In 1962 I began teaching full time in a secondary school (before university: you can’t do that now) using chalk on those dreadful roller-blind “blackboards”. It was possible to borrow a film from someone like Guild Sound and Vision (free, because they were made by sponsoring companies) and that was it. You might find a slide projector in schools but there were few slides. My own school had got an epidiascope with glass lantern slides and a way of clamping a printed picture underneath so that a system of bright lights and lenses shone the image on a screen. There was an ink duplicator, messy and almost limited to reproducing typewriter text only.
Where I was teaching there was a spirit duplicating system. It was far more primitive than the ink duplicator, but, miracle of miracles, it could print in seven colours – simultaneously! A paper master sheet had to be drawn on, colour by colour, using tinted carbon-copy sheets to make the colour original. Then it was pressed onto a gelatine block, with enough of the colours transferring to enable the printing of about 25 copies on paper pressed one after the other onto the block, by hand, until the colour ran out. At least, that’s how a I remember it, and I see that the system is still encouraged as a very low-cost, low-tech facility in less developed countries.
Which is all by way of introducing the illustrations below. They were produced by hand and typewriter as reading material for a school visit to places in North Staffordshire by some of the children I was teaching. It was 1964. I see from a name on the nine foolscap pages (13” x 8” – none of that A4 business) that the pictures were drawn by one of the pupils. Step forward Robert Wood, wherever you are now, 45 years later. Take a bow with thanks for helping out. These were mainly history notes and pictures about the past at our end of the County.
The only out of school activities then were sports events and an occasional visit to another school for some kind of stage entertainment. History was taught by chalk and talk and a few standard posters from a distant schools supplier. A more resourceful teacher might take some kind of objects into class in order to illustrate a point. That would be all. So one day Bernard Gilhooley, the history department head, and myself took a busload of the children to a nearby town and then into the city of Stoke-on-Trent to show them mills, canals, potbanks and different kinds of housing. They loved it. History in the classroom, however well described, is still an abstract concept.
Out in the actual world all five senses can come into play – sight, sound, touch, smell and even taste (try the oatcakes sold outside the pottery factory). It’s a three-dimensional stage set on which life is acted out for real. It’s an interactive experience where questions can be asked of the people you meet. It’s a powerful social experience too – full of the encounters with the people out there, but also between those making the journey, sharing reactions, thoughts and opinions. Maybe the most memorable benefit is the fun which sweetens the learning situation and gives more confidence to the youngsters discovering their world that they can make sense of it by getting out into it.
Books are still needed. Teachers are still needed, stood at the front in the classroom – but a bit of one-day tourism adds a whole spectrum of educational benefits. Whether it’s history and geography, social studies or biology doesn’t really matter. Whatever the heritage is, getting out there to examine and question it is what makes it possible to live with it.
