A few days ago I was talking to a neighbour who was describing the difficulty of throwing away family history items, even though the next generation weren't interested in them being passed on.
I've had my father's school reports (removed from the loft) sitting waiting to be disposed of for some time, finding it difficult to bite the bullet.
The conversation reminded me, and this morning I idly opened one of them, from 1931, and had a read. I noticed the name of my Father's form teacher, a Mr Bacon. It suddenly struck me that it must be the same, wizened, "Flitch" Bacon that also taught me some 32 years later at the same school.
I wonder how many teachers manage to remain at the same school for well over 30 years nowadays? (Being a Grammar School it was probably the apex of a standard teaching career for most people).
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One of my teachers was a pupil at the school, then left to do his teacher training and returned to the school as a teacher for the whole of his working life!!
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There were probably half a dozen Masters at the Grammar School I entered in 1971 who had returned to work in the place after they were demobbed. Or were women of similar age.
Many of them left in summer 1973 at the point the school was due to start its transition to a comprehensive; some a year or two before they were the normal retirement age of 60.
At least two others - younger than those above - had been pupils.
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My missus has been teaching at the same school for 27 years, and I've been a partner at work for 25 years.
Some people just lack the imagination to move around :-)
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>> My missus has been teaching at the same school for 27 years, and I've been
>> a partner at work for 25 years.
>>
>> Some people just lack the imagination to move around :-)
>>
I was a partner at the same GP practice for 39yrs. Continuity is a much undervalued (probably because it's unquantifiable) asset in my profession. You mostly don't need long appointment times and/or a small list size when you know the clientele, all ptnrs are there on 5 or 6 days a week and operate a personal list system, especially when you can program the desk robot to record commonplace diagnoses and print their (legible at last!) prescriptions and/or an information sheet with a mere few keystrokes. Sadly those days have gone.....now too many part timers not knowing the list, often complaining about their long days yet only there sometimes a mere three days a week with no on call work experience.....heigh ho.
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I started at my Comprehensive senior school one September, in the year that my father had died in the May. I was invited to lunch with the Head - he took a different group of new boys every day until he'd met the whole new intake. I introduced myself and at the mention of my surname he scratched his chin - then asked me if my father had been at the school (it had been a Grammar at the time). I said yes he had, but he'd been expelled during the 5th form. The head tells me that he remembers my father in that case, and that it was during his very first year out of University as a teacher that he'd come across Dad. I asked him "what did he get expelled for", because my Dad had never told me. He had been a local champion boxer and I suspected he laid someone out, and didn't want to tell me and encourage me to violence. Well, said the Head, if he never told you, I shall never tell you either, and that was that.
I still don't know to his day, 43 years later.
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Continuity! - smokie
