Breakthrough

Nancy Clunas

The year was 1936; the location was Boquhanran Primary School, Clydebank. On that autumn morning 1 was one of forty mixed infants sitting at my desk, laboriously writing down the letters which the teacher was printing up, one by one, on the blackboard.

At age five I was a conscientious and worried pupil. The main problem was that the letters and numbers which I struggled to practise at home had an awful habit of coming out backwards - particularly the bs and ds, and 3s and 5s. I still remember seeing the paper on which I practised getting more and more worn out (like myself) as I tried, rubbed out and tried again, to make numbers and figures face the right way. That day at school I noticed that the teacher had printed up a group of letters, then left a space and put up another group. I wondered what that meant. Putting down the chalk with a flourish, teacher turned to face the class. "Does anyone know what that says?" she asked, pointing at the board. Mystified, in silence we studied the board - nobody knew the answer. We were stunned when she announced "well that is John Scott's name." As this sank in, we turned, as one, open-mouthed, to gaze at John, who was as surprised as the rest of us. I remember him as a mischievous, brown-haired, fresh-faced, rosy-cheeked boy, sitting the middle of the class. He was now blushing furiously at becoming the centre of attention - 'cos his name was on the board. Teacher continued, 'so now you know all the letters of the alphabet I want each one of you to go home and practise writing your name and address and we'll go over that tomorrow. '

Up to that day learning to write had been a real hassle. I could not see the point of the torture involved in learning and writing down all those letters, but to write down and then read your own name would really be something! I could not wait to get down to it. I sped home and eagerly began practising, finally getting the parental O.K. to progress to writing in my jotter.

Jotters and books had to be kept neat and tidy, with only your name and room number appearing on the front. They had to be covered, or battered, as we called it. At the beginning of term e.g. on a Monday, the teacher would announce, "I want to see all books battered by Thursday". Tension rose as teacher checked on Tuesday and Wednesday mornings that the time-table was being adhered to, with the grand finale on the Thursday morning deadline. I remember anxiously questioning my mother "Have you got the brown paper in yet?" "Oh, I'm sure there's some there somewhere" she replied airily. This was not the answer I wanted, as the best thing would be a bought pack of sheets of glossy brown paper that your pencil could skim over. The alternative was brown paper, which had covered a parcel. It had to be smoothed out turned round to the duller side, with no stamps on it before re-use. Battering was a big problem. I was on tenterhooks until the job was done. The "hands on" work of battering was carried out by Dads in most households. Perhaps this was because they were more used to measuring and cutting, or perhaps mothers were kept busy in the evenings with ironing, baking etc. One time my Dad suggested a slightly different batter and I was delighted with the result. My classmates, if not my teacher, much admired my brightly patterned wallpaper batters (courtesy of a surplus roll left by the painter.)

Keen to show off my new-found ability to write my name and address, I printed it out on the inside batter of books and jotters, when I learned to spell "Britain, The World" I added these words, so that wherever I happened to leave them there was a very clear return address. The result of my reading and writing breakthrough was that for the first time I began to enjoy school. I was helped by the arrival each week of my comic "Chick's Own" - a brightly coloured report in words and pictures of said chicken's weekly adventures. It kindly broke down the words e.g. dol-ly and mo-ther. From "Chick's Own" I progressed to reading books with unbroken words and my spelling worries were soon over too.

There is one sad memory associated with this story - namely the bombing and destruction of Boquhanran Primary School only five years later during the Clydebank Blitz of March 1941. By that time I was attending the Thorn Primary School in Johnstone where I was living as an evacuee. But although my first primary school has gone I still retain the happy memory of that young teacher at Boquhanran School whose ingenious, yet simple, device inspired this pupil to apply herself to learning the joys of reading and writing - a lasting gift.