On this day in 1973, the Daily Mirror published interviews with some Teesside pupils1‘Colin Dunne, Pupil Opinion | Daily Mirror | Monday 22 January 1973 | British Newspaper Archive’. 2023. Britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk <https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/BL/0000560/19730122/054/0009?browse=true> [accessed 22 January 2023]:
HILARY COX, age 13: “It’s rotten, it’s boring, and my Mam says she’s sick of me going in and out like a yo-yo all day. There’s nothing to do at all.
“I’ve been going to all the classes that have been held but it costs a fortune in bus fares when you keep having to go home and go back again.
“I feel sorry for teachers. In our class there are thirty-four of us. Some of the children are always messing about and then we can’t get on with our work. I think the teachers are right. They only want to keep their jobs like anyone else and you can’t blame them for that.
“I’m glad they are coming back but it’s going to be terrible catching up again and I expect we’ll all be on double homework.
“I want to be a typist. A teacher ? Heck, no, I couldn’t stand all those kids screaming.”
VIVIEN WOOD, age 14: “My Mum thinks it’s scandalous. I’ve only been having about seven lessons a week instead of thirty-five and my Mum gets really mad.
“She says I’ll never get a job if I don’t pass exams. I’d like to go to college to be a nurse but I’ve missed all that learning now.
“I enjoy school too. I like all the lessons. every one of them. And I enjoy doing homework as well.
“Some of the children haven’t bothered coming to school at all because it’s not worth it for just the odd lesson.
“I’ve kept on going, but today only five of our class turned up. It’s very unfair on us—we’ve got to learn, haven’t we ?”
ALAN POSTGATE, age 13: “Teachers are all right. It’s a job that takes a lot of doing and I think if you play ball with them they are okay with you.
“Still I don’t think they should have done this. We’ve been wasting our time these last few weeks.
“There’s nothing to do but sit in the house and think how much we’re missing. And I love school, I really do. History’s my favourite.
I’d like to get far in history. ” There’s a wide range of jobs if you know history.”
MARK HANNAH, age 14: I suppose they think they are right. But I can’t stand being sent home all the time like this.
“I have to get up at eight o’clock every day when I could be having a good sleep in, and come to school and then they send me home again. I’d rather be occupied anyway.
“I used to enjoy things like metalwork and history. I don’t mind the teachers either—well I don’t mind the ones who can take a joke, but I don’t like the shouting ones.
“This isn’t fair on the schoolchildren though. I want to get a decent job, a motor mechanic, and this could affect my chances. When the exams come I’ll sit down with the paper in front of me and I won’t know a thing.”
ALAN THOMAS, age 15: “Teachers do a lot of overtime, they have to do homework like us, and, if you ask me, they are underpaid, too.
“But I’m missing loads of classes and football, too, and that annoys me. It was all right at the beginning. But you get fed-up after a bit.
“There’s nothing to do except hang around the town or sit and talk, and you soon get sick of that. I’ll be glad when it’s all over. But I hope they win, just the same.”
I wonder where they are today.
Today’s photo is of course of Capt. cook’s Monument on Easby Moor.
- 1‘Colin Dunne, Pupil Opinion | Daily Mirror | Monday 22 January 1973 | British Newspaper Archive’. 2023. Britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk <https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/BL/0000560/19730122/054/0009?browse=true> [accessed 22 January 2023]
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