Back to School
Part 2 of Tales of Serendipity
After a few weeks our house was ready, and we moved into Colombo, the capital city. I'd been enrolled at the Overseas Children's School, a private English-speaking school for the kids of ex-pats and some of the richer local families.
On my first day I was hit by a tidal wave of culture shock again. Back in England I'd spent over 5 years at a small village primary school, with only three classrooms about fifty kids. I was used to spending all day in one classroom with the same teacher who taught all the subjects. This school had hundreds of kids from all over the world, and dozens of teachers for all the different subjects. It catered for kids from my age of 9 or 10, all the way up to 17-year-olds, suddenly I was a very little fish in a very big, noisy and strange pond.
Some time in the first week, a blond-haired kid from my year came up and said, in a strong American accent "we think you could be in our gang, I'll take you to our secret meeting place".
The secret meeting place turned out to be the gap between one of the classroom blocks and the perimeter wall of the school, and the gang turned up to be the American kid, Damon, and his friend John. My initiation was basically saying “okay” to the question “do you want to hang around with us?”, and as kids do, we became firm friends pretty much immediately. I was no longer a lonely kid lost.
Damon's parents were Salvation Army missionaries from the US, and John was the son of a wealthy Sri Lankan lawyer and his English wife. As gangs go, we weren’t exactly bad-ass.
The school was run by an English headmaster, who ran in it a way that had more or less died out in the fifties back in the UK. For example, we were divided into competing "houses", and we scored points for our house by excelling in schoolwork or on the field. I think each house was named after a Sri Lankan bird. I can't remember the name of our house, but I'm pretty sure we were the Gryffindor of our time.
After I'd been at the school about a year, an odd thing happened. The whole place was apparently "bought out" by a US-based private school consortium. The difference was quite profound. Cricket and rugby were taken off the curriculum, replaced by baseball and American football. They brought in customs quite alien to a English schoolboy of the eighties. My picture was taken for the new “yearbook”, and I dare say if I’d have been there a few more years I’d even been hunting for a prom date!
The dour and forbidding Headmaster was replaced by a "Principal", who, thinking about it now, was probably an ex hippy. I remember the one time we were ever sent to see him, for throwing bits of spare chalk at each other after class. The rumour was that the old headmaster had kept a cane under his desk that saw occasional use... so we weren't sure what punishment to expect from this new authority figure. We sat petrified in his office as he explained the total non-grooviness of throwing chalk, because a piece of chalk in the eye could really harsh someone's vibe, yaknow? He then outlined our penance: a document would be written that said we understood our mistake and would never do it again which - and this is the bit he emphasised as the scary part of the punishment - we all had to sign!
I remember signing it with silent relief that we were getting away more or less scott-free, it wouldn't even be reported to our parents!
Then again, I never did throw chalk again.
Those two years at the OSC were without a doubt the best part of my entire school education. The school was excellent, due probably to the mix of highly-paid and committed teachers and a rarefied pupil demographic. I remember a veteran New Zealand teacher called Mr. Turnbull who taught us the Rime of the Ancient Mariner, passionately explaining the themes and history behind it until our young minds began to appreciate it. It was the kind of stuff I'd wouldn't touch again on my return to England until after four or five years of lacklustre British secondary education. By which time I’d become disengaged and bored by the whole education experience.
Next: Adventures Abroad
After a few weeks our house was ready, and we moved into Colombo, the capital city. I'd been enrolled at the Overseas Children's School, a private English-speaking school for the kids of ex-pats and some of the richer local families.
On my first day I was hit by a tidal wave of culture shock again. Back in England I'd spent over 5 years at a small village primary school, with only three classrooms about fifty kids. I was used to spending all day in one classroom with the same teacher who taught all the subjects. This school had hundreds of kids from all over the world, and dozens of teachers for all the different subjects. It catered for kids from my age of 9 or 10, all the way up to 17-year-olds, suddenly I was a very little fish in a very big, noisy and strange pond.
Some time in the first week, a blond-haired kid from my year came up and said, in a strong American accent "we think you could be in our gang, I'll take you to our secret meeting place".
The secret meeting place turned out to be the gap between one of the classroom blocks and the perimeter wall of the school, and the gang turned up to be the American kid, Damon, and his friend John. My initiation was basically saying “okay” to the question “do you want to hang around with us?”, and as kids do, we became firm friends pretty much immediately. I was no longer a lonely kid lost.
Damon's parents were Salvation Army missionaries from the US, and John was the son of a wealthy Sri Lankan lawyer and his English wife. As gangs go, we weren’t exactly bad-ass.
The school was run by an English headmaster, who ran in it a way that had more or less died out in the fifties back in the UK. For example, we were divided into competing "houses", and we scored points for our house by excelling in schoolwork or on the field. I think each house was named after a Sri Lankan bird. I can't remember the name of our house, but I'm pretty sure we were the Gryffindor of our time.
After I'd been at the school about a year, an odd thing happened. The whole place was apparently "bought out" by a US-based private school consortium. The difference was quite profound. Cricket and rugby were taken off the curriculum, replaced by baseball and American football. They brought in customs quite alien to a English schoolboy of the eighties. My picture was taken for the new “yearbook”, and I dare say if I’d have been there a few more years I’d even been hunting for a prom date!
The dour and forbidding Headmaster was replaced by a "Principal", who, thinking about it now, was probably an ex hippy. I remember the one time we were ever sent to see him, for throwing bits of spare chalk at each other after class. The rumour was that the old headmaster had kept a cane under his desk that saw occasional use... so we weren't sure what punishment to expect from this new authority figure. We sat petrified in his office as he explained the total non-grooviness of throwing chalk, because a piece of chalk in the eye could really harsh someone's vibe, yaknow? He then outlined our penance: a document would be written that said we understood our mistake and would never do it again which - and this is the bit he emphasised as the scary part of the punishment - we all had to sign!
I remember signing it with silent relief that we were getting away more or less scott-free, it wouldn't even be reported to our parents!
Then again, I never did throw chalk again.
Those two years at the OSC were without a doubt the best part of my entire school education. The school was excellent, due probably to the mix of highly-paid and committed teachers and a rarefied pupil demographic. I remember a veteran New Zealand teacher called Mr. Turnbull who taught us the Rime of the Ancient Mariner, passionately explaining the themes and history behind it until our young minds began to appreciate it. It was the kind of stuff I'd wouldn't touch again on my return to England until after four or five years of lacklustre British secondary education. By which time I’d become disengaged and bored by the whole education experience.
Next: Adventures Abroad
You obviously never went to Smithdon then. Houses, prefects, and most of the senior teachers were ex-RAF. I can still remember my class having to stand to attention for two hours because we dared to talk in an art lesson.
My mum and dad went to Smithdon and talked about the house system, but I don't know many other people of my age who experienced it at a state school. And it wasn't really just the houses that made the school feel old-fashioned. We had prefects at my secondary school back in the UK, and it wasn't long from being an old fashioned Grammar, but it felt an age away from the dusty old-colonial feel of the Sri Lankan school in my first year.
x
I'm seeing more and more schools bringing back a kind of house system - Harry Potter has a lot to answer for!
great stories Becky!
When I started at secondary school in the early-Seventies my school (selective grammar) had just abolished a house system. I don't know if they have reinstated it since; they've done all sorts of funky stuff since I left, such as letting GURLS* in!
*As opposed to just closet t-girls :-)
Needless to say he commanded the respect of the entire class.
Wiggins.
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