The Common Vein

Despite David Goss? order that I get my second haircut in two days I felt my newly shorn head was well within regulations and ignored his order. Nothing further happened. I also found out that I had been put in the FF (Fast & Furious) class despite my ?not paying attention?coasting along? and other failings in Primary School and then horror of horrors, because we were supposedly the best and brightest we would be instructed in Latin by none other than the Boss. His reputation had preceded him and by all accounts there were no redeeming features. It turned out not to be as bad as feared but it was never pleasant. We soon learned that we were all ?miserable worms? and not even perfection in Latin would elevate us above worm status. We also had the delectable Noya Shapira for Hebrew and ?Butch? Berman for history. My only recollection of history was being told that the Phoenecians had no ?jamas?. I had no idea that they were forced to go to sleep without suitable nightwear until Ms. Berman passed on that priceless bit of information.
I made the Under 13 cricket team as a middle order batsman and occasional medium pace bowler. I chose not to put myself through the pounding the rugby team got from the various Afrikaans schools they played. It was also the year of my barmitzvah and the regular barmy parties. I remained shy and tongue tied with girls but at least plucked up the courage to ask girls to dance the slow numbers. I was quite happy to retreat after school to my home life, to my music, to voracious reading and started to develop my writing skills, mostly in writing in the style of my two inspirations at the time, the Goon Show and John Lennon?s pun filled writing. Krans Street, a short walk from school had a great mix of kids, most attending King David and afternoons were spent gravitating from one house to the next until it was time for dinner. It was a time of innocence and I certainly didn?t feel any of the adulthood/manhood that my barmitzvah had supposedly bestowed on me.
One incident with Norman Sandler does stand out that year. We had a substitute Hebrew teacher one day and the class was taking advantage of the relative lack of authority by creating a constant ruckus. Suddenly the speaker crackled with the Boss?s voice ordering the entire class to march down to his office. The boys all got a couple of flaps and the girls received their appropriate punishment. At least ours was over in about after a few minutes of pain. Sandler marched into class the next day for Latin and gave us a snap test covering a lot of stuff we hadn?t yet learned. Almost the entire class failed and all those who failed were marched back down to the office for another couple of flaps.
In English we had to study the first of five Dickens novels through high school ? one per year. I never understood the reasoning behind this. By Form III when we had to trudge through the utterly miserable ?Hard Times? I had begun to loathe Dickens, and consequently, enjoyed English literature far less than I wanted to. I have always been biased against Dickens. I find him to be witless, lacking in charm and worst of all, intent on dragging the agony out as long as possible to over 700 pages in David Copperfield. If he succeeded in anything it is in making the reader fully appreciate just how miserable life in Victorian England could be. It was bad enough that we had to do five Dickens books over the years. What made it criminal is that it meant total exclusion of far better writers such as the Bronte?s, Jane Austin, George Eliot and earlier writers such as Defoe, Pope, Trollope and Fielding all far more entertaining than Dickens.
The various posts about the education we received at King David have caused me to reflect both on my memories and also the experience of seeing my daughter who started 11th grade or the equivalent of Form IV yesterday. Setting aside the absurdity of corporal punishment, the main difference is that education today considers a sense of self-esteem for the student to be paramount and to understand that not all students can be ?A? students and that not all students can excel at sports. I?m not suggesting that students need to be coddled but they need to be treated with respect so that they can learn that respect is a two-way street. Calling someone a ?miserable worm? can be destructive although judging by the quality and respect I see of the various KDHS participants it?s obvious we all made it through in excellent shape.
More to come in Part III