to think all UK schools would be better off being Chalet Schools?

[quirrelquarrel]

French, German, English days- hikes up the hills- Kaffe und Küchen- Prees and Joeys and Mary Lous rounding up the miscreants.....would it be impossible, do you think?

Wonder if there is a school like this left!

I always thought the Chalet School was pretty democratic. Biddy O'Ryan remained the daughter of an Irish maid and Sergeant-Major throughout. It was never discovered that she was the stolen child of Lady Whatever, even when she married a lord (there are dozens of such plots in Angela Brazil).

And she ended up a teacher by some miracle of class swap - wasn't their original idea to train her up for a lady's maid?

But when did she marry a lord jeee? Must have missed that one [pouts]

Can't remember precisely - but it's mentioned several times in later books

I thought she married a doctor - though he might have been Von or Zu Something (german nobility, perhaps).

She married Dr Courvoisier and had twins. I've clearly spent far too much of my life reading and rereading these...

Oh - and another for the accident book - a crashed and burning German plane in the war. One girl temporarily blinded and badly burned (Corney), another girl just burned (Violet) and the third girl (Maria) precipitated into a full-on nervous breakdown as she now has to lie in bed thinking about her dad in a concentration camp.

But I still wanted to go there.

He may well have been a doctor.... they all married doctors didn't they? But I'm sure he had a title.

I bloody love the Chalet School books.

They were always so concerned about The Robin?s health. Didn?t she end up becoming a nun?

Jo married her former doctor Jack Maynard very shortly after leaving school. Was he her actual doctor when she was a schoolgirl?

Jo was always changing girls names. ?Hmm you name?s Jemima? Well we don?t like that so from now on you?ll be referred to as Jim/Ted/Biff?

People were always interrogated as to whther they were RC or CofE upon arriving at the Chalet School.

Only one girl was ever expelled. Think her name was Thekla something. In later life she wrote to Mrs Annesley and thanker her for expelling her as it turned her life around and turned her into a good egg.

Jo Maynard was able to have multiple births at will.

The food always sounded amaaaaazing.

Only ?silly empty headed? gels thought about ?fellows?.

Going for a walk was v hazardous. I remember a few of them getting stuck in an avalanche and they were able to mnake some hot chocolate with snow and a bar of choc.

Mary Lou was an awful old prig. Felt sorry for her quiet step sister Verity.

Rosamund went a dreadfully common comprehensive type school pre Chalet School days. The others gels were very kind and she able to rise above her lowly status.

Iirc, Thekla wasn't expelled, she didn't return, because of the war. The girl who was expelled was Betty Wynne Davies, who let slip some info to a spy, about secret passages into a building that was being used by the Government (belonging to the Highland Twins' family, I think). I'm pretty sure that we never found out what happened to Thekla after the war.

Sorry STDG but Thekla did get expelled.... so did Betty W-D but I think they were the only two. Thekla wrote a letter to Mademoiselle LePattre a few years after being expelled (not sure if after the war) thanking her because her expulsion had made her change.

Ooh yes Viking the crashed and burning plane...although I guess that could be called "war-related" rather than "insane negligence".
YY Northern the whole school tobogganing, one girl ends up with a critical head injury, and they don't do anything different next time! And the dangling off cliffs, a regular hazard. Makes you wonder how the population of Austria survived.

I think the CS is democratic, particularly for the times, and doesn't object to either Biddy or Rosamund Lilley being the children of lady's maids. The caveat being they had "dainty table manners" learned from their mother's employers.

One of my favourites is "A Problem for the Chalet School", namely working class Joan, who likes the 1950s equivalent of lycra, "braid", loads of slap, and going to the chippy with lads called Vic. I think it's Mary Lou who does a nice kind explanation of her behaviour to the others which is that girls with Joan's background do grow up more quickly (more quickly than at the Chalet School, where 6 kids by the age of 20 is standard !). Compared with the Malory Towers treatment of Josephine Jones who for being loud and a bit nouveau is "not fit to be at Malory Towers" it's very democratic.

You're right, Sticky - I am being very dim today (blames nasty cold and bunged up head).

They had very cold baths every morning, all those dozens and dozens of teenagers. Did people really do that?

There are some surprisingly realistic bits, especially in the earlier books. The Nazi episode is one of them (don't think many children's books from 1940ish gave a detailed depiction of Nazi anti-Semitism) and does anyone remember Jem's sister Margot (I think?) whose husband turns out to be an abusive alcoholic?

Oh, this brings it all back. The fact that every other school they ever encountered wasn't much cop, like the wimpy St Scholastika girls who haven't got the right nailed boots for their first Austrian winter and can't walk up hills properly. And some of the CS naughty girls find inspiration in the Ku Klux Klan when feuding with the Saints, and this is OK .

Everyone is terribly religious and the nativity plays are so full of rabid sincerity that audiences are moved to tears on a regular basis. You are only allowed to play the Virgin Mary if you are drop-dead beautifu though.

When Joey isn't singing someone back from the gates of death with her 'golden' voice, she's rescuing kidnapped princesses, heading off up dangerous mountains to rescue runaways from precipices, falling through ice while rescuing skaters, and saving St Bernard puppies from being drowned. She grows up to have eleven children, wears her hair in earphones, and develops Peter Pan Syndrome, and continually claims she'll always be just a Chalet Girl if she lives to be a hundred. Despite the eleven children, including triplets and two sets of twins, and the fact that she beats a fit seventeen-year-old boy in a swimming race within a few weeks of giving birth in her late thirties, she's Really, Really Fragile.

People keep telling you that the secret of walking up mountains is bending your knees at every step, and that secret of si-ing is not letting the toes of your skis cross.

YANBU. I think ALL of the UK's educational problems could be solved in this way - shipping all the children to Switzerland to run around mountains. That's what you were referring to, no?

Sounds good to me, Abs. I will start packing the dses trunks forthwith!

Ah, I looked for School at the Chalet on Kindle and found this: ggbp.co.uk/ebooks

You will be packing for a long time then, STDT, sports kits, ski kits, climbing and walking kits (don't forget the knapsacks) uniform, blazers, big coats, evening clothes, dress up clothes, Guide uniform, sheets, towels, night things, books in all three languages for every academic subject. Paint box. Tuck box. Sewing things and knitting needles. Musical instruments. And anything they need for hobbies club. A jigsaw to cut jigsaws perhaps, several tea chests to make into dolls house, a lot of plain white china to paint with alpine flowers. Hockey sticks, skis, toboggans.
And an umbrella.

Don't forget a large shawl to coss over their chests and tie behind them.

I think the Biddy husband confusion is because she married Eugen Courvoisier (the doctor) and Marie Von Eschenau's husband was also a Eugen - but also a Count or something. He definately had a castle because the Nazis pinched it.

The plan for Biddy was to train her as a lady's maid but there is a bit in one or two books later on where it's made clear that the priest in charge of the village school had pointed out that she was very bright and therefore absorbed in to the school at large. She goes to Oxford and then teaches. All the Chalet girls seem to go to Oxford or London or the Sorbonne. I think there is mention of one or two other continental universities and of course Bedford for PT but nobody goes near Cambridge!

A similar exercise in democracy is the sorting out of Reg Entwhistle's education. Kind hearted farm hand lad Reg is sent to the grammar school, becomes a doctor and marries Len.

I have thought of the teensiest hitch with sending my dc to the Chalet school - unless it has gone co-ed, in the intervening years!

Ah well - back to the drawing board - and I was so looking forward to all that peace and quiet, and the house staying tidy.

How old are they? The kindergarten was co-ed.

Could they cross dress and make dolls' houses?
Tom got away with it.

Didn't she become Von und Zu something...Wertheimer?

I always found the Reg/Len thing quite creepy, like he'd had designs on her since she was about 7....