We were watching the Netflix series “Queens Gambit “over the weekend. It is a lovely mini-series about a young girl whose mother dies and Beth is sent to an orphanage to be reared and educated. Beth is a very clever child and is always first finished her classwork.
Teacher sends her off to the basement to bang the dusters. Down there she sees the janitor who always has a chess board and is playing chess. Over time he teaches Beth to play chess and junior management has advised me not to reveal any more details of the series lest some of you should chose to watch it.
When I saw the duster banging it started another train of thought in my head. I was transported back to my own primary school days and being sent out to bang the duster. There was a special assigned place at the back of the school called bangers wall where all dusters were well banged.
When I started teaching myself, I had a big blackboard with pullies, and you could push the blackboard up and down. The headmaster cautioned us to take good care of the boards and to bang our dusters on a regular basis. This was done on a wall behind a prefab specially reserved for dustups
In wet or very cold weather the duster banger might just stick the hand outside and bang it off the wall nearest the door. There were often investigations into who was banging today, and the culprit just had to be discovered. Major crime. How times have changed.
Talk and chalk was all the go until we got some respite with the introduction of the Gestetner. It was such a delicate chore to make the master copy on this mess incorporated machine. Older teachers at the time just could not cope with such revolutionary technology.
One colleague thought it was brilliant that you could make an extra copy of something. One evening he brought home two masters , got his steak, wrapped it in the purple master copies and put the lot in the oven. So, one steak became no steak and much silence ensued in the domestic affairs of that residence for the evening. This incident was a source of much amusement at staff gatherings for many a year.
Gradually the quality of the photocopiers improved, and carbon copies were less messy than the former ink versions.
Around this time too we welcomed the overhead projectors and their accompanying acetates.
These were a great advance in that you could make your copy and store them for future use. They were much used for geography and maths. Again, here some of the older teaching colleagues were flabbergasted by the introduction of such modern technology. Many of them said they would leave that to the younger generation.
I was delighted when I got my first slide projector. I took a lot of photographs and had them made into slides . I showed them at home and then in a Eureka moment I realised I could use them in school.
Later we got ‘fearas’ in school . This involved charts and they were accompanied by little cans of tape for teaching Buntus Cainte. This was to save and reinvent Irish as a spoken language. Some teachers loved it but I personally I thought it beat the capped can for its uselessness and did not last too long, buiochas mor le Dia na Gloire.It was so boring. It totally stunted inventiveness and creativity and its deilbhini are long faded from the artistic side of my brain.
During all this period of marked improvements in Irish Education we still managed to hold on to the charts and marker education. Any trainee teacher who stood half a chance of getting a diploma had to have the chart press fairly full of charts for every subject. I remember them well going into School armed with my bundle of charts marching past the elder statesmen of the school. One wag thought he was very funny when he asked me if I had been to the zoo for the weekend seeing as I had so many elephant x rays under my oxter.They all thought this was hilarious.
We survived all the innovations ,even that early seventies New Curriculum malarkey. We were brought to Wicklow town for retraining which was an exercise in pure unadulterated boredom.
We were told that there would be big improvements on the way with new tape recorders and film and slide projectors. I remember standing up and asking them to speak about the situation currently prevailing in schools. I was supported by some brave colleagues. The older senior inspectors who were giving the indoctrination course were indignant and we were accused of insubordination and were asked for ainm agus scoil le do thoil . Naturally we refused and a few of us walked out. They later apologised but we noted that we got a few regular inspections from one Ard Cigire na Roinne for some time after that . We always had notai seachtaine, cuntas miosuil agus sceim bliana ever ready for inspection.
It was the era of the black polo necks and the ARD mandid not like us wearing those either. He was a collar and tie man and thought we should change our dress code. We did not and asked him if he was coming to asses our fashion style or teaching ability. Game set and match point to we rebels.
As my late father always said a shut mouth catches no flies. I should have kept mine closed on that occasion. I learned one lesson for life that day. No matter how boring the topic just sit, grin and bear it and keep the lips zipped closed for the duration.
We survived all that crap and went on to work with the emerging computers, laptops and white board technology.
All of us enjoyed the old times but over the years we embraced everything new that improved the quality pf our teaching lives.
In my present retired state, I cannot imagine life without laptops, mobile phones , what’s app ,face time , Netflix, Apple and of course Dr Google
Our letter writing has all but ceased. It is a forgotten art and we may lament its demise .For myself I was never very happy with the exactitudes of the letter form with all the emphasis on layout, full stops ,commas ,exclamation marks. I was, and still am ,more of a free flow person with many a long sentence and elongated paragraphs. It’s the thought that counts.
We cannot halt the tsunami of technological advances happening in the world around us.
I love to embrace them all and will make every effort to stay abreast of emerging communication system.
I must go now as I hear my mobile ringing and I must reply to a few emails and what’s apps
Slan go foill
Mick O Callaghan
03/11/2020