started the winter session by setting out a sum in Practice on theblackboard and then relapsed into a state of bland hibernation until, the spring coming round again, he stirred to thebugles of the local Volunteers and remembered his duties as a senior officer of that picturesque corps. Who shall singnow of M. Adolphe Vignon. who taught us to chant Frere Jacques as a catch - "Frerry Jacky," to our less able linguists- and who, like one of the characters in the French contes he loved so well-fed the mice in his cupboard with thecrumbs from his frugal lunch ?

Of course, it is easy for the professional writer to look back and let the tears doonfa' and throw off thumbnail sketchesof figures now beyond the ken of most of us. I should, however, be creating a very wrong impression ifI have failed to suggest to the reader, probably younger than I. perhaps one without any affiliations with GreenockAcademy, that I look back on my schooldays with affection and, what is much more, a true sense of gratitude.Miss McWilliam took me into her capable, if muscular, arms in the year of grace, 1897; William Braid Taylor, one of thebest men and best teachers I ever knew, sent me out into the world towards the end of 1910. not ill-equipped,if I may say so.

It has always interested and puzzled me that so many men of my own writing profession look back on their schooldayswith horror. One gathers that the English Prep. School is on the whole, an institution in which the sensitive child isbullied, starved and humiliated, and from which he passes only to be roasted and then bored in his Public School. Thisgloomy retrospect has coloured so much English fiction and so many memoirs of the past 40 years that one wondershow the system could ever produce leaders, which was one gathers the main idea.

Perhaps only the born leaders could survive it, but it seems to me that we have done not so badly in Scotland under thepurelv native system. My own simple soul is completely tree from any hangover of grievance against GreenockAcademy. No memories of cruel beatings keep me awake o' nights: no female teacher ever chose me as her Young

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Woodley and provided me with the subject of a future novel. My worst memories are merely of occasional boredom,especially when the subject of the period bordered on the mathematical. As for leadership, I can compile from therecords of my own peers a not by any means undistinguished list of pro-Consuls, Indian Civil Servants, soldiers, sailors,airmen, master mariners, tea planters, and tough eggs in general.

It often occurs to me quite seriously that any boy or girl may be best educated in a day school of the old grammartradition, with a sound domestic background as the other essential of the pattern.

It is quite firm in my mind that the men and women of my generation were lucky in their school above Nelson Street.And there was always the Rector who rode a white horse and went to law about a monkey puzzle. I cannot believe thateven a Provost of Eton ever conferred such a distinction of individuality upon his foundation.

George Blake.

FORSAN

My schooldays began (somewhat late, for I was an unhealthy child) in 1913, and ended in 1923. Over long stretches thesands of time have settled, level and bare. I think I remember being taken to the Infant Room and after much brightexchange of reassurances between my mother and Miss McWilliam (in which I took no part) being committed to thecare of certain aged crones, who must in fact have been very young women, if not mere girls. Curiously, there seem tohave been no other children present at all. Of these early days little remains but shadowy and (on the whole)benign personalities associated with the names of McWilliam, MacGillivray, Cairns and Speedie. Miss Aitken I canrecall vividly because she was my first love. Then or later my garb was the ubiquitous sailor-suit of Britannia stillregnant, or (to be orecise) two sailor-suits, the Sunday and newer one complete with white lanyard and whistle: mystockings were black, in winter worn over the knees, and my boots buttoned. About that time, since my homeward wayto:)k me up Newton Street, the menace of Finnart School often clouded my days, Long before any of us had heard ofMarx or Engels. we "Academy pups." unless travelling in convoy or basely detouring by South Street, encounteredalmost daily the truceless hostilities of the class struggle. Joy was it in that dawn to be alive ? Some of us wondered. Butthe years passed and the Finnart boys grew smaller and soon I was in the "Qualifying." Nowadays (it seems) this is theGreat Divide, Childhood's grand climacteric, with fuming fathers and hag-ridden mothers fretting their hearts lest theirtiny tots be condemned to courses baselv mechanical or even be torn from the bosom of their alma mater and exposedsomewhere on the hills behind the town. But Consule Planco the psychologist and the politician were scarcelyeven a small cloud on the horizon of education. Across the bridge from the primary to the secondary school all wenttogether by a kind of divine prescription, asses and thoroughbreds alike. Indeed, by an ingeniousmisnaming of classes we were all across the bridge (or seemed to be) before we reached it. Senior One was ourqualifying year. And for many years more the great imoosture was to continue. All over the world today former pupilsof the Academy are being accredited with six years of secondary schooling when in fact they have had but five. At someearly stage, probably in the chaos of the kindergarten, we completed one year and called it two.

If in respect of genuine reminiscence the first years of one's schooling are a featureless desert, the later years are ajungle of fantastic growths. Palpable inventions combine with innocent (and ignorant) misinterpretations ofimperfectly observed facts to present an impenetrable barrier to the traveller after truth. The very dimensions of themost obvious things are desperately wrong. The school tower, for example, is definitely further off from Heaven.Can that half-acre of grass, those narrow flower-beds fronting Nelson Street be the rolling savannahs, the paradisalpleasances I knew as a child? And who would have thought that the writing-room was so much smaller than the naveof St. Paul's ? Admittedly the Great War created temporary vacancies on the staff necessitating the admission of typesnot normally to be found in halls of higher learning and after the war the new permanentteachers had certain habits to unlearn as they made their educational experiments on our vile bodies. Even so that otherwar was still on. the age-old strife of pupils and teachers with all its propaganda and denigration.Surely Mr Millar. one of the finest teachers the Academy ever had, neither peered throughkeyholes for evidence of indiscipline nor kept bottles of whisky in the gallery clock ? Surely Mr Mushat did not supportthe trousers of his morning suit - his invariable attire - with the bright, cowhide belt he employed to belabourthe imperfect Latinist ? Cockroaches could never have been so numerous on the premises that the juvenile purchasersof janitorial rolls and syrup stood an odds-on chance of getting a third ingredient. Nor. I suppose, are the featsof magisterial cunning basically any more credible. There must have been some ranges, some angles, that baffled thevirtuosity of Mr Smith who, succeeding Mr Millar. abandoned the orthodox manipulation of the tawse -difficilis in perfecto mora' - and made of it a missile weapon like the aborigine's boomerang. There must have been somemathematical problems too abstruse or too involved for Mr Tait to solve with a scrap of chalk on the palm of his

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admittedly impressive hand. And when boys, staggering from Drawing to Latin heavy with purloined leadshot.proceeded to rain their shrapnel at the back of "Massa" Goodliffe's apparently unsuspecting head, did thatingenious optician always catch the rampant offender reflected in the corners of his spectacles? We were indeed bravebovs and clever girls whom enemies so ruthless and resourceful could not defeat or daunt.

But there remain some memories which being less pandemic I find more persuasive. In my adolescent mind—honi soitqni mal y pense' - the extreme brevity of Miss Mackail's gymnastic tunic made a profound impression. So did thebilingualism of Mr Culbertson who dressed his ordinary thoughts in the sweet Doric of Hawick but never let the Clas-sics go abroad unless in a stiff and shiny Sunday suit from the heart of Wardour Street. I wonder how many of usrealised just what Vergil's husbandman was up to as he "eke made drums for his wains." I remember Senior Six's Latinin the cosy fug of the Rector's room being interrupted regularly about ten o'clock by the state arrival of the youngDauphin. I remember learning natural history from "Daddy" Park under the sad cypresses of Greenock Cemetery: I canstill see a sombre pond, its waters browned (we believed) like Tennant's beer by the effluvia of adjacent death, the onlynursery of sticklebacks in the whole county of Renfrew. I remember how easily Mr Taylor could be lured away fromthe hard asphalt of grammar into the fresh woods and pastures of country lore. I remember Mr Ramsay's gentlehorror at "the coarser pleasures of our boyish days and their glad animal movements," his resigned despair over somany young Calibans congenitally blind to the subtle "tones" of his miscellaneous crockery. I remember the pneu-matic Mr Gunn and my own persistent failure in several years to complete even one solitary plant-label: always - inlimine portus - the blind Fury would sink the abhorred chisel a final fraction too deep, and heigh-ho' beholdthe diminished sliver ceremoniously broken in twain and money demanded for new woodand (monstrous injustice!) new paper for a new plan. I remember. I remember .... But how authentic are even thesememories that seem so personal'.' Is it reminiscence or "a mere fiction of what never was" ? Of the nine Daughters ofMemory only one is the Muse of History. The odds are against us.

Jack McLean.

TWENTY YEARS AFTER

WHEN I was invited to write an article for the centenary brochure, I realised that it is twenty years since I leftGrecnock Academy and that school customs and methods of teaching have probably changed a lot in thattime. In Victoria, the fashionable emphasis in teaching is on "project" methods (you learn arithmetic by keeping rabbits,and so on) and on "teaching aids," by which is meant any gadgets, doodahs, gimmicks or ancillary apparatus used todrive the lesson home. I once heard a list of teaching aids which started: "One whip, two revolvers. .... .." but the moreorthodox application of the term is to radio sets, puppet shows, instructional films, working models of machinery, orspecial equipment of that type. And there is a lot of equipment available here. The teachers cannot plug in to atelevision demonstration of some tonic, as teachers do in the U.S.A., but radio sets are plentiful and most secondaryschools have a film projector. For films, there is an excellent library of films and the teachers can orderwhat they want from it.

No doubt similar equipment is available in Greenock Academy nowadays. The point I want to make is that it was notin use twenty years ago. There were B.B.C. broadcasts for schools but I cannot remember hearing anyin school, although the broadcasts were well worth listening to. (I realised this when I had the chance to listen to someof them after I left school). It was probably tradition rather than the cost of a radio set that nrevented usfrom hearing these broadcasts in school. Or perhaps it was simply that thev did not fit into our timetable and syllabus.

Looking back on it. the school tradition must have been rather conservative at that time (1930-35). The obviousprocedure would be to attribute this to the rector and the teachers but the pupils contributed, too. Iremember George Dow. the head English teacher, trying to make our readme; of Shakespeare more dramatic by askingbovs and girls in the class to take over the roles in the play and read out the appropriate speeches. The girls respondedmoderately well but the boys did it grudgingly and grunted resentfully through their parts. It must have been the eraof strong, silent heroes, for there was a great reluctance to put any expression into our voices. The same thing happenedin French. Perhaps it was worse there, partly because there were genuine difficulties, partly because it was well knownthat Mr Perry was very sensitive to this form of torture.

So it was not altogether the fault of the teachers. The class had its own idea of how lessons should be conducted andwas probably more conservative than the teachers. Another instance of this tendency came if a teacher or.a visitoraddressed a question to the class general way, without designating a particular pupil. The tradition was that nobodyreplied, even if most of the class knew the answer. I suppose we were too self-conscious - attracting attention. This

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may have been due to the way we were treated at home rather than in school. In the presence of their elders, childrenwere supposed to listen quietly and speak when they were spoken to and we carried that training into school with us. Ican see now that some of the teachers tried to change our ideas. But at the time these influences had little effect. Thecult of leadership, so carefully nourished in the wealthier English schools, was on a famine diet in Greenock Academy.

I noticed the contrast when I went to Cambridge and encountered these brilliantly talkative Public Schoolboys.Sometimes their conversation was brittle as well as brilliant but, right or wrong, they could talk rings round me. Inoticed the same contrast, in a more likeable form, in the U.S.A., where five-year-olds take part in the familydeliberations with the gravity of grandfathers. It always amused me to meet one of these American kids in the street. Aswe passed, we greeted each other solemnly: "Hiya, Arch !", "Hiya, Butch !". Or if we stopped to talk, it was always a realman-to-man approach.

Recently. I was asked to fill in a questionnaire on behalf of a student who wanted to enter an American university. Itwas a long questionnaire, with twenty questions or more about the student's character. I went through it patiently,filling in the obvious answer each time until I came to a question: "Does the applicant show qualities of leadership?" Ireplied: "No. He is too sensible to chuck his weight around." This happens to be true I am sure it is not the answer thatwas expected. It was an echo of the Greenock Academy tradition of 1930-35 rather than the Australian or Americanoutlook.

Of course, the tradition has probably changed since those days. At that time there were no school prefects or housecaptains and, in general, little need for pupils to act on their own or undertake responsibility. In addition.parents took the line "Children should be seen and not heard'" rather than "Punish them'.' Oh. no! You musn't bruisetheir little ego !"

Another tradition that may have been blown to bits by the war was that the brighter pupils were guided into Latin andGreek. For example, there were bursaries which stipulated that the bursar take Latin and Greek and thisin itself ensured that two or three of the best pupils in each year took these subjects. Occasionally a bright pupil (or hisparents) refused to give way to the pressure of tradition and chose science or modern languages, but'ho orthodox course was classics.

Not that I regret doing Latin and Greek in school. I remember pleasant conversations with Mr Niven. in the after-glowof our midday meal, before we buckled down to reading Thucydides. The class prolonged these intro-ductory conversations as long as possible, rather than start on the work we were supposed to have prepared overnight.We did not dare take any liberties of this kind with Mr Mackenzie, but we liked him for the clarity and precision of histeaching. To me, the climax of our classical studies wai reading Homer in the original. It repaid all the grindof Greek proses and irregular verbs that we had gone through in our earlier years. I do not believe I could have got thesame impression - or anything like it - from translations, still less from pompous academic imitators like Virgil orMilton.

However, that was twenty years ago and I have forgotten most of it by now. A few traces remain. Apart from incidentaladvantages of a classical education, such as in doing crossword puzzles, I find that I have a great deal of sympathy formodern French authors, most of whorn seem to have been brought up in a similar tradition of classical studies, withcompetitive examinations as the gateway to higher education or civil service employment.

Our education, too, was closely wedded to the examination system. I can hardly complain, since I thrived on thissystem, but I rnust admit that a good memory was often more valuable than sympathy for the subject. On the other

hand, the training we were given tended to develop some useful characteristics, such as a capacity for hard, patientslogging at a subject and a desire to make sure of the facts as the first step in any problem.

Our training may have been stolid and limited in scope but within its limits it was thorough. Nowadays my job islecturing in mathematics to university students and in this job I realise how fortunate we were in getting such a soundtraining in school. I see examples again and again of students who get themselves into difficulties by mistakes in algebraor arithmetic, even when they know how to deal with more advanced problems. (These mistakes in algebra are liable totransform a problem which was carefully arranged to give a reasonable solution into something which is practicallyinsoluble).

Little attention was paid to non-academic subjects in those days. We had one hour of music and one hour ofgymnastics a week. For most nupils. woodwork and art dropped out near the beginning of the secondary course. The

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tendency at that time was to be "collar-proud" and the social prestige attached to a white-collar job was held tocompensate for the small salaries that sometimes went with these jobs. So manual skill was not: encouraged. AlthoughGreenock was an industrial town, few pupils went into the engineering faculty at the university. Here again, the schoolwas cramped by tradition: the tradition was that the brighter pupils tried to get an Arts degree. Of course, this was adepression period and prospects in industry were discouraging but I doubt if that explains the white-collar outlookcompletely. I suppose it was a form of snobbishness.

Well. these are one person's impressions and I do not imagine that my class-mates would agree with everything that Ihave written. I have concentrated on the academic side since that is the side with which I was mainly concerned. Therewere other things besides study. although I find it a little difficult to disentangle school activities from outside activities,since the same people appeared in both. The class I was in was unusually keen on football and for two or three years weplayed at the side of the school after 4 o'clock, scraping together our pennies to get a shilling ball when the hawthorn,hedge had punctured the previous one. The pitch we used had a number of natural hazards, such as the boundary wallor an occasional pedestrian, but the experts could turn these to their own advantage. (I must have been hard on shoesin those days, for if I did not wait to play football I went home kicking a stone along the pavement all the way).

Among my other recollections are the morning parade, when the boys and girls strolled up and down in front of theschool during the morning break, or the trek along Finnart Street to Fort Matilda on a Wednesday afternoon, when wegot away early for rugby practice. And I remember the pleasures of Schoolboys' Club camps, especially the summercamps at Crianlarich. I hope that, however much things have changed, the present-day pupils still get as muchenjoyment out of their schooling as we did.

Archibald Brown.

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