CASTLE ROCK BY SUBJECT - PART 1

Even before I started Castle Rock older people would ask “who’s your form teacher” and when I said “Miss Davis the Ceramics teacher” they would all give the exact same reply. “she’s horrible”. My parents tried to reassure me that it wouldn’t matter as I would only have her for registration and of course ceramics.

She was horrible, absolutely vile,  I didn’t see her smile once in 3 years. She looked more like a man and always wore the same blue overalls. Thankfully the only class photo in our year that the teacher didn’t appear on was ours. Her neck would always go bright red when she was shouting at anyone and her favourite saying was “you’d better start getting it right”.

Anything that happened in other classes usually got back to her and you had done something wrong you often got in trouble for it twice. In my case it was usually for not doing my homework for Maths and Science (see earlier entries). Miss Davis was one of them (many) teachers who did what could best be described as collective punishments. Once a few of the boys were messing about in Home Economics throwing food about and generally disrupting the lesson. Every boy in the class was summoned to her even the ones who had absolutely nothing to do with it. This tactic never has worked and never will, if I’m going to get in trouble because someone else is throwing food about I might as well do the same myself!!!!!!

As well as Ceramics (this is covered elsewhere) and registration we also had one lesson a week called tutorial. We did a 15 minute personal diary session (that she read) unfortunately I didn’t have the guts back then to write my real opinions, I threw this away the day I left Castle Rock. We spent a lot of time doing various worksheets the content of which I can hardly remember and she always checked our homework diaries were signed by our parents.

Her main theme of tutorial was our record of achievement folders, if only we spent a fraction of the time actually achieving something than talking about it we might have actually got somewhere. At the time we were told how important the information contained in them would be to any future employer. All I can say is the only piece of paper I ever got from school that has ever been of any use at a job interview is an award I got at King Edward VII for “consistent attendance” between the ages of 14 and 16.

Final observation on this is that everyone got a “record of achievement” full of computer generated statements. Even the idiots who couldn’t read, write, add up a couple of 2 digit numbers and disrupted the lessons on a daily basis stopping everyone else from learning got one which slightly diminishes their value!!!!!!!!!!

I would have thought that the grades on our school reports would be sufficient to give anyone an “at a glance” good idea of what our strengths and weakness were. At Castle Rock however each report contained not one grade but two. The first was the good old fashioned A - E attainment grade. The second was a grade for “effort”......20 years later I’m still at a loss to explain how a teachers is meant to grade “effort”. A gifted person could score 75% on a test with no effort at all while a less able person could make all the effort in the world and not score 50%.
To me it’s a typical example of political correctness, so that someone who can't read, write or add up can still get a grade A on their report for “effort”. Worse still Miss Davis told us that the effort grades on our reports were the most important which has to rank as one of the most stupid statements I have ever heard come out a teacher's mouth. She was full of this sort of stuff and represented everything that was wrong with modern education.

Every school report also had to contain a self assessment for every subject, in other words we had to write a report on ourselves. Another waste of time that my parents didn’t pay even the slightest bit of attention towards. I remember the baffled looks I got when trying to explain this concept to my grandparents generation.

As well as an individual report for each subject I also got a form teachers report as well. I seriously object to being described as “a rather immature member of the class” when I was usually fairly quiet and tried to get on with my class work while being constantly held back by idiots who had no intention of learning.

DECEMBER 1988

Matthew has ability but in many subjects has failed to utilise it fully during the autumn term. He must take more time and care with his work and homework in on time. A rather immature member of the class.

MAY 1989

Matthew has ability but until he puts greater effort and care with his work he will not realise his full potential. I do hope he can now adopt a more positive approach to his work as I am sure he is capable of achieving good results.

FEBRUARY 1990

Matthew has made sound progress in many subject areas this year and has shown that he has the ability to achieve good results. He must however guard against carelessness in the presentation of his work.

NOVEMBER 1990

Matthew has ability but in some aspects of his work he is reluctant to utilise it fully. While he understands concepts his work is flawed by poor presentation which I hope he will make every effort.


The rest of this Castle Rock by subject is a rundown of the rest of the subjects not already covered and the school reports I got for them. As well as tutorial the only subject we didn’t get any report or grades for was applied studies. We would be given a list of courses to choose from and would pursue that course for about 6 weeks on Thursday afternoons. Examples of courses we could do would be learning German, writing the school newspaper, or making a go-kart, some of them were useful, others were a waste of time. Some like personal finance and first aid should be compulsory education anyway..........