Schooldays

English Class, Heanor Aldercar Secondary School, Mid-1960s

I had an email recently from someone asking me if I would sign one of my books and dedicate it to his wife on the occasion of her 65th birthday; she had been a young student in one of my classes at Heanor Aldercar Secondary School in the mid-60s, and had since gone on, I discovered, to study Mathematics at Imperial College, followed by an MSc and PhD in Computing at Nottingham University – for not one scrap of which I can lay claim to have been any kind of influence. What she remembered me most for was my love of contemporary poetry and my handwriting [a sort of Italic with the occasional added flourish] which she spent hours, apparently, trying to copy. A good job she can’t see it now! She and her husband had read a number of the Resnick novels without realising that the John Harvey who had written them was the same as the one who had talked her whole class into buying their own copies of Penguin Modern Poets 10: The Mersey Sound, thus risking the wrath of any parents who might object to the raciness of their contents.

So mild they must seem now, those poems, innocent even … Roger McGough’s “At Lunchtime … A Story of Love”; Brian Patten’s “Song for Last Year’s Wife” and “Little Johnny’s Confession”; even Adrian Henri’s schoolgirl obsession. Another time, another age, another set of values: other lives.

Twelve years I spent teaching English & Drama: Heanor first, a small mining town, as it was then, between Derby and Nottingham; then Andover in Hampshire and, finally, Stevenage, Hertfordshire.

All a long time ago, though it doesn’t take much to remind me: a chance meeting, an email out of the blue. But names and faces blur and, looking back, you can only hope you did some little good; taught students successfully how to write a coherent sentence and instilled some enjoyment, in one form or another, in words. Anything more, surely, would be presumptuous – too Goodbye, Mr Chips. 

This message came via Friends United some ten years ago …

Dear John
You turned my life around learning about the War Poets (Seigfried Sassoon – “Oh German Mother”) and introducing me to Folk Music (“Blackleg Miner”).
At the time we met I was off the rails – you put me back on them.
I often refer to you as my saviour from the factories and coal mines of Derbyshire.
Tom Cooke had me down as a loser which I was before you.
I am now retired from the Fire Brigade after 34 years reaching the post of Divisional Officer and I live in Spain with my wife Angela.|
As well as teaching me English you believed in me and taught me about social history ands much more. I have a lot to thank you for. Hope you are OK.
Ian Shaw  1965-1967

Weigh that alongside whatever else I might have achieved, whatever honours and good reviews, and make me choose and I would have to say it means more. Goodbye, Mr Chips, indeed.