Re: What do you remember about CSEs from school?
 

Do tell.....

We had a Greek Cypriot temporarily (1960s) and one black kid who I was good friends with. Except for the part where, in my innocence, I'd call him blackman to get him to chase me in the playground.

I cringe when I think about it now. Sorry Douglas.

Re: What do you remember about CSEs from school?
 

Different times. I don't think we saw anything nasty about it in those days. It was just a difference in colour. Even the school thugs didn't pick on the non-white kids. It probably didn't occur to them that they were meant to.

Re: What do you remember about CSEs from school?
 

My. That's another world. We had the children of wave after wave of failed immigrants; the successful immigrants having moved on. I recall there being West Indians by the busload, one called Everard, Greeks, Turks, Indians, Pakistanis, Spaniards, Portuguese, Poles, binnies of multiple flavours, even a Canadian. Now I understand there to be a wave of Chinese immigrants. When I arrived I thought Toronto a bit monocultural.

Re: What do you remember about CSEs from school?
 

It is still largely the case though isn't it?

Re: What do you remember about CSEs from school?
 

My Direct Grant school had about 50% of the pupils from 11 plus passes the rest were fee payers. It had very good results apart from me and many girls went to university which was not so common then. After the reforms it opted to become fully independent removing opportunities for working class kids.

I didn't think much if the 11plus as a selection method though, it failed boys miserably plus at the age of 11 you became an obvious part of the them and us world.

Re: What do you remember about CSEs from school?
 

Brighton has always been another world. Even as a kid I knew that it was a bit "different". It has got a lot more "different" over the years. It just gets odder and odder.

Re: What do you remember about CSEs from school?
 

I feel a bit self-conscious commenting in a thread like this. I had an enormously privileged education: a combination of an Armed Forces bursary and an academic scholarship meant that I spent my secondary education in the rarefied surroundings of an old-fashioned independent boarding school. Most of the staff were Oxbridge graduates and very good at their job, class sizes were small (no bigger than 22 until O-level, most A-level classes were 15 or fewer), the extracurricular opportunities were spectacular (regular overseas tours for sports teams, theatre productions and music ensembles of all sorts). I don't think a single CSE was offered on the syllabus - even the carpenters and metal-bashers took O-levels.

I was one of those lucky folks who can belie the lack of effort in class with surprising results at exam time. With a hatful of good grades at O-level I was encouraged to sit (and was given extra tuition towards) the Oxbridge entrance. As a result of which I was a recipient of one of the "two Es" offers mentioned above. I probably did less work in the term before A-level exams than at any other time before or since, yet (largely as a result of the Oxford offer) received a glowing, almost sycophantic, school report that term. I date my increasingly cynical attitude towards the opinions of authority figures from that school report. It was probably all their fault that I did so little work at Oxford that I was thrown out before completing my degree. :o

ETA: Oh, and we had lots of international students, so long as their daddies could pay the fees. One of them was the son of the Thai prime minister, I think; another is now the king of Swaziland. Nobody paid any attention to the colour of his skin, nor do I recall ever being rude to him - but then again, his bodyguards were very large indeed.

Re: What do you remember about CSEs from school?
 

I am older, :p - I have a Pitmans Shorthand certificate, an LCC Typewriting certificate (we learned on manual typewriters!) and took my only GCSE in my 40's (English, A*) just to prove to myself that I wasn't thick, lol. Despite being an avid reader from the age of 3 I failed the 11+, went to the secondary modern that my two sisters had been to, left there after getting beaten up (badly) and attended private school until I was 15 (Clarke's College).

In my first job as a junior secretary in Kensington I used a teleprinter (telex) and operated a 10x50 dolls eye switchboard and got paid the princely sum of £11 a week (of which half went to my father). In those days, I could get a one month travel pass from Bromley to Victoria for the train and underground (circle line) for £6! I don't think you could get a single for that nowadays.

Fond memories of smoking disque bleu, going to the Admiral Codrington for lunch daily and getting chatted up by a Russian ballet dancer on the underground, lol!

Now I really feel old!

:o

Re: What do you remember about CSEs from school?
 

"Well, of course, we had it tough......"

:lol:

Re: What do you remember about CSEs from school?
 

Niet. One had an absolutely brilliant time drinking screwdrivers at the age of 16, stopping traffic in one's mini-skirt and generally getting up to all sorts of mischief!

:p

Re: What do you remember about CSEs from school?
 

Well of course I did that too. :(

TMI Siouxie, TMI.

Re: What do you remember about CSEs from school?
 

I worked in Chelsea around then and lived in Belsize Park. Those were the days....

Re: What do you remember about CSEs from school?
 

Is this where we all confess to dressing in our mum's dresses and high heels?

Too young for the booze at 6 or 7 though. :unsure:

Re: What do you remember about CSEs from school?
 

Don't be daft, Novo wouldn't be seen dead in Crimplene. I'm sure he was more of a cheesecloth and loon pants guy.

Re: What do you remember about CSEs from school?
 

I did that for the GPO and then operated a digital switchboard for British Telecom. That may have been the best job I've ever had.

One of the joys of the nightshift in the telephone exchange was that you could listen to calls and, if they were entertaining, put them on speaker for the enjoyment of the other employees. And so it was that I came to be hearing a mother offering advice to her daughter on a marital problem. That London-Jewish voice sqawking "and if that don't get 'im going, nuffink will" rings in me ears to this day.

Great job, operating the eaudies, I expect it's all gone now.

Re: What do you remember about CSEs from school?
 

I have to admit to having had a cheesecloth shirt, but I'm not sure what loon pants were? Can you find a picture for me?

Re: What do you remember about CSEs from school?
 

Very deliberately targeted Smartarsery: mainly because the class was a complete waste of time & I resented enormously that it was compulsory. HE had been abolished at the school some years before & I thought the reintroduction was irrelevant, amongst some rather stronger feelings relating to girls' education. (I was a rabid feminist at a rather young age.)

TBH, my schooldays were much closer to yours than others in the thread (startlingly similar in fact!), but I that hasn't stopped me commenting ;).

There were, in the time I was there, the grand total of 6 non-White pupils: 3 African diplomats' daughters, 2 HK Chinese, 1 Indian. And lots of Army brats ;).

Re: What do you remember about CSEs from school?
 

Oops, assimilated moment. Loon trousers

http://http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/ff/Loon_Pants.gif

Re: What do you remember about CSEs from school?
 

I had a mildly unusual education in that I attended a middle school until the age of 12. When you went to high school , you went straight into third form ( there was no first or second form)
I did Latin for the last two years of middle school and for the first two years of high school, until you took your "options" when I dropped it quicker than a red hot coal.

The national curriculum was just coming in, limiting what options we were allowed.
Basically you picked History or Geography. Then a "technology" subject ( I ended up doing child development , don't ask , just don't!)

then you had two "free choices" I opted for business studies and what was called " keyboarding" ( was really typing and transcription)

I was told in no uncertain terms that "people of my ability didn't take those kind of subjects"
so I ended up doing German and another course that escapes me at the moment. All GCSEs

So now I can order a beer in German but can't touch type.


Just remembered , it was religious studies" - again tres useful!

Re: What do you remember about CSEs from school?
 

What is this thing with History and Geography? It was the same in my high school. You did both for the first two years but in the two years running up to O-level, you had to pick one. That's a shame. I would have liked to do both.

Re: What do you remember about CSEs from school?
 

you could do both if you picked the other one as one of your free options.
I hated my history teacher and had a serious crush on my Geo teacher, so no contest!

Re: What do you remember about CSEs from school?
 

Actually, loons were generally advertised as loon pants anyway. At least in the NME, spunos, Melody Maker etc

http://thumbs3.ebaystatic.com/d/l225...A7udxK9Z1g.jpg

Re: What do you remember about CSEs from school?
 

I remember doing H&G as a class and another time having a History class separate to a Geography class.

I found history, either on it's own or paired, to be dead boring. Tudors and Stuarts; Chippendale furniture (the strippers would likely have been more interesting) and someone or other's Fireplaces; Boston Tea Party...that's really all I can remember.

I recall actually having to draw some Chippendale furniture as part of the lesson. :blink:

Re: What do you remember about CSEs from school?
 

I did both History and Geography. The History teacher was amazing and left me with a lifelong love of the subject. The Geography teacher we had for O level told us that she wasn't going to teach us Geog but how to pass a Geog O level.

I wanted to go to evening classes to learn typing but was told that "no girl educated in this establishment should ever have to earn a living by typing" a little short sighted of them.

Re: What do you remember about CSEs from school?
 

Ah yes! You ordered them from NME,

Re: What do you remember about CSEs from school?
 

Or from Austin's Trouser House in town. :rofl:

I bought jeans called Jingling Joe's (a bell on the leg) and pink trousers from there.

Re: What do you remember about CSEs from school?
 

History was my all time favourite subject. Until an horrendously awful & incompetent teacher killed all the joy. I chose geography to get away from her. That teacher was boring, but I ended up liking geog.

My parents were understanding about my reasons for not choosing history, but believed it was a Very Important subject & so homeschooled me in it. I wasn't too keen on that at the time, but appreciate it now :).

(My (quite academically oriented) family were big on home-tutoring: I chose Spanish over German, reasoning that it was a) an easy option, & b) if I did German & didn't get good marks, I'd be stuck with "extra lessons" from Grandpa. Much goofing off & bad reports in Spanish (& Latin to a lesser extent) eventually led to the discovery that Grandma was more than capable of sorting out my Spanish & Latin... ;) Despite my resentment, her Spanish lessons were made amazing through her anecdotes & reminiscences of working in Spain in the 'twenties!

Latin? She was such a "Drill sergeant" that I buckled down & worked my arse off to avoid ever having to study with her again!!!!).

:lol: We *did* go to very similar schools: I was refused the evening typing class option because my "calibre" made them "unnecessary"! :rofl::rofl:

Re: What do you remember about CSEs from school?
 

lol.

I still have all my school reports. There is a classic from my first year at high school, when we were forced to do things like woodwork, metalwork and pottery (until our parents forced a change).

The woodworking teacher remarked that I did not enjoy the subject much. That makes me laugh. It's now my hobby. I've made a lot of the furniture in my house.

Re: What do you remember about CSEs from school?
 

seems to be a theme. I never learnt to type properly. I am now in the awkward situation of being reasonably fast with two fingers so that if I attempted to learn "properly" I'd be so slow as to be unproductive for far too long.

Of course the German I was forced to learn comes in useful everyday - NOT

Re: What do you remember about CSEs from school?
 

My parents bought me a touch typing computer program that seemed obsessed with using poems. I remember that typing out Shelley's Ozymandias with my eyes closed was a somewhat challenging task. I don't suppose people do that to their kids anymore, it's just assumed you'll pick it as a matter of course.

Re: What do you remember about CSEs from school?
 

I dropped German as soon as I could. The French exam was so complicated that I did no revision and thought the time would be better spent revising other subjects. I passed them all except French. Later I moved in with a German girlfriend, in Augsburg, never learned much German as all the locals wanted to practice English. After that, I moved in with a French girlfriend, Dordogne this time. The lady and her kids only ever spoke French to me and I picked it up quite well. Now in Canada, where my French puts the Quebecois to shame and they speak to me in English. C'est la vie!

Re: What do you remember about CSEs from school?
 

Only two?

I type fast. I have no idea which fingers I'm using. They seem to know where to go, even if it is at the other end of the keyboard.

Re: What do you remember about CSEs from school?
 

Same.

Re: What do you remember about CSEs from school?
 

I was taught to touch type in the Army. They had a Mavis Beacon type of lesson approach and one had to reach a speed of 60 wpm with a 98% accuracy. It took me a number of attempts to pass. The keyboard they used for the test was blank - nothing on it at all, and the text we had to type used just about every shift key there was

Re: What do you remember about CSEs from school?
 

Ah. Maybe that is why my wife can touch type. Ex-soldier. Logistics.

The founder of the company I work for had a savage test for people back in the 70s, apparently. You had to add up all the phone numbers from a page in the directory without looking at the calculator.

Re: What do you remember about CSEs from school?
 

I was Int Corps initially. Why they required the ability to type is beyond me. The guys in the signals corps were the ninja typists. During periods of boredom on exercise we would pick a page of a novel and see who could finish first. They slaughtered me every time.

He wasn't Carol Vorderman's father was he? :p

Re: What do you remember about CSEs from school?
 

I'm a fairly fast, through necessity, typist now. I could never in a million years attempt "properly".

That made me laugh! I probably *could* type out Ozymandias, even now; nothing to do with (touch) typing classes, rather having had to memorise & recite the damn thing...

Re: What do you remember about CSEs from school?
 

In the days of electric typewriters I could type over 100 words per min. I have RSA I, II and II with distinction in typing. The keyboard on my iPad does my head in. :D

Re: What do you remember about CSEs from school?
 

:lol: After a number of years in QC, I've painstakingly learned to speak French-from-France (local classification) deliberately badly. And readjust accordingly when in France. It's a case of 2 countries "separated by a common language" ;)