Interview (K. G. C

INTERVIEW

K. G. C. — T HE E ND OF AN E RA What have your main interests been?

When did you join St. Peter's?

September 1949, full-time, although I had spent January to March 1949 here as a student, which was when I was offered a job.

What was the School like at that time?

Well, it was of course a completely boys' School, predominantly boarding, and it had a pretty rigid system of discipline. There were some of the vestiges of the traditional public School practices such as fagging and a seniority system. Uniform was strictly worn by all members of the School, and that included a School cap and a blue suit which was worn on Sunday's whatever they were doing. The School was dominated by the Chapel: there were daily services for the whole School and there was at least a full Evensong on Sunday which was compulsory for the whole School, and sometimes also a Matins, so that there was not a great deal of time for exeats. Exeats were few and far between: only two a term were allowed, on specific weekends, beginning after breakfast on Sunday and finishing half an hour before Chapel. There was no question of an overnight exeat. We had no half-terms at all, but we did have the occasional day's holiday, such as All Saints' Day in the autumn and Ascension Day in the summer, when the boys were given a day off and encouraged to go off and do their own thing.

I was initially appointed for three years, and at the end of three years I went to see the Head Master, John Dronfield — for whom I had tremendous respect, incidentally — and he said that if I stayed, there were various things he would like to offer me. So I found myself becoming an Assistant Housemaster in The Grove (1953-56), where duties sometimes went on until two o'clock in the morning because the Housemaster was a very keen bridge player. I was also offered the chance of starting a Careers Department (also in 1953), and the other thing that I was involved in from quite early days was the Scout group, which we built up in the 50's and early 60's to about forty or fifty people. This was a very energetic bunch, and very nice to work with because they were doing something they wanted to do. We had many very interesting camps and expeditions, we produced a lot of Queen's Scouts, and in some ways the scouting activities represent the highlights of life here as far as I am concerned. The present Activities Centre was our Scout Room, and we helped to dig out the foundations for it. When scouting died out during the late 60's and early 70's, we changed the Scout Room into an Activity Centre, and I ran an Activity Group for some considerable time after that. Also in 1953,1 was approached by a group of sixth form farmers' sons, who asked if I would be interested in forming a Young Farmers' Club. I expressed interest, and I maintained that association right up until a year or two ago, when the Young Farmers' Club seemed to peter out completely. By and large it had been a pretty successful Club, which had provided an outlet for many people.

As time went on, I moved out of Grove, and eventually I was told by Mr. Dronfield that if I stayed on he would make me a Housemaster when I was thirty-eight. Sure enough, when I was coming up to my thirty-eighth birthday, Dronfield House was being built, and we were asked to start it off. So, in September 1964 we opened Dronfield House, and we remained there for seventeen years. We thoroughly enjoyed it. We were appointed for fifteen years, and we were asked to stay on to cover a hiatus period for a further two years, and this was probably a mistake, because we were geared to the fifteen years and at the end of fifteen years I think we had had enough. When I moved out of the House in 1981, the Common Room was looking for a new Secretary. I offered to take it over for a few years and ended up doing it for nine years, until we brought in the present constitution and appointed a Chairman and Secretary to take my place. Of course, I have done a bit of teaching, too....

What would you say were the highlights of your career? Are there particular things which have given you personal satisfaction?

Becoming a Housemaster was very important, especially as we were appointed as a team and we ran it together, my wife and I. We also had the advantage, which very few people have, of starting a House from scratch. We didn't inherit someone else's way of running it, although we did find a bit of a handicap in the fact that some of the early boys came from other Houses. This was very interesting, because we found big differences between those who had been in School House, The Rise, Grove and Manor. The Rise people had very rigid ideas about the seniority system and the fagging system, which I was absolutely against from the word go, whereas the School House people couldn't care less about it. It was a very interesting job welding them into a House. We only found out afterwards that the games players of the School got together behind the scenes and somehow manipulated it so that they all came into the same House together. So for the first two years of my Housemastership Dronfield House reigned supreme. This gave the House a great fillip, although it was a little unfortunate for those Houses from which the games players had come. I may not appear to be terribly interested in games, but I was then very interested, and in fact I used to do quite a lot of games coaching.

One other highlight was that I introduced two things into the School which gave opportunities to those who didn't fit too well into the conformist society. One was that when I felt I was getting a bit long in the tooth for rugger games and so on, I started a walking group as an option to games. We went walking on the Yorkshire Moors, the Dales and the Wolds. It was quite vigorous walking and it involved another of my hobbies, the use of maps, and there were plenty of long conversations and heartsearchings as we tramped across moorland. I think it provided an outlet for some of the individuals who found it difficult to fit in otherwise. The other thing — and here I was helped when I was in Dronfield House — was that we were given two very valuable pieces of machinery: a full-scale printing press and a hot-metal typesetting machine. Again, various oddbods who didn't fit into anything else would spend hours printing things like play programmes, tickets, School newspapers and so on. Unfortunately, this died out when I left Dronfield House, which seemed to me a great shame.

Is Geography in the 1990's a very different subject from what it was when you started?

Oh yes, very different. When I started teaching geography, it was very much regional-based. It required amassing a lot of factual information. The subject has moved right away from this approach to the- modular or conceptual approach, where you are looking at ideas, such as migration or the lithosphere, and any reference to regions is what you bring in by way of example. You are not learning quite so much in the way of fact, but you are learning much more about theories. The other great thing that's happened is the subject has been flooded by the concept of the model: models of industrial or agricultural location, models of cities and so on. You can bring in, wherever you like, your examples, and this gives a great deal of freedom to the teacher and to the pupil, who can build up by wider reading much more than was possible in the past. So the model approach, combined also at A-Level with a much more statistical and analytical approach, has changed the subject from being a matter of a great deal of fact learning and fact regurgitation to a much more conceptual approach, whereby the student uses his or her powers of thinking very much more. So it has changed, and I think it's changed for the better.

Have you found your work in the Careers Department a satisfying part of your own career?

Yes, I thoroughly enjoyed Careers work. It gave me tremendous satisfaction, in two main areas. One was that it brought me into contact with a lot of young people, and I felt that in my own way I was helping them towards decisions that they had to make. I never felt it was my job to make those decisions, but to feed information, make suggestions and help them along the way. It has been very satisfying to have had several come back and say that my advice was helpful to them. The other thing was that as a Geographer I found Careers work a great help, because it's got me out of the School and into all sorts of industries and occupations. I've seen much more of the world outside, even though I've never moved around from one School to another, than many Schoolteachers do. This has broadened my geographical outlook as well as helped my Careers work.

Do you feel that teaching is a more or less enjoyable career now than when you first started?

I think it is probably more enjoyable. I have certainly found in recent years a more relaxed approach in form — and I think this has been helped very much by the advent of girls — has added to the pleasure of teaching. I find that the pupils today, either because I've changed or because they are different, are much less "them and us" in form and much easier to work with. I suppose that one of the things that colours it is that in my last year I have taught probably the pleasantest bunch of Upper Sixth people I have ever been faced with. It really has been a joy to work with them. I've also had a very pleasant and co-operative Fifth Form set and an equally cooperative Fourth Form set, and I've enjoyed working with them immensely.

You've served under five Head Masters. Do you think that the character of the School is dictated by the character of the Head Master, or does it evolve separately from any changes at the top?

I think that it used to devolve very much more from the nature of the Head Master than it does today. In my early days the School was dominated by the figure of John Dronfield, who had been Head Master from 1937. Interestingly, in the light of later events, he was invited in to take the job after the Governors of the day had made a very bad mistake in appointing his predecessor, whose apparent mission in life was to close down public Schools. He nearly managed to close this one, and John Dronfield was hurriedly invited to come and rescue the School. He made a very fine job of this, and also guided the School through the very difficult war years. As a result the School was very much his baby, and he kept a very tight control. The School very much reflected his personality, but I think this has changed. The Head Master has become more of an administrator, and certainly in the case of one Head Master the School went on in spite of him. We decided that we just couldn't work with him or under him, and so we got on with the job.

Do you have a philosophy of education, an idea of what it should provide?

Yes, I suppose I have. I think that education should encourage people to be actively interested, be questioning, be ready to challenge. In other words, I think that what we should do as teachers is to stimulate people, not merely fill them full of facts. We should actually get them to think for themselves and to argue. Education should be a preparation for life. Therefore, if life is unfair and arguable and fluctuating in its pleasures and their opposites, I think education ought to do likewise.

Finally, after such a long time at St. Peter's, are you looking forward to retirement, and how are you going to spend the time?

I'm looking forward to it very much. I've always been a great believer in looking forward. I shall miss the School, I shall miss teaching, I shall miss the young people, although that is made up for to some extent by grandchildren. What are we hoping to do? We have two or three ambitions. The family is very much an ornithological family, and we hope to get away to some of the bird areas that we are very fond of — places like the Outer Hebrides — at times of year when we have never been able to visit them before, when all you people will still be working hard. We would like to get out and see our daughter and her children in Norway, a country which we are very fond of. So we hope to get out and about, to use our Dormobile more than we have done in the past, to visit those parts of Britain and the world that so far have eluded us. Other than that, I hope to spend more time reading, more time sleeping perhaps, to enjoy eating — nothing terribly ambitious, but I think that we shall find that we have more than enough to fill our time.