Blogger: Aggie Rothon, Communications Officer
I went to boarding school. It was a funny old place. There were the metal-framed boarding-house windows that didn’t quite shut, lumpy horse-hair mattresses and thick canary yellow socks. We marched in to lunch to a band and had study on every day of the week.
Sounds a bit austere, doesn’t it? Except for the socks perhaps. But despite memories of rain sodden woollen uniforms, a large degree of ‘rigour’ and of missing home comforts, we did have some fun times. Watching cricket in the sun, secretly roller blading in the ‘day’ rooms and putting on plays in the professional theatre. All in all, I was privileged to a great education that, incredibly, was free as well. I was lucky.
This week I have been trying to understand when and why it became personally necessary to work in conservation. When did I become inspired by the outdoors and nature? Was it a certain teacher, my A level in Biology or reading a particular book? Through this thought I have realised that for all the great scientific minds that taught at my school, and the place’s general academic merit, the teachers that influenced me most were the ones that quite simply offered us pupils time to muse.
I remember a lesson in coppicing. What a fine art coppicing is and to how much do we owe the woodsman! The heart shaped leaves and bright yellow crowns of our spring messenger, the lesser celandine. Carpets of creamy primroses or pungent ramsons and the purple ear-lobes of common dog violet. The hammering of woodpeckers, the urgency of a nuthatch calling, great flocks of tits flitting in crowds amongst the branches.
But I haven’t come to know this because of my school lesson in coppicing. In fact I still, to my dismay, can remember little of the practicalities of this craft. I was too busy answering the questions on my worksheet and getting the maths right. And then I would have been too busy racing off to my next task, my next netball match or my next lesson to become inspired by what I had just seen.
But I also remember Mr Reid. He took us to the woods on the hill beyond the playing fields and let us sit there. Bluebells carpeted every inch of the glades that we explored or simply mused upon. The lesson involved no right or wrong, no outcomes or expected results but gave us time to ask ourselves, ‘are you interested?’
Perhaps some of my peers weren’t inspired by that woodland excursion and more structured study suited them far better. But I hope that for those of us that need to ponder, the current curriculum will give time to just that. Here is to Mr Reid. May many more teachers follow his path.
Photo by Andy Hay (rspb-images.com)
Article on 18 Feb 2012 in EDP