ORIGINAL MESSAGE

NAME: James (Jas) Cowen    Then & Now

DATE: 21 August 2012

CONNECTION WITH QE: Pupil 1956-63

Reading through my old school reports, which I wanted to peruse in order to reply to certain of the threads, one of the the main things that struck me among some complimentary messages were the constant admonitions from different masters and the two headmasters, EHJ and TBE, about my many faults and how I need to improve. This leads to various thoughts. They seem to think that my father should have some kind of input to get me to improve. I do not ever recall my father saying anything to me and certainly not showing me any reports and asking what my plan of action was. My father was not academic in any way and did not understand at all about studies and how to improve. He left school at 14 to join the Royal Navy. It would have been more helpful for masters and, if they was really interested, the headmasters to look at my faults and suggest how I should tackle them to improve. Of course in my day teachers did not really know the theories of education and how to get students to deal with learning problems. I had to use self-help to overcome my spending too much time on some questions to the exclusion of others. One of my daughters has never done this and hence has no A Levels and no degree, unlike the others.

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