A Good Education

Rosemary Fitch

1949

I was sent to school when I was three. It was called kindergarten and I think I learned to read there. Also to sit nicely at morning assembly with the big girls, and to understand big new concepts like Stealing, Owning up and Guilt.

It was quite a posh school I suppose. It would certainly have been the best that my parents thought they could afford. Both of them believed strongly in the value of a good education and our lives as children were shaped and determined at all times by this aspiration. So I was kitted out in my kilt, green blazer and green panama hat and despatched to school at the earliest possible opportunity.

I wasnt unhappy there, but I remember very little about it. Except the one thing. That dreadful day. The journey to the school meant walking round the corner from our tenement flat in Richmond Street and then up to the tram stop. Then get on the tram and sit in a row with the other children dressed like me, then change trams, then get off the tram and walk the rest of the way to school with a teacher who met us at the stop. I think my mother used to come with me at first, but by the time I was four (probably as a mark of how grown up I was) I went by myself. This was in 1949 and children did this. ... (continues)