[southern geordie]

English Education during the Second World War.

You need not feel to have been deprived, with regard to your poor diet of Brittish history. I was in school right through the war. We were short on teachers and books. With the enemy at the door (Dunkirk, and our armies in retreat on all sides), we were made to copy from a series of eight blackboards the "Great Wall of China," followed by "The Great Lakes" of North America That took up about two years of tedious copying. When I left school at 14, I thought that China and the USA were closer to us than were France and Germany. Since we were a little short of being called up for military service, (but were to be so shortly afterwards to do our National Service) it could have been of use to the nation to inform us about Europe. However, In a mining area our educators of the day reasoned that as boys destined to be trapped into the coal mining industry, we would not require a degree in order to use a shovel , thereby, for to make a living. (Mining was not considered to be a trade). It is a great surprise to me to hear that, somehow, so many of our local boys managed to find their own way to Dunkirk and the English Channel, during the retreat. If it had been our class nembers, we would have, in all probability, ended up under the shadow ot the Great Wall Of China.
Southern Geordie.