Computer Studies , just had zero interest in it we had a competition to see who could get out of the O Level exam (1986) first , we had to be seated for a minimum of 1 hr for a 2 hour exam , I managed to set the ball rolling by getting up on 57 mins and not being told to sit back down and the floodgates opened as prolly half the other kids sitting the exam followed my lead needless to say a big fat U , i mean seriously as if that computer bollox would catch on
Latin. First class of Grammar School. From the friendly helpful teachers of my primary school I was confronted with the twisted traumatised leftovers from WW2 that that school employed. A terrible awakening for a rather innocent 11 year old.
Art. I was terrible at it, the teachers at school were terrible, the art classrooms were horrible and I simply had no interest in it. An hour a week for 3 years of my life I'll never get back.
I used to hate physics. It was really dry and just didn't inspire me and invariably taught in one of the classrooms that had big windows and was on the 3rd floor and I would watch the particles of chalk dust move in the sunlight and slowly drift off to sleep. I liked chemistry and was OK with biology.
Computer studies. Got basically forced to take it as an option because I was in the top x% at maths. The school had only just opened its first computer suite with bbc b machines (I think that's what they were called). Anyhow, this suite was an adjoining room to the classroom so rarely had the teacher in it. You'd do your theory in the classroom, which was whatever our maths teacher had learnt at computer night school class the previous evening, then put it into practice in the suite. The trouble was all the monitors could be switched to TVs so I spent my time watching what was 1984-6 equivalent of Jeremy Kyle. Like oohahh, a 'U' grade was proudly achieved.
A Level Physics. Enjoyed GCSE Physics and got a decent B grade but fcuk me, the mathematical content of A Level was beyond me totally. Bunked the final exam and went to the pub. Dont tell my parents, they still dont know!
Hated Maths, just one of those things I can never understand even now... took four exams (GCSE level at School and after) and slowly got my grade better until I failed the last one and gave up
Funnily enough my Dad is really good at Maths yet rubbish at English (writing) whilst the latter is something I excel at
Technical Drawing, I was so bad at this would have sleepless nights the day before this lesson. Was also terrible at woodwork but got away with just planing pieces of wood away to nothing and so went under the teachers radar!
I liked learning languages but the 2nd year of Spanish at secondary school was a nightmare, only because of this big fat miserable cow of a teacher.
Every register would be the same, a nightmare. Every persons name she would shout out would be followed by questions on the previous lesson, seriously it would take half hour every time.
For example one week we were learning directions to places. It was alright if you were at the beggining of the register as the questions were always easy "how do you say? Take the first left in Spanish", but if you were in the last 1/3 you were in trouble. I remember I was asked " how do you say, take the 3rd right, then go straight and when you reach the post office take the 2nd left for the theatre"....cue the shrugging the shoulders and taking your 5 minute bollocking.
Still, was great when the projector screen fell on her head and she ran out the room crying.
Electronics............I spent 2 years burning solder and trying to make my own terminator action figure. I managed to scrape an E in the exam some how.
coming from a very non-technically mined family as I did, it was only natural that the 11-plus administrators should decide that a Technical School would be an ideal place of learning for me. So for the next five years I happily occupied the bottom of the class position in woodwork, metalwork and engineering drawing. The thing was they never gave up on me: they seemed to think that their teaching methods would one day produce the perfect tea-pot stand, or the best metal paint bucket ever, 0r the straightest line ever drawn, but it was not to be.
I suppose nowadays things are different and kids have more control over what subjects they take but in the fifties you didn't get a say or a choice : you just had to get on with it as best you could even if it was a waste of everybody's time .
deffo another vote for maths. There are some atrocious maths teachers around. The one for my gcse's had so little control i think once or twice we made him cry. The bloke was a complete wanker who had poor personal hygiene so none of us felt bad about it. He's some one that also needs to be a character in some sketch show he was so caricature in the way he acted and the hilarious ways he got angry. Even the other teachers found it embarrassing how poorly he would control an otherwise extremely well behaved group of students.
One time one of the guy's put his hand up when we were given old exam papers to work through and asked "I cant remember my name sir!", the teacher waddled over (he would waddle) and growled "THIS IS YOUR NAME ISN'T IT?!" and wrote PRAT in large letters across the front page. To be fair that kid was really annoying. But it just made everyone laugh more at the teacher.
I was absolutely dire at maths, almost to the point of numerical dyslexia (if there is such a thing). I got an E, resat it and got an F ffs. However, I loved maths lessons for the simple reason - Mrs Peters, the teacher, was sooo fit. Thing is, she knew it and would wear clothing that wasn't suitable attire to be worn around fifteen year old lads. If I knew how to, I'd like to work out, as a percentage, how much of my secondary school years I spent fantasising about her.
DT...which is a shame as it's one I should of really enjoyed. Excluded from it for most of year 8 as me and my mate didn't realise the teacher was looking right at us (he had a glass eye) as we stabbed each with compasses. Then come GCSE's my pisshead teacher lost my coursework and told me I had to do the whole lot over from scratch - I went and complained to the head of DT who said "Look you can call me a dickhead if you like but you are going to have to do it all again". When I said ok and called him a dickhead he decided I could do it all again in after school detention. A few years later he was sent down for being a chomo.
History. And i absolutely love it now. Mainly because my teacher was a really sweaty man. Smoked like a chimney and sweat like a pig. I remember when he came around the class and lent over me to read what i had written about the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand, and a massive bead of sweat dropped from his Benson & Hedges fog filled beard and landed slap bang in the middle of my page. The ink ran slowly and the uncomfortable silence was deafening.
Physics as well. Which i also now love. But that was because i ate the teachers sandwiches as a dare and he never forgave me.
Computer studies. Got basically forced to take it as an option because I was in the top x% at maths. The school had only just opened its first computer suite with bbc b machines (I think that's what they were called). Anyhow, this suite was an adjoining room to the classroom so rarely had the teacher in it. You'd do your theory in the classroom, which was whatever our maths teacher had learnt at computer night school class the previous evening, then put it into practice in the suite. The trouble was all the monitors could be switched to TVs so I spent my time watching what was 1984-6 equivalent of Jeremy Kyle. Like oohahh, a 'U' grade was proudly achieved.
THIS. I dropped computer studies in the 5th year after my mocks. I also wanted to drop French as I could never grasp the male/female & past tenses. Wasnt allowed as I had already dropped computer studies so had to carry on. I took 7 "o" levels, obtaining 6 (3 "b"s & 3 "c"'s).......and a U in French - I told them I was no good at it !!!
PS - History. I really wished more emphasis is on modern history, ie the last 150 years, as that is what is shaping us now.. All I remember learning about was the Stone Age, Iron Age & 1066 and all that - I don't see too many of them blowing up buildings or invading the Balkans.
Maths (and in particular the algebra element). At no point in my life since have I needed to add up letters. What was the bloody point? Problem for me was that I somehow fluked the exam when we were put into streams ahead of GCSEs and ended up dribbling over my work amongst a load of John Nash wannabes.
Up in darkest Bedfordshire they must have had a completely different RE curriculum to London. We were taught about religions - plural, not the bible. It might have had something to do with the head of RE being an atheist mind you.
I didn't mind any of my lessons, but physics was dull as the teacher was awful, and I was piss poor at metalwork, although I did try. Latin was livened up by a decent teacher. Both my maths and English teachers were brilliant, as teachers and as people.
Comments
we had a competition to see who could get out of the O Level exam (1986) first , we had to be seated for a minimum of 1 hr for a 2 hour exam , I managed to set the ball rolling by getting up on 57 mins and not being told to sit back down and the floodgates opened as prolly half the other kids sitting the exam followed my lead
needless to say a big fat U , i mean seriously as if that computer bollox would catch on
Apparently Rimski Korsikov was not the polish left back at the 82 World Cup.
Never saw one before or since,
I hated anything artistic also......mainly as I am utterly useless at it.
Got basically forced to take it as an option because I was in the top x% at maths.
The school had only just opened its first computer suite with bbc b machines (I think that's what they were called). Anyhow, this suite was an adjoining room to the classroom so rarely had the teacher in it. You'd do your theory in the classroom, which was whatever our maths teacher had learnt at computer night school class the previous evening, then put it into practice in the suite.
The trouble was all the monitors could be switched to TVs so I spent my time watching what was 1984-6 equivalent of Jeremy Kyle.
Like oohahh, a 'U' grade was proudly achieved.
Funnily enough my Dad is really good at Maths yet rubbish at English (writing) whilst the latter is something I excel at
Having to stand at the front of the class and explain it all (tips, favourite positions etc) to the rest of the class and the teacher was embarrassing
I liked learning languages but the 2nd year of Spanish at secondary school was a nightmare, only because of this big fat miserable cow of a teacher.
Every register would be the same, a nightmare. Every persons name she would shout out would be followed by questions on the previous lesson, seriously it would take half hour every time.
For example one week we were learning directions to places. It was alright if you were at the beggining of the register as the questions were always easy "how do you say? Take the first left in Spanish", but if you were in the last 1/3 you were in trouble. I remember I was asked " how do you say, take the 3rd right, then go straight and when you reach the post office take the 2nd left for the theatre"....cue the shrugging the shoulders and taking your 5 minute bollocking.
Still, was great when the projector screen fell on her head and she ran out the room crying.
I suppose nowadays things are different and kids have more control over what subjects they take but in the fifties you didn't get a say or a choice : you just had to get on with it as best you could even if it was a waste of everybody's time .
One time one of the guy's put his hand up when we were given old exam papers to work through and asked "I cant remember my name sir!", the teacher waddled over (he would waddle) and growled "THIS IS YOUR NAME ISN'T IT?!" and wrote PRAT in large letters across the front page. To be fair that kid was really annoying. But it just made everyone laugh more at the teacher.
Excluded from it for most of year 8 as me and my mate didn't realise the teacher was looking right at us (he had a glass eye) as we stabbed each with compasses.
Then come GCSE's my pisshead teacher lost my coursework and told me I had to do the whole lot over from scratch - I went and complained to the head of DT who said "Look you can call me a dickhead if you like but you are going to have to do it all again". When I said ok and called him a dickhead he decided I could do it all again in after school detention. A few years later he was sent down for being a chomo.
Physics as well. Which i also now love. But that was because i ate the teachers sandwiches as a dare and he never forgave me.
PS - History. I really wished more emphasis is on modern history, ie the last 150 years, as that is what is shaping us now.. All I remember learning about was the Stone Age, Iron Age & 1066 and all that - I don't see too many of them blowing up buildings or invading the Balkans.
The teacher asked me about it the next day in school and he said "I dont blame you"
I didn't mind any of my lessons, but physics was dull as the teacher was awful, and I was piss poor at metalwork, although I did try. Latin was livened up by a decent teacher. Both my maths and English teachers were brilliant, as teachers and as people.