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!
|
