Some Fretwork and the Interminable Christmas Play at the Chalet School

[EmilyAlice]

Now girls, line up and listen because this term is a busy one. Firstly we are combining our hobbies club and the Christmas play, so we will need our fretworkers to get busy on the scenery, some beautiful découpage for decorations, our nimble-fingered needlewomen on costume duty and some scrapbooks for - er...
Now one other thing girls. As you know the Chalet School has moved from the Tyrol, to Guernsey, to Armishire, to some island or other and thence to Switzerland.
This term we have moved again and the first thing I want you to do is to find out where the bloody hell we are....

they don't even consider a non-private school for Jo

Ah, but state schools at the time meant elementary schools up to the age of 14 which was school leaving age for the vast majority. My mum and dad went to elementary schools and always said it was rote learning random 'facts' plus being drilled in arithmetic, with some woodwork for the boys and needlework for the girls. Tiny numbers (I think around 2% but I'm not sure where I heard that or if it's right) would have passed scholarship exams at 11 or 12 to go to local high schools but in some cases were unable to take up their places because uniforms weren't subsidised. My mum used to talk about how envious she'd been of the 'high school girls in their lovely uniforms' when they walked past on their way to school. So I guess the middle-class Bettanys wouldn't have considered this option for their delicate sister.

Interesting, though, about international as well as historical exchange rates. I'd never thought about how quickly the Bettanys become wealthy - I suppose I've always thought that a lot of Madge's later wealth would be down to marrying Jem who presumably has inherited as well as earned income.

Was thinking of the "grammar schools" of the day, as opposed to the board schools - BBC says: Children from poor families who did well at academic subjects could take an exam to win a 'scholarship'. This would pay for a place at a grammar school, where they could be taught to a higher standard. These schools also took pupils from families who could afford to pay for a place and a uniform. How the costs would have compared with girls' public schools, I don't know.

Apparently "The proportion of 'free places' at grammar schools in England and Wales increased from almost a third to almost half between 1913 and 1937. However, when poorer children were offered free places, parents often had to turn them down owing to the extra costs involved." - I don't know whether parliament.uk means up to half of children, or only half the places at said schools which might have covered only a small percentage of children?

My grandparents left school at 14 and learnt a lot of poetry, lovely handwriting, but little else. My uncle left school at the same age in 1950 and was at least introduced to various subjects. Dad got into the grammar - I know the cost of uniform was considered a burden and it was just as well he could walk there. I suppose the Butler Act of 1944 was the start of the end of the tiny little schools and private schooling becoming only for the rich.

Well I have had my cold bath and am now waiting outside our dear Madame s window ready to sing.....where are the rest of you????

I'm here. What are we singing?

Christmas carols????

Am I late for dear Madame's birthday serenade? I had to go back for my clean hanky which I'd left on the Mongolian Steppe so it's taken me a while. Loo!

The BBC website quotation uses the term 'grammar schools' but I think they mean the high schools - like the one in Taverton, and the ones Winifred Darch writes about! I also think that the rise of a third to a half of free places means places at said schools, which is perhaps quite a bit more than the 2% of the working-class school population I thought it was, but still not high. It was definitely the norm for working class children to stay in elementary schools for the whole of their school lives. I wonder whether there was a group of children who attended private but cheap schools until the age of 11, at which point they secured scholarships at the high schools or left?

1944 (1945 in Scotland) was the beginning of secondary school for all, and I think the high schools had the choice to become fully maintained grammar schools where all places were free, or direct grant grammar schools with a mix of free and fee-paying places, and not controlled by LEAs in the way that maintained schools were.

According to this history of North London Collegiate School (the school that Molly Hughes goes to in 'A London Girl of the 1880s') the direct grant grammar schools operated from 1945 to 1976. After that I suppose they became fully independent or went comprehensive?

But still, not a lot of choices for the middle class but impoverished Bettanys in the 1920s. Perhaps similar to the choices faced by the Fossils/Wicharts in the 1930s.

I think "high schools" often refers to the schools in the Girls Public Day School Trust.
www.gdst.net/about-us/since-1872
My mum went to Croydon High and would often start singing, "the girls of the ivy green". 😀

"The girls of the ivy green" sounds like something out of EJO!

Anyone feel like composing a companion ditty, the girls of the brown and flame/girls of the gentian blue? I think we're missing a trick here.

Just had a look at the history of Croydon High and this bit about the first Headmistress is fascinating.
"The school’s first Head, Miss Neligan, was a formidable character who had served with the Red Cross in France during the Franco-Prussian War in 1870 and legend has it, had been left in sole charge of the wounded at Metz. She remained Head of Croydon High for twenty seven years and after retirement, so incensed at the long delay in giving women the vote, she became a militant suffragette. On one occasion, she protested by refusing to pay her rates and on another she assaulted a policeman but escaped prison presumably because of her age!"
My mother used to sing the school song very loudly with her old school friends. Gin and Orange was frequently involved. 😀

Girls of the gin and orange sounds the best yet.

I'll step away from the seranade, being like Jessica Wayne and apparently droning away on two notes, mainly flat.

Thinking about the small private schools in Angela Brazils and EJO, it doesn't sound nearly so ambitious of Madge to think she could provide a similar level of education herself. It's basically being a governess with more organisation. And a foreign country.

I agree Mornington. Brown and flame, Gin and Orange. Perfect. 😀

I like the old St Trinian's song:
"Remember our school motto:
Get your blow in first
She who picks her sword up last
Always comes off worst."

I've recently read The Clergyman's Daughter by George Orwell (written in the 1930s) and part of it is based on his experience of teaching at a small private school aimed at the children of small local businessmen. In it the main character gets told off for trying to teach in a creative way. They only want the children to learn so much and no more - no point in wasting time on the creative side of learning. In the story there are several schools of a similar kind in the same street. The headteacher only cares about the school fees and sucking up to those parents who pay on time, and the previous teacher was sacked for being a drunk. The heroine, Dorothy, gets the job without having any teaching qualifications or real experience.

So, with schools as poor as this about I agree that it wasn't that ambitious of Madge to think that she could open a girl's school offering a good standard of education in spite of her own youth and lack of experience.

Ahem, Mornington. The Queen of Belsornia, if you please. And yes, I did send my gaily apparelled henchmen to escort lists, after all I am always a Chaletian.

This thread is ripping! Oops, slang, sorry Madame. I'd love to join the school, a little late due to a terrible sledging accident.

I've just bought three Chalet books from a second hand book shop I found on holiday. Have read Trials and am halfway through Triplets - both full of the usual near death experiences. Avalanches, winter sports accidents, a motorcycle crash (which surprisingly enough was rather skimmed over), an unexpected blizzard, and pupils getting lost.
I bought Genius Too, which I have read, I think, but it was years ago. So sad to be so happy!

I was just reading the Faraway Tree updated thread and wondering how the Chalet School books would fare updated.
Obviously some of the names are very dated-I don't think I've met a Josephine aged under about 50, and ones like Barbara are also dated. But there's so many outdated names, and interspersed with the German/French/Other nationalities names (which may well also be dated) I suspect it wouldn't work changing them. Josephine could become Joanna, I guess (my friend Joanne was always Jo or Joey) but you'd always be thinking "Who?" if you had a mixture of the books.

You could change uniform dress into sweatshirt and jeans etc, but such a lot of it is dated, plus you have the WWII stories, that I don't think it would be recognisable or you would have to condense several books into one by taking so much out.

But then is it needed? I think because it is clearly dated, it doesn't need to be updated other than occasional remarks like "working like a * * * * * *"

I think that's why people get indignant about the Enid Blyton books. Because although they're dated, they're not clearly dated so people judge them by todays standards. When I read them as a child I thought they were about modern children, and I know dd2 was astonished to find they were over 50 years old (or the early ones were)

I think for the time they were quite progressive-girls would be expected to stay safe, so George keeping up with the boys would have been a shot for feminism.
And people would have assumed if someone was wearing boys clothes that they were a boy, hence the constant mistakes, they wouldn't have looked further than the clothes. Of course to truly update it, perhaps George would become trans?

I don't think you could update them, really. The fact that a child nearly dies practically every term in the early books would mean that the school got shut down pretty quickly. But those are the most exciting parts of the books and without them you're just left with high jinks relating to dropping ink everywhere (of course that wouldn't work either in the world of biros).

As for the absolute obedience expected by the girls - well I'm afraid my 10 year old just laughs when I suggest that she behaves like that

DD just accepts them as period pieces - as they are.

The fact that a child nearly dies practically every term in the early books would mean that the school got shut down pretty quickly.

Then each episode could be followed by a chapter called "The Health and Safety Report/Recommendations". or after a bad one "Ofsted Inspects"

Ha! Someone I work with had a baby Josephine in 2015. I also know one of 13, so pretty much perfect for early CS. no I didn't have the guts to ask either mother if it was a Chaletian reference

I find the 'updating' quite a weird thing, conceptually. It's a really limiting view of children (or anyone), that they/we can only cope with reading stories about people who inhabit exactly our world. I agree there are a handful of phrases that could do with editing out (and 'working like a " would be top of my list!), but in general I think the language and the names and the currency are of its time and place. I think I liked the specific dated-ness of the earlier and wartime CS books as a child, in much the same way I like Dickens' Victorian London or Laura Ingalls Wilder's prairie. I think one of the things about fiction is that it enables the reader to look beyond those boundaries, isn't it?

Plus obviously discussing the complicated position the Chalet School would occupy in 2017 is interesting - it'd seem a shame to lose that opportunity by trying to merge the two in any convincing fashion! Although I guess there's something rather free school ish about it all, so it's not as utterly impossible as it might have looked ten years ago...

I find the 'updating' quite a weird thing, conceptually. It's a really limiting view of children (or anyone), that they/we can only cope with reading stories about people who inhabit exactly our world
I totally agree with this. It's rare (if ever-I can't think of any) where I would prefer the updates version. I can remember being really upset finding that the children's version of "Children of the New Forest" had been updated in language, it lost a lot of the charm. I found an old copy eventually and dd2 also preferred it
It's the same as (I'm told) that if a British book is published in America then they change it to an American version (pants/diapers/color etc). Now I'm sure that if we as children were more than capable of working these out, then American children are capable of working out the other way round. It does seem a little insulting of the publishers to assume that.
(although the Hardy Boys spending a "semester" in Oxford university was hilarious in the extreme. 5 minutes of research on the web would have shown little things like it not being a campus university etc and made it a much better book)

I agree, Nell and Witchend. As a teen I remember reading some updated Dimsie books, never having read the originals. It was baffling - I couldn't tell whether they were about a modern school, or written several decades before in a world with which I was by then familiar having been steeped in Chalet School. The attempts to update the Dimsie texts really didn't work, because none of the cultural references could realistically be updated (anti-Soppists just weren't a thing in the early 1980s) but they were using decimal money and some editor's version of 1970s slang. It was much more confusing than if they'd just kept to the original.

Popping up my head again to ask if the one drive details could possibly be shared. I'm 4 weeks into a hospital stay (home next week we think) and my brain is too tired for 'real' books. I'm just reading Juliet of the CS and I have a couple of other fill ins, but some of the originals too would be nice.

My copy of Sisters of the Chalet School arrived yesterday . Anyone else got it/read it? I'm planning to start reading it as soon as I've finished my current book, and wondered if anyone would like to discuss it in a few days.

Emerence I'm a tecchie failure and I've never negotiated the onedrive myself, but I'm sure someone will be along soon to help you out.