morganacademyfp

Over the years, since completing 6th year in 1960, I have fairly frequently, had occasion to be thankful for the education I got at the Morgan (both primary and secondary). I'd like to start a new topic that encourages us to think of occasions when we have given thanks for having been taught (or having learned) something from a class or a particular teacher or maybe a fellow-student. I'll think of an example or two from my own life and post it shortly, once I become more familiar with the format of this website.

Isn't it strange that nothing has been posted, so far, on this thread?

I'm very proud of having been at Morgan Academy (1954 - 1965), but . . .

I can spell, write reasonably good English, speak "proper" English and perform mental arithmetical sums, including multiplication, thanks to my Primary teachers.

From Secondary teachers I learnt
1 humiliation of another human being is degrading and should not be copied.
2 no pupil should EVER be labelled as a failure.

I've been silent, morganfp, only because I'm building a cottage in Ontario and am utterly exhausted at the end of the day!

I find it interesting that you should mention writing good English. Like you, I would put my writing ability down to the excellent training I was given during my 13 years at the Morgan (1947 - 1960). Throughout my working life I have been obliged to write a great deal -- progress and final reports on evaluation projects as well as reports for internal circulation within client organizations, lectures for my courses, and papers for publication. Because teachers at the Morgan taught me grammar, spelling and composition, (and gave me a life-long love of reading), I've never found writing difficult or viewed it as a chore. I can look back at these English classes in particular and feel enormously thankful to the teachers. Not all of the professional colleagues I've worked with have enjoyed the sound training the Morgan gave us -- and I'm very grateful for that!

Thinking about this topic has made realise just how well my 6 years at Morgan has served me. First and foremost, the people I met were a splendid sample of the the worlds populace. Mostly great folks, pupils and teachers alike, I`d be happy to sit down with and have a blether. Then there was the knowledge of maths, science, history, geography, a smattering of French and German and on and on. One area of knowledge that was greatly broadened at Morgan was literature and Scottish literature in particular. Everything from Sir Walter Scott and Burns through McGonagall and Lewis Grassic Gibbon to Neil Munro and Cliff Hanley. We all owe a great debt to Morgan.

I remember Ron Smith as he was in my year throughout my time at Morgan. Like him I am eternally grateful to the old school for giving me the oppotunity to develope any talent I may have. Despite the fact that i became a doctor,which for some reason I always wanted to be, Iloved foreign langusges and through excellent tgeachin at Morgan got bursaries in French and German to go to St Andrews to study Medicine!!! my interest in languages has always continued and i now speak French,German,Danish and now Chinese, as well as some Gaelic,Soanish and Italisn.These have all been very useful to me in my career and especiallly now at Shanghai East International Medical Center where I see patients from all over the world. I am eternally grateful to Ma Macdonald, DB Smith and all the other language teachers at Morgan Academy, which is why I keep a picture of the Old School on my wall in Shanghai

Welcome back, Ian! Peter asked me yesterday if I had heard how you were! Have you sorted out the Google problem and access to UK sites from China?
Hope you are well. It would be nice to see you at the Founder's Lunch on 11 Sept.

Thanks Thelma. Nice to be back. Managing to access the site ok now. Afraid I can't get backin September this year but would have loved to.tell Peter I am now teaching Chinese doctors Western medicine and our standards. Abit like a Chinese PLAB!!!

Ian, well I remember you too. (Yes, then I was Ron Smith.) So glad to hear that you – and Dave D. also, have found that our education at the Morgan has served us well. We had teachers who worked us hard, cared that we learned and encouraged us when we showed interest and put in the effort.
You have your McIntosh Patrick print in Shanghai and I have mine over the fireplace in the now completed cottage on the shore of Rice Lake, Ontario.
Congratulations on your linguistic capabilities! D.B Smith told me that I’d ‘never learn French’ – but I went on to learn that language and now use Spanish as my home language and learned some functional Romanian, Czech, Polish, Bulgarian and German while I was working in these countries or areas where these languages were commonly used in the 60s and 70s. As an evaluator responsible for assessing international development programmes, I found that the physics and chemistry I learned in (Corky) Brown’s class served me very well in my interactions with biological and other scientists and gave me the confidence to get to grips with the scientific and technical foundations of the projects I was evaluating. The approach to learning we were given by (Pa) Brown in Geography has allowed me to use inductive and deductive thinking throughout my life – and to be attentive to the topography, climate and economy of the dozens of countries I’ve worked in.
When I write my bio-statement for publications, I usually say something like “educated in Scotland and gained a PhD in Canada .” (Nobody has ever caught the irony in that!) I really believe that I was provided with the foundations of learning – and a great deal of substance -- from my teachers at the Morgan from Primary 1 (Miss McDougall) to the teachers we had in 5th and 6th year of secondary.

During a visit to Scotland in August, the first in four years, my wife and I drove past the Morgan. We drove slowly down Forfar Road past the school, turned at Stobswell and drove up Pitkerra Road (?). The sky was a brilliant blue, the sun shining, and the school looked as fair and stately as it had while I was a pupil there. We didn't stop. On a previous visit we had asked to visit the school and the deputy rector had willingly shown us around. This time, we drove on to the the Eastern Cemetery where my mother and my maternal grandparents are buried, parked the car, located the grave and stood in silent recollection for a time. As we drove away to pick up the Kingsway and head to Forfar for a bridie, I remembered the friends with whom I had cycled at weekends and during the holidays -- Billy Adams, Derek Forsyth, Ernest McAree, Sandy Falconer, George Keiller, David Robertson .... there must have been others. I was introduced to youth hostelling by the parents of a fellow pupil in the last year of primary school and never looked back. As I drove past the Mains and towards the Todd Hills, I thought “What a great upbringing in the 40s and 50s and what a sound education I received at the Morgan Academy.” I wasn’t the most attentive of pupils but I am grateful to my primary and secondary teachers alike for instilling a discipline in me and a respect for learning that still serves me well. "Hail the Morgan stately, splendid, Hail the teachers every one!"

August 1957. The first day back after the summer holidays. We heard we were to have a new teacher, a man from the Western Isles.
When we were all in the classroom finding seats beside friends, the new teacher strode and in total silence took up a position at the front of the class.
We settled down and waited. He continued to stand there, silent, no expression on his face.
Increasingly uncomfortable, we sat in rigid expectation at our desks.
Slowly he removed his Lochgelly from his shoulder under his gown and placed it on the desk in front of him. It lay on the desk like a folded brown threat with a cloven hoof.
Still in silence, he took off his gown and hung it over the edge of the blackboard.
Our class of 30 watched with increasing trepidation.
He took his jacket off and hung it carefully over the back of his chair, undid his cuffs and rolled up his shirt sleeves. All Scots know that rolled up shirt-sleeves means business. We heard the clock tick.
The class was becoming nervous.
He took a fresh stick of white chalk from the wooden groove below the blackboard and broke a couple of inches off the thick end. He set it upright on the edge of the table. It sat there like a tiny white lighthouse on a dangerous coast.
We looked on, bemused.
With a sudden movement he lifted his Lochgelly, swung it swiftly over his shoulder and brought it down brutally on top of the chalk stub.
[size=150]CRACK! [/size]
Thirty teenagers flinched at the noise of the unexpected action.
The new teacher bent down with his face to the height of the table and blew off into a puffy cloud the tiny mound of white dust that had been, only a second before, a cocky stub of chalk.
He picked up the remaining piece of chalk and in large confident letters wrote on the board, Roderick Macleod.
Expressionless, he turned back to the class, unrolled his sleeves, did up his cuff-buttons, put on his jacket, and slung on his black pleated MA gown.
Then he turned to 30 silent, white-faced teenagers; "My name is Macleod. I will teach geography; you will learn geography. Do you understand me?"
Thirty convinced heads nodded in unison. We learned geography.

Good one Ron. I remember it well/ Never saw anyone get thbe belt from Roddy.Nice man socially!

Miss Goodfellow was a disciplinarian. She was fond of strapping disobedient boys and ordering inattentive girls to stand facing the class until , duly chastened and abashed, they were allowed to return to their seats.
Nevertheless, she was recognized by pupils as a ‘good’ teacher who made her classes interesting by bringing into every subject the everyday experiences that she could rely on us sharing.
In one memorable class she was explaining how and why climates varied in Europe and around the world. A maritime climate like that of the British Isles was moderated by surrounding seas and the warm Gulf Stream. She used her pointer to tap the appropriate spots on the great map of the world she had unrolled over the blackboard. A continental climate, on the other hand was found far from the mediating influences of the sea, in the centres of great land masses. These land masses would heat up fiercely in summer time and cool down severely in winter. She went on, to our fascination, that a desert climate suffered daily extremes. Temperatures could reach well over a searing 120 F during the day but without soil and plants to retain even some of that heat, nights could plunge to freezing and below.
During this class -- it must have been in January in 1949 or 1950 – Miss Chalmers told us she had recently received a letter from her brother in Canada. He worked for The Hudson’s Bay Company in the Northwest Territories that bordered on the Mackenzie River. He lived, she said, in a log cabin and heated it with a wood-burning stove that had to be fed logs constantly to keep the cold at bay.
“He told me, Class,” she called us “Class”, “that sometimes when he wakes up in the morning there is ice in his beard.” She let this intimate piece of information from her brother’s personal life sink in. We sat there imagining stretches of pure white snow, howling wolves, dark pine forests and her hardy brother trapping or trading with Indians or whatever it was he did for the Hudson’s Bay Company. We could see him in a thick checked shirt tossing split logs into his stove as he wrote letters to his sister in Dundee. But despite the logs and the stove, he would wake up in the morning with ice crystals caking his beard!
“Why do you think that is, Class? Why would my brother have ice crystals in his beard in the mornings?” We wracked our brains for the answer. It clearly had something to do with the extremes of heat and cold and sources of moisture. Individually we concentrated on providing a considered explanation.
Then one hand shot up. “Yes, Millman?” (I have used a fictitious name.) Neil Millman was known neither for volunteering answers nor for his swiftness so the attention of the entire class was focussed on Millman. How had he, of all people, come up with the answer to this complex matter so quickly?
“Miss ...” Miss Chalmers encouraged Neil with a nod. “Miss, your brother probably slavers when he’s sleeping. And if he doesn’t wake up to feed the stove, his slavers freeze in his beard, Miss.” Millman looked pleased with this logical deduction. The class appeared to find this a believable explanation. A slavering trapper! Clearly the moisture came from her brother’s mouth. The more thoughtful students were silently beginning to formulate explanations of condensation from his breath but slavers also seemed to provide an adequate reason for the ice. So we all waited to see if Miss Chalmers would confirm that this indeed was the answer she had been looking for.
There was a painful silence that forbad ill. Miss Chalmer’s eyes drilled into Millman for what seemed like ages. Then she took in a deep breath, leaned back, opened her eyes wide and roared, “How dare you! Millman! How dare you!”
We were all taken aback by her sudden outburst, trying to grasp at what had turned her from a relatively mild and caring teacher into this Vesuvius.
“Come out here!”Millman, confused but resigned to being wrong because he usually was, slowly stepped out to the front of the class. Miss Chalmers turned, opened her cupboard door and retrieved her leather strap. She whirled round on the confused Millman, indicating that he should raise his right hand. He raised his hand away from his body, the palm flat, as much out of habit as out of any appreciation of how his answer fell short of the mark.
She jerked the strap sharply over her shoulder and cracked the split end of it into Millman’s small and tender palm.
“My brother .....” CRACK!“ ..... when he sleeps .....” CRACK!“ ..... does not .....” CRACK!“ ..... slaver .....” CRACK!
“ ..... into .....” CRACK!“ ..... his beard .....” CRACK!“Do you understand Millman?” Millman nodded. Millman - indeed all of us -- knew that when an angry teacher asked you if, after a belting, you now ‘understood’ that the wise thing to do was nod emphatically. Admitting lingering doubts was not an option. Neither was asking the teacher for an extended explanation of the offense.
“Now! Go and sit down!”Millman squeezed his stinging right palm under his left arm and screwed up his face. He returned slowly to his desk bowed with pain and the effort of bridling back tears. The rest of us sat wide-eyed, straining to grasp the depth and precise nature of the lesson and of the offense occasioned by Millman’s answer.
Years later, I was told, but never confirmed, that Neil Millman was sentenced, by the Magistrate at the Sherriff Court in Dundee, to a year less a day in jail. He was found guilty of stealing daily, over a period of months, a crate of Babycham from the truck he drove for his employer and falsifying the weigh bill.

Discarded -- too factual.

A good lesson to have learned, cby! I'm sure that it has served you well throughout your life. Be prepared, at the very least in the most obvious ways!