Sir Bob Jones
Recently someone sent me a faded photo of my standard four class in Lower Hutt, 75 years ago.
The oddities vis a vis the current situation were first, a total of 44 of us. I’m told in state schools today the maximum class size at that age is nearer 30 or less and in private schools, about 20.
But the strangest feature was the gender ratio, specifically 16 boys and 28 girls, God knows why there was such an imbalance.
Other oddities compared with today was not one fat kid and the male teacher, Mr Nicholson, spectacled, besuited and moustached. It wasn’t until I went to secondary school that I encountered female teachers, and then very few.
Imagine today a bloke telling you he was a primary school teacher. One would view him as embarrassingly wet, but back in those post war blue collar days, any white collar and suit-wearing job, of which there were few, automatically commanded prestige.
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