Harkness – MacGillivray Stories

In Rhoda’s 1962 Diary, my mother talks about Stuart and Sandy’s performance in their English exams.

My brothers – the ‘dunces’

I’m not sure what this refers to. I can only assume that it refers to GCE ‘O’ levels (which students take when they are 16 years old). At this point in time, Sandy was about 20 years old, and Stuart was about 18 years old.

I never realised my two eldest brothers were such dunces! After all, the GCE English ‘O’ level was hardly a difficult exam! This, despite all the efforts of my poor mother! 

She would have us sitting at the dining table doing extra exercises in our free time. She bought various books so we could try to ‘increase’ our ‘intelligence’. I still have one such book on my bookshelf, which she swore was a key book for English grammar and provided ‘secret’ information about commas, etc. 

Commas have always been my enemy. I have never quite fully understood them; but neither has anybody else, as they often seem to be arbitrary and optional. However, they are a handy tool that proof-readers and teachers can use to terrorise others! 

Perhaps it’s  not a good idea to say I don’t understand how commas work. After all, I’m a teacher of English! I understand how they work more or less, but I’m not 100% sure! I add this note here so my readers don’t think I’m a ‘dunce’ like my two eldest brothers.

Alistair and Secondary Moderns

In retrospect, one wonders why the third son, Alistair, didn’t re-take his English exam as well? Perhaps he passed it the first time? Wrong! Alistair was thrown in the ‘educational dustbin’, or better known as a ‘Secondary Modern’ Secondary Modern schools were reserved for ‘stupid’ working class children. They were deemed too ‘stupid’ to take ‘academic’ examinations, such as GCE ‘O’ levels, and sat for ‘lower’ examinations, ‘CSEs’. Secondary Moderns gave pupils training in simple, practical skills, like mechanical skills such as woodworking, and domestic skills, such as cookery.

Sandy attended the Isis Private School. Thus, he was able to sit for ‘O’ level exams – but unable to pass them it seems; similarly, Stuart attended a grammar school, but was also unable to excel academically. If Sandy and Stuart were such ‘dunces’, why couldn’t the ‘dunce’ Alistair also attend a private school like Isis? Well, one obvious answer was the matter of the family budget, which was perhaps stretched to the point of breaking when they sent my eldest brother, Sandy, to a private school. When it came to Alistair’s turn, the kitty had perhaps run dry. 

My mother never favoured the third-born Alistair, and always criticised him, implying that he was the ‘dunce’ of the family, and some kind of ‘accident’; in other words, she seemed to be imitating the behaviour of her mother. Her sister Flora, the third-born, was the un-favourite of her mother (as discussed elsewhere in “No Woman. No Cry”). 

One might even go as far to say that our family consisted wholly of ‘dunces’ because all the family members struggled, in one way or another, to complete their education; some never managed at all, such as Stuart. Stuart was the only son that passed his 11-plus examination giving admission to a grammar school, but he was also the only son that never completed his education, and ended up taking unskilled low-paid jobs such as minicab driving, postman and salesman.