Serendipity!

I love the word “serendipity”. I don’t think I’ve ever actually used it in my life but just love the sound of it and its meaning. According to the OED serendipity means “finding interesting or valuable things by chance” and this week I did, I think, experience “serendipity” and have thoroughly enjoyed the experience! Let me explain.

Mr Bolton as I remember him

When I was 11 I, like most of the boys in my junior school class, failed my 11+ exam and so was destined for Fishwick Secondary Modern in Preston Lancashire. It had a reputation of being a tough place but in those far off days – and especially for kids like me from a working class background - you just accepted your lot. In the end places like Fishwick had largely one purpose – producing “factory fodder” for the cotton mills and heavy industry of northern England. It was what they did and did very successfully.

I was there between 1956 and 1961 and it was undeniably a school of its time subject to the legal requirements and the social/historical context in which it had to operate. It is true that there were many short comings which we can recognise with the benefit of hindsight from 2020 but despite this my time there was a happy and productive 5 years . The hard working staff and excellent leadership of Dr McEwan provided us rough and ready kids with opportunities that in those days many secondary moderns did not offer. Dr McEwan (we called him Batman because he wore his doctoral gown as he moved around school!) was a quiet and gentle man who arrived shortly after I began my life at Fishwick and reversed many of the "discipline policies" that had ruled under the previous head, the tyrannical Dr Pickard, who ruled with, if not a rod of iron, certainly a fearsome cane. Under Dr McEwan the school began to change rapidly for the better. For me the most important change was that he introduced the opportunity for kids like me to sit O levels – something quite new in most secondary moderns. In the end I came out with my "O" levels and a positive view of education that gave me not only a good start in my career but a desire to "learn for life".

But there was another thing that Dr McEwan did. He appointed a new English teacher and deputy head – a man named Gavin Bolton (see photographs). I was lucky enough to be taught by Mr Bolton and for that I will be forever thankful; he lit a flame which has given me a life-long love of the spoken and written word which now, in my eighth decade, burns even brighter. He exposed us to great literature and wonderful writing opportunities; I can remember sitting enthralled as we read long extracts from Great Expectations by Dickens - the fearsome Magwich and the mysterious Miss Havisham and the rest of the great Dickensian characters of that novel leaping off the page at me. I was thrilled, inspired and the seeds of social awareness and justice were planted within me when Mr Bolton indulged us with Hardy's Jude the Obscure - still today, in my view, the greatest English language novel. Brilliant images and high excitement flashed through my young mind as we ploughed through Buchan's Prester John and John Meade Falkner's tale of smuggling and derring do Moonfleet; later when I had my own class I often relived those classroom hours with Gavin Bolton by using Falkner's great work in my own classroom. A year or two ago I reread, for the first time since leaving Fishwick, Herman Melville's Moby Dick – regarded by many as the greatest novel ever written – and as I turned its 600 pages I could still hear Mr Bolton’s voice from that long ago Fishwick classroom; my pulse again raced - as it had all those years ago - as I pictured the mighty struggles with the great white whale, the maniacal Captain Ahab, the drama of the chase across the high seas and the strange friendship between the story's narrator Ishmael and his friend the tattooed cannibal harpooner Queequeg. I already knew from my own career as a teacher that Mr Bolton's real love was the teaching of drama in schools and I also knew that he became internationally known for his work in drama education; he wrote the biography of probably the most famous drama teacher of all, the late Dorothy Heathcote a lady who I came across on a number of occasions in my own teaching career. And as a young teacher, Mr Bolton's and my own path crossed again in later years. As I climbed the career ladder I attended summer holiday residential courses run by Her Majesty's Inspectorate where eminent inspectors and educationalists lectured and on two of those a guest speaker was Gavin Bolton. The times that I spent during those courses sipping a cup of coffee or a pre-dinner glass of sherry chatting to this charismatic and brilliant man about our time at Fishwick are still treasured memories; he did not know it but not only did he influence my teaching through his lectures during these in-service courses but the visions that he planted, the doors and interests that he opened for me as scruffy 15 year old at a tough secondary school in a northern industrial town have stayed with me and made me what I am to this very day.

All this, of course was just “stuff” in the far reaches of my mind until earlier this week when a bit of serendipity leapt into my life. I was surfing the net carrying out some completely unrelated research when I suddenly came across Mr Bolton's name - and to my delight and surprise – or rather shock - saw the word "Fishwick" leap off my lap top screen! A few more clicks of the mouse and I was reading a Ph.D thesis completed in 1995 by a Canadian student named Laurie Jardine at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. By 1995, I discovered from the thesis, Mr Bolton was a senior lecturer and visiting Professor at that university - and a world renowned figure in the teaching of drama and Ms Jardine was undertaking research on Gavin Bolton, his life and his teaching. Fishwick Secondary Modern was never one of the great schools of the world so to see it mentioned in Ph.D thesis written on the other side of the world was to me quite wonderful. It brought back so many memories, events and names.

Fishwick Prefects 1961: Mr Bolton sits 4th from the left on the front row, Dr McEwan the HT sits at the side of him and next is Miss Bisbrowne the lady DHT. I'm on the third row, third from the right

This is what Ms Jardine wrote:

"An offer came and Gavin became Deputy Headmaster of Fishwick Secondary School, Preston, Lancashire. The move to the Northwest had its problems. The school itself was tough, with a student population quite accustomed to being in the hands of the police - not exactly a fertile ground for the kind of teaching with which Gavin had become comfortable. Pre-war notions of education which called for rigid discipline and non-interactive teaching styles would not ease for some time; for young Bolton, bursting in with respect for students and for learning, the progress seemed very slow. The customary discipline for misbehaviour was caning. The staff had adopted a stiff disciplinarian policy, viewing their role defensively. When Gavin arrived as Deputy Head, he was told, "the only way to deal with these kids is to clip them over the ear", which presented difficult administrative choices for Gavin. Many of the staff were sceptical and outwardly unsympathetic to the idea of introducing drama into the school. Of course, Gavin was convinced that the only way to attack the problems would be through drama and plenty of it. So, in addition to his administrative responsibilities, which included the school timetabling, Gavin made sure that every class in the school had drama, which he taught. Gradually, everyone was won over, and the school developed a positive bias toward drama. Teachers, administration and students began to value the place of drama in their community. The same unmanageable tough kids became drama festival winners, showing up at Drama Club even if they’d been truants for the rest of the day."

Mr Bolton in 1995 at the
University of British Columbia in
Canada - a long way from Preston!

I'm not sure if I agree totally with all Ms Jardine says (I know Fishwick was not Eton but I don't remember it being quite so "tough" as implied here, although we did have some tough kids and at least one stabbing incident that I remember well!) and I would add that Mr Bolton arrived at a time of change for the school in general following Dr McEwan’s appointment as head teacher a couple of years previously. But overall Ms Jardine is correct; it was a tough place and Gavin Bolton made a huge impact.

The seeds that he and Dr McEwan planted in my young mind stayed with me giving me not only a love of the spoken and written word but of learning in general prompting me to first gain my Master’s Degree (M.Ed) in my mid-thirties and then an M.Phil a year or two afterwards and to continue studying throughout my career and still now in my mid 70s. There is rarely a day goes by without me thinking fondly of the Fishwick teachers who taught and inspired me: Gavin Bolton, Harry Helm (maths), Mr Seed (Art), Mr Calderbank (Technical Drawing), Mr Davies (English), Mr Edmundson (Geography), Mr Bamber (PE), Mr Addison (Science), Mr Wolstenholme (Geography) and many many more. These wonderful teachers and my time at Fishwick and the arrival of Dr McEwan and Gavin Bolton not only opened up career doors that a few years before would have been unthinkable for a kid from the narrow terraced streets of Preston who had failed his 11+ but also opened up life doors and gave me a love of learning which I have absolutely no doubts fuelled my desire to become a teacher myself.

My little brush with serendipity has kept me busy all week trying to track down Ms Jardine (no luck so far) to perhaps see if she has any more bits of information about Mr Bolton but beyond that it has done so much more. It has brought many happy memories of another time and another life and the opportunity to reflect upon the people, places and events that have made me what I am. It has also confirmed my long held belief that it is only by looking back at where you have come from that one can understand who and what you are and what you believe in - and from that what your ultimate goal in life should be.