Looking Back, with Eric Leaver

BETTER education standards are top of the Government's agenda.

A crackdown on calculators in schools is coming so that pupils learn to do sums in their head.

But would it not be a real breakthrough if we suddenly found our 10-year-olds doing algebra, calculating the cubic capacity of cones, analysing sentences from works of English literature and taking part in spelling contests?

And would it not be amazing if even those in the infant classes could mentally multiply 12 by 12 and any smaller numbers you cared to mention?

It would be progress indeed. But it seems that we would have to put the clock back, not forward, to achieve it - as 91-year-old Mr John Kitchen reveals in recollections of his schooldays during the First World War.

Born and brought up in Hapton, Mr Kitchen is presently a "star" of a special exhibition marking the 70th anniversary this month of the consecration of St Margaret's Church in the village. In the church, parishioners have assembled displays of memorabilia and old photographs like these of high days and holidays in Hapton - including one showing the laying of the foundation stone of St Margaret's in 1926.

But one of the special attractions is an audio commentary on bygone times in the village which a team of helpers, led by Mr Brian Hough, of Scarth Avenue, has collected in interviews with half a dozen old-timers - with a 120-minute contribution from Mr Kitchen. Mr Hough intends placing these in the Clitheroe-based North West Sound Archive but a record of Mr Kitchen's schooldays, penned by him a couple of years ago, is already lodged with the Department of Educational Research at the University of Lancashire - along with its telling insight into what pupils of 80-odd years ago were expected to learn. This is where we find children as young as 10 at the old Hapton CE School grappling with subjects that would be hard to find in today's primary school curriculum.

"It was in those classes that we really knew what school was about," said Mr Kitchen, of Buckshaw Terrace, Whalley Road, Simonstone. "It was as if the headmaster knew that elementary education was the only one we were likely to get. So, before the factory system claimed us he would cram as much as he could into us.

"We had arithmetic every day and this, for the brighter ones, included some algebra and plenty of decimals. Mental arithmetic was used to sharpen your wits and he had large cubes, cones and cylinders for which you had to discover the volumes." Mr Kitchen, who, during his working days, was in charge of the accident and welfare department at the old Howard and Bullough textile engineering works in Accrington, says: "All this may seem very elementary to a secondary schoolboy or girl, but we were only 10 and, finally, 12 years old when we were in the head teacher's classes.

"His English included parsing sentences on the blackboard from the first lines of books and essays. Spelling was made competitive."

But if it was in those final years that pupils, starting work at the age of 12, found out what school was really about, it was hardly a casual education that they received in the reception classes - as Mr Kitchen discloses.

"The Infant Section was divided into three classes - the first one, in a separate room, was known as the Babies' Class. By the time you had reached the First Class, you would probably be about six years old and ready to go into the mainstream of the school.

"In the infant classes, pens were not used, nor indeed was much paper or exercise books. A more economical practice for infants was the use of 'slates.' These consisted of a piece of good slate set into a wooden frame. You used a piece of soft slate or chalk to write and when you had finished the whole exercise could be erased with a damp cloth." He adds: "Another important part of the infant class curriculum was the learning of the times tables.

"These were taught by means of the whole class standing up and reciting in chorus: "Twice one are two, twice two are four' and so on. This was done daily until all the tables from 1 to 12 were learned.

"It could be a tribute to the system to say that, whatever else adults forgot after their schooldays, they rarely forgot their tables.

School, however, was also about play - with the sexes separated in different playgrounds. For the girls, favourite games were checks and bobbers - which involved picking up small coloured cubes of pottery during the single bounce of small ball - hopscotch and skipping. But for the boys rougher play prevailed - including football with a ball made of hard-packed rag.

"If it happened to be a wet day, the effect of being struck by a sodden hard ball was something you noticed, particularly if it was your neck or face which took the impact," says Mr Kitchen.

Another boys' game consisted of one lad standing facing a wall and stooping slightly as the rest of the boys ran at him one at a time and jumped on his back. "The idea was to cling on without falling until as many as possible could add to the number before the whole lot collapsed on the floor," he explains.

At the village school, children were taught the virtues of honesty, respect for their betters, discipline and self-improvement - with punishments for those who strayed.

"Our head teacher's cane never became dusty from lack of use. Caning was automatic for misbehaviour - for the boys," he recalls. I do not remember a girl being caned. The punishment meted out to girls was to push the sleeve of the dress or frock up towards the shoulder and then the offending girl was slapped hard on the soft tissue of the upper arm."

Prevailing throughout Mr Kitchen's schooldays were the effects on the home front of the First World War - those of food shortages and, often, hunger which the school allayed by creating its own vegetable gardens in which the children worked. At times, local allotment holders provided the ingredients for issues of free soup to the schoolchildren and, at home, the meagre meat ration was often supplemented by rabbit pie.

But when peace finally came, four months after Mr Kitchen's schooldays were ended at the age of 13, not everyone rejoiced.

"There were those who wept bitterly for the ones who would not be coming back, facing the years when they would bring up their families alone, make decisions alone and grow old alone," he recalls. Yet those schooldays which insulated Hapton's children from most of the war's realities were all too brief.

"Our 12-year-old schoolfellows were being got out of bed at 5.30am to start unpaid work in the local cotton mills," Mr Kitchen remembers.

"It was unpaid because the mill owners considered that while you were learning to weave, you were helping the weaver who was teaching you. Therefore, if anyone should pay you, it was the weaver.

"As he had an average wage of approximately 24 shillings (£1.20) for this five-and-a-half-day week, it was most unlikely that the poor little 12-year-old learner would get anything at all until he was proficient enough to operate two looms without supervision."

Adds Mr Kitchen: "After his six-hour morning stint, the half-timer would be back at school at 1.30pm, his head still ringing with the clatter and bangs of 200 looms.

"Under these circumstances, not much was expected from him - or her - at school. The teacher kindly overlooked any shortcomings. The child was going to leave anyway in a few months to take up full-time employment. So his education virtually finished at 12."

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.