teaching relevance in later life

[keibat]

Fascinating to hear folk's very different stories. At CH (mid-50s to early 60s), my natural inclination was to English (both of my parents were English, i e Eng Lit teachers). When in the ?Little Erasmus we had to choose between German, Geography or Greek – what a hilarious alliteration! but not bad in terms of kids' orientations and abilities – I went for Greek, but did later do a year of German in the Grecians. My maths studies ended at O Level. For A Level, bizarrely, I did English and Greek. (Greek turned out useful 50 years later when I did a theology degree!) Between school and uni, I lived with family friends in California for six months, and audited 101 courses in sociology and political science at UC Berkeley; and then spent 6 years at uni doing a BA and PhD in English, before teaching Eng Lit at Tübingen in Germany for 3 years, where it felt as though German 'entered my backbone'. I still stumble on the grammatical ramifications of gender, but German decisively shunted French off to one side and my French has been very rusty ever since. That experience matches comments by many others about learning a foreign language effectively in situ vs learning it academically in the classroom.
In the longer run, languages became the core of my work. I lived and worked in Finland for 40 years, teaching anglophone history and contemporary society, and sociolinguistics, in an English department, and working alongside that as a freelance translator. I even from time to time taught some literature (more Commonwealth than English). Finnish is now my 2nd-strongest language (I read the Finnish news every morning).
So – did studies at CH contribute to my later life and career? Undoubtedly, with one exception. My O Level year in history was ghastly (mainly boring 18th-century military campaigns, as far as I can remember) and I thought I had turned my back on it for ever. Yet for most of my later academic career, I was teaching at least one course in history every year, sometimes several.
What I really took away from CH for the rest of my life, though, was choral singing. I sang with all sorts of choirs for six decades in all (including CH). Sadly, my hearing was damaged a few years ago (through exposure to a series of very loud bangs) which fundamentally messed up my harmonics, and I had to abandon my choirs. Not CH's fault!

[rockfreak]

That's terrible Keith that a series of loud bangs should have screwed up your hearing. I can't imagine why someone should have been exposed to bangs like this. Are you still able to listen to music?

My own experience, on a more pop level, involved getting tinnitus from going to too many rock concerts and then discovering recently after a hearing test that the treble end of my hearing had pretty much fallen off a cliff. They showed me the graph after the hearing test. It was sobering. I've now got state of the art hearing aids in both ears and find that not only can they deal with the volume problem of hearing loss but that they can boost bass or treble as necessary and enable you to pick out conversation better in a crowded pub. So I went home and discovered that some of my favourite albums had a brass section on them that I'd entirely forgotten about.

Other examples from the pop world. Dave Swarbrick, the fiddle player with Fairport Convention, has tinnitus and has given up fiddling (unlike my old housemaster AH Buck who kept it up until the day he left) while Debbie Harry of Blondie has it too and thought it was aliens trying to get in touch with her. I thought at first that it was just the hum of the universe. Ah! We fanciful old hippies!

[rockfreak]

Going back a bit into your post Keibat, I'm interested that you concentrated so much on 18th century military campaigns. If you'd had Chern I feel that he might well have concentrated on the Enlightenment, which after all has given us the freedoms that we so take for granted today. I had Chern in my last year for the 19th century (Chartists) going into the 20th (Irish War of Independence) and he was much concerned with the various social reform movements of the time. It's funny isn't it how teachers were allowed to emphasise their own preferences back then. Perhaps some felt that battles would spark the imagination of boys.

[loringa]

Many similarities to loringa's comment (what years, Andrew?).

I was in LHA as a junior house 1973 to 1976 (2nd form to LF), and Col A as my senior house from 1976 to 1980 (UF to Sci Grecians). I was not on the fast stream!

[keibat]

Dear Rockfreak David,

2 points to reply to:
1) the loud bangs that have messed up my audio-neuroreceptors were experienced at the *excellent* experimental Wonderlab at the Science Museum in South Kensington, 4 years ago. A truly great place to take kids of a wide range of ages, with loads of hands-on experiments for the kids to do for themselves, as well as staff-only things like generating lightning … or demonstrating basic rocket science with the aid of empty Pringles tubes filled with hydrogen to which a match is put – hence the loud bangs. We were told to protect our hearing by sticking fingers in our ears, which gets complicated if you already have hearing aids for standard age-related hearing loss; and in the end, I cheated and just covered my ears with my hands – which possibly created a little echo chamber. My fault, not theirs; but as soon as we came out of the demo space, I knew my hearing was messed up, and even an expensive private audiologist hasn't put it back together again. I still love music, but I need to restrict it to registers that I can cope with, avoiding anything shrill or jangly. And organ music is now utter cacophony.
Sadly, the whole LOUDNESS thing with rock and other musics is of course highly destructive for the hearing system, and you are not alone with tinnitus and even deafness in the long run.

2) "If you'd had Chern I feel that he might well have concentrated on the Enlightenment…" Chern was my housemaster, and I thought and think of him very highly. If I'd gone into the History Grecians, we'd have studied the Carolingian Empire and it would have been fascinating. Actually I know that C!8 military campaigns could also be fascinating, too – but the new? member of staff who took our O Level class was simply not an inspiring teacher.

[sejintenej]

That experience matches comments by many others about learning a foreign language effectively in situ vs learning it academically in the classroom.

I'll echo that. My French O level and my granddaughter's GCSE proved totally useless. I mastered it by living there and still delve into an 1826 edition written by Chateaubriand.
German I hated even with 2 years one-on-one, but had no trouble with two other romance languages because the concepts carry across. At 80 I am now learning Italian because my wife has discovered her Italian family tree but cannot learn it so it will be up to me when she meets them.

As to what else I carried forward from CH - just about nothing except first aid and fire fighting from the CCF

[rockfreak]

Thinking back to history lessons under Chern, I do wonder whether we were especially privileged. Christ's Hospital in the 1950s would surely have followed the elite boarding school pattern of bigging up our empire (remains of which were still floating about). But although we were taught
about Clive of India we were also taught about his greed and the cynical expansion of the East India Company, along with the Black Hole of Calcutta, the Sepoys' Mutiny and the Black and Tans in Ireland. I left after the Fifth Form but we were already covering the Irish War of Independence and indeed the political tensions between Collins and de Valera. In the 1950s that was pretty recent history, but maybe it reflected Chern's serious interest in politics and social reform.

A few years ago I got myself on a Radio 5 phone-in where the subject of the British Empire came up. I opined that, just for once, I agreed with Michael Gove who had recently said that we should teach the history of our Empire in schools, while I made the reservation that he had to be prepared for a few skeletons to come rattling out of cupboards. George Galloway who was guesting recalled that he had an Irish grandfather who used to say that the sun never set on the British Empire - which was just as well because you couldn't trust the b*ggers in the dark.

[MrEd]

I did science A-levels at CH, followed by a biological sciences degree and a spell as a research assistant to fund a law conversion course. Was my science wasted? No, as I take great interest in science and can sniff out BS readily. There was no law option at CH but some books on general law in the library that I devoured. As for languages, CH struggled to teach languages, French, Latin and German O-levels obtained, not fluency, but at GE my mother moved to Spain then Portugal where I learned both languages, on my own for Portuguese and with one lesson a week at CH for Spanish from a nice chap who taught a motley crew of us interested some basic Spanish and some cultural tips (the importance of fish) for a couple of terms. My Latin actually helped a lot with Portuguese particularly, the verb forms and some basic roots.

Where am I now with what CH taught me? The only thing I learned at CH that really sticks is some maths, physics and chemistry, and I have some French and German but a summer post-O-level in Spain more or less erased my French temporarily. Nowadays I can get by in French, and most Romance languages, and in German I can have rudimentary conversations e.g. at Oktoberfest with random strangers on the benches. I still have a bash at Latin inscriptions when I see them.

Music-wise, the best efforts to teach me the bugle and clarinet stalled in LE. In middle age I took up the viola having inherited one, different clef, but CH's basic tuition helped immensely.

What I do recall of CH is that there was an ethic to respect learning, if you did well academically, you were congratulated, by staff and pupils.

In my line of work, more or less self-taught after Law School in my area, I don't think that I learned how to learn at CH.

[sejintenej]

As for languages, CH struggled to teach languages, French, Latin and German O-levels obtained, not fluency, but at GE my mother moved to Spain then Portugal where I learned both languages, on my own for Portuguese and with one lesson a week at CH for Spanish from a nice chap who taught a motley crew of us interested some basic Spanish and some cultural tips (the importance of fish) for a couple of terms. My Latin actually helped a lot with Portuguese particularly, the verb forms and some basic roots.

I cannot remember his name but my junior housemaster had been a professor at Seville (or similar place) university so I did Spanish in the back of the German class when doing science A levels. Helped just a smidgen when posted to Gib. As for Portuguese that seems to be very localised. The Algarve is different to Lisbon and a friend in France is Portuguese but our accents clash so much we talk in French. Mine are Carioca which works in Lisbon but is full of slang. . I don't know if Lisbon has the 23 different tenses I had to learn! I also speak Paulistano to my bosses. That said Brasil has so many varieties including indigenous words adopted into speech with Gaucho (from the south) seemingly having hoch deutsche as every third word .

[rockfreak]

Deafness in Later Life: I think a limerick is due.

Keibat went deaf through a bang,
While Le Freak heard the loud guitars clang.
But it must be more cheering
To be losing your hearing
As opposed to be losing your wang.