Memories of School in the 50’s

Short trousers, new school bag, jam sandwiches and a bottle of milk. Fear in my eyes, my mother reassured me- “Everything will be fine.”
Into my classroom- the “Master” introduces himself. No niceties- more of a question of “I’m the boss, and if you do what you’re told, you won’t get hurt.”

There was no such thing as charts on the walls, computers, CD players or anything like that. The education system in the 50’s was the ‘Chalk and Talk’ approach. We listened, we learned, and if we didn’t, there would be consequences. This came in the form of the feared ‘bata’. We learned mostly out of fear, but we definitely learned, and we still remember our tables very well!

Later, when I was allowed to go to school on my own, the highlight was calling into Sarah Flood’s shop to buy a pennyworth of jellybeans, which Sarah carefully put into a cone which she made out of newspaper. She also sold ‘slab’, a toffee which was as hard as a rock. Three squares could last you for the day if you weren’t caught chewing it in school. For safekeeping, it was often stuck under our desk. Sometimes, if we had to move places, there was an added bonus of finding a supply of slab stuck under the desk!

At the end of primary school came the ‘Primary School Cert’, an exam which put as much pressure on children as the Leaving Certificate does today. But enough of primary school. The next big adventure was being sent to boarding school. “Sent” is probably the wrong word, as I really wanted to go there. I had heard enough stories about midnight feasts, tuck shops and the like, to make me think that this would be like heaven. It wasn’t heaven, but it wasn’t exactly hell either!

Ciarán McCarthy