The
school was a meeting place of cultures.
Liverpool came up the hill, and
representatives of deepest Lancashire
came I know not how or why. I wondered
why others could not master the art of
English pronounciation as those fortunate
enough to be born and resident in an area
bounded by Portico, Rainhill, Prescot,
and Eccleston, or even a couple of miles
towards Huyton so clearly could. This
early discovery of the variability of
human culture, when finally generalized
to include the chosen people of Prescot,
those from locations known only from
hearsay and far beyond our frontiers,
like Newton-le-Willows, the south of
England, and eventually onwards and
outwards to points far beyond, stood me
in good stead later both practically and
professionally.
On to America and exposure to a different
set of places and different traditions.
There was a silly ethnocentric yet
pervasive perception in my generation
that we were simply better. America was
trivialized, its enormous complexity,
competence and energy neutralized by
focusing on its strangeness and excesses.
I learned quickly that the best in
America was very good indeed and that
what counted was merit and excellence and
not merely presentation. But wasn't that
what PGS had also taught? In fact it was,
but that message was not the sole voice
in England. It was tilting its lance
against established interests which
defended privilege on grounds quite other
than proved competence. So it was that
America became a revelation and an
opportunity and it fitted very well the
ethic of my background. PGS was about
merit and excellence, but it was also
about equality and opportunity. Quite
basic was a belief that you treat people
as equals because in the most significant
sense they are. This also prepared me to
deal with America where more energy was
devoted to opening opportunities up
rather than to closing people out.
There was however another theme from my
background which did not sit well with
America. Opportunity and innovation were
good but was life simply about maximizing
individual self-interest? Did the vision
of the good society boil down to this?
Only in a society where social obligation
and accountability went hand in hand with
opportunity could a worthwhile community
exist. Yet wasn't this after all what had
been on the menu at PGS? Interestingly
enough, the same issues so apparent in
America thirty plus years ago are clearly
relevant in the United Kingdom today, and
right now the answers being given are not
impressive.
I look at the burglar alarms and the
decay of the north of England with sorrow
as at a disappearing world but not one I
really understand any more in any sense
more basic than reading about it in the
Guardian Weekly. After twenty years spent
in North America we made an unusual
choice and have lived for the past
fifteen years in a place where narrow
managerialism is only now taking hold,
and where bad taste is no more vicious
than rural excess on a Saturday night.
Yet it is a world of freshness and
possibility with a real sense of equality
and open-ness. We look daily out toward a
sea as apparently changeless as when
James Cook, that remarkable Yorkshireman,
sailed there such a short time ago, and
once in a while it is grey, raining and
chilly and I think back to another place
and another time.
PGS was also about tradition. There were
ways of doing things and rituals to be
followed. Basic courtesy is a vital
ingredient in social facilitation.
Tradition does not merely constrain but
provides a shared and taken-for-granted
base from which innovation and
experimentation become possible. When in
the hands of the dull and the mediocre
tradition is stifling and empty. When
seen as a resource to be mobilized it
provides direction. The public life of
all modern societies today suffers
visibly from the discordant and grating
actions and interactions of people who
lack a sense of values, of direction, or
socially worthy goals.
So it is with schools and universities.
We have not solved the problem of
equality of access and increasing
participation while preserving what was
good. Elitism has become a generalized
term of abuse as opposed to a celebration
of achieved competence with resultant
social responsibilities. PGS as I knew it
was a fine school, not because its
buildings were imposing or its facilities
were world class, but because there was a
vision and a tradition with room for
growth and a definite commitment to the
future. We had the chance to share in
that vision and add to the tradition
without losing sight of our roots.The passing of
the grammar schools in this country is a
source of sadness to me. By all means
open up the world of privilege and
increase pressure and competition, but
the attack on meritocracy must rate as
mindless at best, and probably far worse.
The vision of the grammar school can be
extended to include far more people, but
its message should not be muted. The
societies which will compete successfully
in the new world will be those with good
education systems, not those geared to
lock-step learning, to narrow training,
or to the production of a mindless
mediocrity. The need to extend
educational opportunity and participation
is clear, but it does not require
throwing the baby out with the bath
water. So I hope that the Prescot School
in its new form will actively try to
maintain the vision of the old PGS. Much
changes, but the basic realities of a
good education do not really change, even
when the rhetorics and the demands of
educational bureaucrats and politicians
make life difficult.
In the midst of the praise let me note
that I have found the best in America
offers some things worthy of emulation.
Students move at their own pace and what
matters is the destination rather than
the route. That system, again at its
best, encourages development without
labelling abilities as if settled for all
time at an early age, and male and female
manage to work together as they will
continue to do throughout their lives.
Perhaps part of the price of my education
was paid by the large majority who did
not get that chance. We had to choose
between Modern (a euphemism for Arts) and
Science too early, when it must have been
becoming obvious that mathematics and
some real appreciation of science were no
longer optional extras. In this sense we
were victims of a rather narrow
tradition, what C.P.Snow called the 'two
cultures.' However that tradition was
robust enough to provide a launch pad
from which we could take off and develop
in the future. A good education after all
is something which can be built on, not a
closed book of knowledge to last seventy
or more years.
Geography classes over the years all
seemed to start with the phrase
"take out your maps of France".
I learned to draw maps of most of the
major places in the world by having two
basic shapes, a curve and a V. Each shape
had four possible variants, e.g. the V
could point up, down, left, or right, and
this seemed to exhaust the range of
possibilities for all known ports. Mr
Stevenson, (Fanny) was going deaf, and as
I follow him in that direction I have
come to remember his problem very well.
"What do they produce in
Basle"? "Fancy cheese
Sir", the answer spoken in low
voice. "That's right boy,
handkerchiefs" Hilarity all round,
confusion and consternation and out it
comes again, "take out your maps of
France." And yet you know, I can
still remember some of the old economic
geography of assorted European and
Commonwealth countries, and I can still
draw a map in eight different ways! I
remember Physics and the slow and careful
enunciation of Mr Hawthorne (Juddy)
talking about 'copper-bottomed
calorimeters', knowing that I would then
be asked "Crook, how would you like
to have a copper bottom?" However, I
don't think my knowledge of the subject
went much further!
When it was simply impossible to turn out
for sport on Wednesday afternoons (and
clearly rain was not a sufficient reason
or there would have been no sport at
all), we got the supply of National
Geographic magazines to look through, an
occurrence of far reaching significance
in my life. It gave rise to a consuming
interest in the mammary glands of dusky
maidens in far-off exotic places, and
also triggered a life-long interest in
comparing human societies, variations in
the human psyche, and a commitment to
hands-on experience and research. Please
note that the hands-on bit refers only to
the second clause in the preceding
sentence!
Enough of my meandering, there are
friendships to renew and drinking to be
done. If any of you are ever in our neck
of the woods do let us know and come and
look out over the Pacific with us. The
company is good, accommodation
comfortable, and Australian wine- superb!
Let me hasten to a conclusion.
I have been talking about memory and
community. The PGS motto was Futuram
Civitatem Inquirimus, usually rendered
"we seek a future State." On
checking it out with my friendly
neighbourhood Classics Professor I find
that a more accurate and useful
translation might be "we are
searching for a future community",
the key issue being to do with
citizenship as social obligation rather
than place. It really could be rendered
"we are in the business of producing
citizens". It is a fine motto and it
says a lot about the vision which saw the
need to combine real technical competence
with all round development and
citizenship. We were given a privilege, a
social investment by others, and in our
diverse ways we make returns on that
investment. A fundamental commitment to
human equality and an absence of
pomposity are also a central part of our
common experience, and there is not a lot
wrong with that either.
I remember PGS today not simply as an
exercise in nostalgia but as a continuing
source of identity, values and strength.
I can take pride in my background, in PGS
and the traditions we share. I am
confident that in this at least I can
speak for the many other members of our
community around the world. It is a most
memorable experience to be home for a
time, however brief, with other
Prescotians. In particular I am delighted
that my wife Annabel, who hails from
deepest Nova Scotia, has the opportunity
of meeting many of you and understanding
that what she thought were personality
aberrations are in fact nothing more
remarkable than cultural traits well
within a normal distribution curve!
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