Central Technical School

[helbo]

Thanks for the 'Memory Jog' Guys…Now I remember. Lots of cheese pie, green cabbage and semolina! Thats why the 'Baby Boomers' are aging so well.

[DUFFEMS]

My uncle Graham Norton went there, I can't recall the years he attended but, he was born 1935 so it's unlikely anyone on here would remember him.

Unfortunately, he's no longer with us but, I can recall him talking about his time there. He went into the RAF to do his National Service after the "Tech".

Edited January 11, 2010 by DUFFEMS
Added more information.

[Gethro]

I"m sure there must be someone who knows your uncle on this thread. he"s not all that old,!!. I was born in 1938 and was at the "Tech" 1951-52-53. on the building side and I"m stil knocking around. (just taking the tablets,!!!!)

[HPSec]

Great Memory.

 

Can you recall Herbert ( set sail down the assembly hall!every morning) Wadges Deputy= smoked like a trooper- smallish chap grey hair ?

 

Herbert's Deputy would be "Whistling Gil" - Gilbert Thompson (Mr Thompson or "Sir" to you and me) - who was Acting Head for a period of time after Herbert retired, and a good job he made of it too (in my opinion). It was as if a certain, if unusual, calm had descended on The School after the larger-than-life (magnificent, irreplaceable) Wadge. I seem to think he took my class for Maths at some stage. The "whistling" that endeared him to class mimics was on account of a slight gap between the front teeth which led to the opening word in a statement being accompanied by a shrill sound. Very fair-minded I thought him, but he did have a reputation for being in constant need of a cigarette - as you observe.

[coalandcoke]

Hi. Stumbled onto the page while watching it snow and it certainly jogged the memory. I remember many of the staff and students mentioned but thought I'd try and add a few. I was at CTS from 1952 to 1957 and was in 3C (Davis was Form Master) 5A (FM McCallum), AX (FM Thompson), A2X (FM Thompson), A3 (FM Bee). I still have my reports (thanks to my Father) but all the signatures are abreviated so I cannot add too many names to the list. Bee was the math teacher and wore one inch thick crepe soles on his shoes so you didn't know where he was in the room. Gregory took over chemistry in 1956 and was out of his depth coming from Building Science. His foul red ink is on my report. I think the tales of Gregory must have got taller in the later years. Pilling (not sure of the spelling) taught pattern making and moulding. You could get on his good side by talking model railways. I don't remember the amount of caning that some later students mentioned. Maybe we were better behaved in the 50's. Students I remember included Brian Day. He took a couple of us (Tony Davis was the other) out caving. Dumbest thing I ever did. Gerald Craven and Roy Antcliff were two other names. I was a prefect in the last year and did late patrol, which consisted of hanging over the railings on West Street and watching the girls while listening to Herbert droning on in the hall. He had a Jaguar at one stage and got berserk because it got scratched. Turned out to be a cat that liked the warm bonnet. I bet he caned the poor beast! I remember they increased the school day by 5 or 10 minutes while I was there so Wadge could do his thing. Wadge wasn't all bad. I wanted to leave as soon as the GCE's were finished so I could get a job to pay for a trip to Europe (big deal in those days). Turned out he was quite favorable. I went to Salford Tech after CTS for four years. After I'd finished I quit my job and then went to see Wadge about a teaching job. He set me on the next day as Chemistry teacher. Two other former students had also returned as teachers, one was Barron but I cannot remember the other. I left after a year, in 1962, (the pay was pathetic) and went to Sheffield U and then moved to the USA. Not sure what I would have done if it hadn't been for CTS. It was interesting to hear about Holly Street. I wonder what they did about all the mercury that had been spilt on the floor. As to the meals at Cathedral Street, I remember the fish covered in white sauce, mash potatoes and peas most fondly.

[Janner]

Thanks for the 'Memory Jog' Guys…Now I remember. Lots of cheese pie, green cabbage and semolina! Thats why the 'Baby Boomers' are aging so well.

 

In 49 a lot of us would by great thick slices of white bread & dripping, I think the shop was near to where we went for school meals. This delicious snack caused the headmaster to have a fit & a stern warning from him that his pupils will not be seen around town eating "doorsteps"

[HPSec]

You remind me that Mr Wadge had a lot to say about "fud".

Edited January 28, 2010 by HPSec
typographical error

[HPSec]

“Poor white boys ‘not catching up’.” That’s a statement on the BBC News Front Page on the web today. Government is ringing its hands again. Do you think Dawn Primarola (Children’s Minister) deserves to be told about our education – about the success story of 11+ failures (not just white boys)?

 

Do you think it's time that technical schools like ours were brought back?

Edited January 28, 2010 by HPSec
typographical error

[HPSec]

I went in 1963 until the move to Gleadless the sports were held somewhere at Ringinglow.

 

Yes, you remind me, Carosio and David!

 

The walk as, I remember it, was from the corner of West Street and Leopold Street; down High Street; left down Vicar Lane (the name I’d forgotten until you mentioned it) passing Silverstones (DIY shop) on the right at the bottom; across Campo Lane; down Lee Croft, turning right at the bottom into Silver Street Head where our destination (“Cathedral School”) was on the right.

 

We must have got quite fit coming back up, and, if we took school dinners and had a lesson there, we must sometimes have been doing the trip a couple of times in a day – carrying our bags.

 

What was the toyshop with the recessed doorway called – going up High Street, near the top on the right?

 

Later, when we moved to Gleadless, we had “the Causeway” from the bus stop to the school, in all weathers – although, if you were at the senior end of the school then, you had a locker and perhaps didn’t have to carry all your books backwards and forwards (from one side of Sheffield to the other, on two buses each way, if you were like me).

 

Remember going to King Ted’s swimming baths on the hired double-deckers?

 

Of course (I needed the prompt), having left the steep pitch at Ringinglow behind, we had the wonderful new sports pitches and the tennis courts at Gleadless.

 

What strikes me is how the old buildings, so dismal, so Dickensian in our day, there in the middle of town, are Listed (part of Sheffield’s heritage now) whereas those magnificent new buildings at Gleadless, of the late ‘60s, light and airy, have already been demolished for a number of years (probably before the City Council had re-paid the loan capital).

 

And these days, we knock down school buildings and build new ones costing millions – having some strange, but misguided belief that Education (that god) is in the hardware (not in the quality of teaching, not in discipline, and not in encouragement). And I say this, as a building professional with, you are entitled to think, a vested interest in construction!

[HPSec]

Ah, dear Hilldweller and Sandie - Wisewood in the early ’60s!

 

I too look back on those days with a certain fondness – through (I have to say) rose-tinted spectacles because my overriding feeling is that I was a reluctant scholar. But now? The opportunity to learn! I see how wonderful that was - the opportunity “to learn how to learn”, Russell Ackoff might have said.

 

A W Goodfellow (the immaculately suited, proud, straight-backed head teacher);

Miss Ballard;

Miss Revill (do I remember her or have I merely picked up the legend);

Hodgkinson and cross-country over Wadsley Common;

Croft (and the white slipper incident);

Richardson;

Mossingdew;

Turton;

Haydock (famed for the phrases, “You’ll get some of my peppermint stick!” or “You’ll get a big dig, lad!” or for forgetting to put out his pipe before putting it in his thick tweed suit jacket pocket. The “peppermint stick” (you will recall) was a short, stiff cane. And the cat in his imagination that walked on the corridor roof below the clerestory lights! – that always got the point of his lesson, whereas (he believed) it went over the heads of us dummies. He was wrong (he was not a teacher in vain);

Miss Dexter;

Holmes;

Moffit;

Hartley (seriously ill perhaps, drinking soothing warm milk from a glass science beaker, but entertaining us with the pops and wheezes of some practical science experiments).

 

Cycling Proficiency!

 

It was at Wisewood in the playground there, I saw a teacher lead with a flat-handed left and connect with a flat-handed right. It made quite an impression and I was just a spectator. Seems like yesterday!

 

Croft (maths and football) and, in particular, Charlie Haydock (English) were certainly my making (into little more than a bag of nails) - fearfully strict but fair and with senses of humour. There was one other to whom I owe special thanks - Mrs J E Jarvis from the junior school. It was in the very last moment of leaving that institution. She and I were the last out of the J4 classroom and alongside each other in the corridor, and it was no more than a word of encouragement. She said the Big School was a new opportunity (that I should embrace). She praised my slight arty-crafty “skills” (I’d obviously given her next to no reason to think I might have academic ability) and we went our separate ways never to meet again, but I still remember the good in what she spoke.

 

At the Big School, the bright kids - including (I dare say), even then, the odd ones coached for the 11+ and the even odder one who had had elocution lessons (though I think we were all “working class”) - had been skimmed off to the Grammar Schools. Suddenly at the Big School my like had risen to the surface.

 

A sad sack like, Prescott, who endlessly moans that he failed the 11+ (and yet he still, for obscure reasons that escape me, became Deputy Prime Minister) castigates the Grammars. They were the best thing that ever happened to me. There was the half-day holiday after the exam, for a start. What I can’t understand is why there is not an 11+, a 12+, a 13+, a 14+, a 15+, 16+, 17+, 18+. In other words, I cannot understand why there is not Opportunity, Opportunity, Opportunity created at every level in Education, Education, Education - and in life in general.

 

I despise Education being used as a political football and I do firmly believe that it has stood still for the best part of fifty years – or gone backwards and forwards without making any significant progress.

 

Society’s expectation of Government is, that with a steady hand on the tiller, we shall see slight improvement – year on year. We don’t ask for much, but what a disappointment in large part!

 

Who was the woodwork teacher there? I think I owe him too. At Wisewood we might make the odd teapot stand - long cherished or not by our mothers.

 

At the Tech we made joints – all manner of halvings and dovetails and even a tusk tenon or a corner of a window frame. It was years later and once only that we were allowed to make something useful – a fishing stool - under the firm direction of “John Henry” Hunter – who would be respected (and is, in my mind even now) - or his less intimidating colleague, Mr Jarvis.

 

And downstairs in Holly Street (below the pavement lights, now gone, and the shadows that fell), the brickwork shop where Sam Crisp had a lengthy cane with the girth of a broom handle and was often heard to say things like, “5X, you’re getting in my hair! And you’d better get out of it!” Paints a strange picture in my mind as I think of us standing there in our boiler suits! Was there a bigger figure in the school, there in his grey smock, large brick trowel in hand – shoulders raised in anger? I grant you, Ron Underdown and Mr Hill were tall and made an impression in their black gowns.

 

The cane as, others have commented, was there – not much used, but used nevertheless. It was never used on me and I think I looked away at the point of contact when others got it. I saw tough kids cry sometimes, some deservedly - although I dare say, occasionally, by Sir’s mistake. I am reasonably sure that a more liberal education would have failed me. I don’t think I would have done the homework, if the teacher hadn’t had some sanctions. I think perhaps we are failing generations of scholars in the absence of discipline.

 

The Merit/De-merit system worked of course. The very best education would, in my opinion, be predicated on no more than encouragement.

 

As it happens, I’m writing on an historic day – Blair before Chilcot. The radio is playing in the background and I’m reminded of Albert Bun’s comments in the margin of my misguided essay which said something like, “You can be clever and still wrong!” I scored a zero. An uneasy peace rests on the Battle of the Boyn - even 400 hundred years passing. How long shall we be obliged to remember the lesser cause, and the folly, of Iraq? In my too easy acquiescence (to the likes of Blair) I find blood on my hands.

 

We were brought up on Crispin, but this day should be for ever remembered as Gilligan’s Day.

Edited January 29, 2010 by HPSec
typo corrected