Tendring Topics……on Line
St. Trinian's-on-Sea?
When I was at my secondary school in Ipswich in the '30s I can't remember ever seeing a policeman on the premises. Most of us cycled to school in those days so I suppose it's likely that one or other of us was at some time caught out in a minor cycling offence, though again I can't remember any such incident. The school maintained its own discipline and maintained it very effectively. Corporal punishment (no, I'm not condoning it but in the '30s it was, although sparingly used, a fact of school life) and hours of detention were very real threats. I am quite sure that had any one of us been found guilty of anything approaching criminal behaviour he would have been instantly expelled, a sentence from which there would have been no appeal.
It may well be said scathingly, 'well, of course, in those days teachers ruled by fear'. Some may feel that that was better than no rule at all. When everyone feared the teacher, there was much less need to fear the bully, the thief, the arsonist and the vandal.
That, of course, was the better part of a century ago. I am inclined to think though that the situation was much the same when my sons were at Clacton County High School some thirty years later.
Today, everything is very different. When I first heard that Clacton's County High School, Colbayns High School and Bishops Park College were each to have a dedicated police officer with the school as his base I thought that it must surely be some kind of temporary public relations exercise. He or she must be there to impress on the minds of the pupils that police officers were ordinary approachable human beings to whom they could speak at any time about any of their problems. I didn't dream that they were there to detect and discourage criminal behaviour among the children themselves.
I could hardly have been more wrong. PC Williams, a CCHS 'old boy', recently reported that 141 'incidents' were reported at his old school during the past academic year. 16 pupils had been arrested and 105 were dealt with through 'restorative justice' – a meeting between the victim, the wrong-doer, PC Williams and both lots of parents.
The incidents included 36 cases of bullying, 16 thefts, 41 assaults, 15 incidents of criminal damage, 10 threats, 10 internet related offences, and 8 'nuisance' offences. There were six other offences including two of a sexual nature and two drug related. Five students from year 11 (I think that that means they were sixteen-year olds) were expelled following the most serious assault case.
Perhaps the most worrying thing is that PC Williams really feels that things had been even worse and that his presence had made a difference. He showed a graph indicating that there had been a drop in bullying, assaults, thefts and criminal damage.
PC Cheryl Stubbins at Bishops Park College, seems to have had an even tougher job. She finds hope in the fact that 'arrests have decreased since Christmas' and that a 'troublesome' group of 15 and 16 year olds are leaving school. One of her early experiences as a dedicated PC at Bishops Park was being called 'a pig and other names'. Now she feels that she is starting to win the pupils over because she is usually addressed as 'Miss'!
Do our secondary schools really make St. Trinian's look like a well-disciplined convent? It should, of course, be said that the trouble-makers, vandals, thieves and bullies are still a minority. PC Williams reported that there were 141 'incidents' last year at CCHS. We don't, of course know how many pupils were involved in each incident but if we add 200 to that figure it still comes to a small proportion of the total student body of 1,700.
It is a very worrying minority though which, in my opinion, is a product of today's secular, materialistic and acquisitive society. I wonder if at Bishops Park College, the situation would have been the same if, as some of us had hoped, it had been allowed to become a 'faith school' attached to the Church of England?
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Berating the Elderly
I don't often allow letters published in local papers to annoy me. Life is too short and my blood pressure is too high anyway. However I have to admit that a letter from Graham Stutton of Clacton's Rush Green Road, published recently in the Clacton Gazette, did get under my skin. Silly really! Because nothing that he complains about in his letter actually applies to me personally.
Mr Stutton asks rhetorically 'Why some retired folk get pleasure in using the roads that lead to Morrisons, Lidl and Clacton Market at 8.30 am, when the rest of us are on their way to work or are dropping our children off at school?' He goes on to say that he has been unlucky enough 'for several of the past Tuesdays, to get stuck behind the same old boy on his way to Morrison's. If you're reading this, kindly put your foot down for another five miles an hour please'.
I wonder Mr Stutton ever considers the possibility that that 'old boy' may be thinking. 'I wish that impatient young lad just behind me would maintain a bigger gap between our cars. I'm going slow enough to allow him to overtake me – and at this time in the morning there's not all that much traffic in the other direction'. Of course, if Mr Stutton were to leave his home just five minutes earlier he would be less in a hurry to get to work, and would probably be on the road before the 'old boy' anyway.
I don't drive a car nowadays but I do like to get to Morrison's at about 8.30 because there is less of a crush at that time and I am more likely to be able to get the kind of shopping trolley that I prefer. If I were still a motorist I would want to go early to make sure of a parking spot not too far from the entrance doors.
Use of the highways at inconvenient times is not the only practice of us oldies that irritates Mr Stutton. 'Banks and post offices are clogged up with retired folk at lunchtimes too, which is frustrating for those of us who have just a half-hour break for lunch; so next time you see or hear the elderly slate the younger generation remember they can be equally bad'.
I hardly think that using the highways, the banks and the post offices at times inconvenient to dynamic young Mr. Stutton is really 'equally as bad' as the activities of some young, and indeed some middle aged people, regularly reported in the press. Age does tend to limit the range of possible human misdemeanour!
I am tempted to remind Mr Stutton that he too will be old one day. However, bearing in mind his obvious impatience, and his apparent intolerance and short temper that might not be true.
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Golden Olympics!
Where athletic sports and team games are concerned I am not so much a 'has-been' as a 'never-was-a'! All my life I have been useless at every one of them.
I never knew quite why. It wasn't for want of trying. I would have loved to have been one of those sporting heroes I read so much about in the comic books (we called them 'tuppeny bloods' because they were full of 'blood and thunder!') that were popular in my childhood and youth.
Nor, at least when I grew up, was it lack of physical strength. As a POW at a working camp in Germany I regularly carried 1cwt sacks of potatoes or coal (occasionally 1.5 cwt sacks of flour and at least once, and for a short distance, 2cwt sacks of sugar) on my back. I dug graves, worked in an iron foundry, and helped move heavy furniture, machinery and scrap metal. Yet, when I was home again, I struggled to pass the army's physical fitness test!
However, even I have found myself getting really excited about British successes at the Beijing Olympics, at seeing Britain third in the medal table and ahead of medal winning favourites like Australia Germany and Russia.
The only physical activity at which I have ever shown even a glimmer of promise was swimming. I was never of competition (even local competition) standard, but I do hold the bronze medallion of the Royal Life Saving Society and a certificate for having, on one memorable occasion, swum a measured mile.
My swimming days are long over but, perhaps because of them, I particularly warmed to the 19 year old British girl whose swimming has won her two gold medals. She had imagined that the competition at Beijing would be just 'a trial run' for the 2012 London Olympics where she had really hoped to win a medal!
In the midst of all this success felt especially sorry for Paula Radcliffe. She always seems such a very likeable young woman when interviewed on tv, and has pressed on, even though dogged by injuries and ill-health. How wonderful it would be if she really were able to compete in those 2012 Olympics on her home ground….and strike gold!
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