Graham Kinnear Memories Of Brandon High School From Australia

A Memory of Motherwell.

Brandon High School, Motherwell, Scotland.

Reminiscences by Graham Kinnear May 2023. Living in Australia since 1980.

I was so fascinated by fun and games and adventures, that primary school in Wishaw was just a daily distraction. When the 11 plus exams came along, I failed. Thank goodness that those overseeing education thought it a good thing to trial new ways to get the best out of those poor failed students. Success was the hallmark of those hand picked teachers at Brandon High School.

The school was run like Alcatraz, with the belt or strap being administered for almost anything, even including talking in the corridors between period classes! I got the belt almost every day! Yet, we loved most of those teachers dearly, despite them putting a hard face on. The memories include:

Jim Fergusson, French teacher, who kept his belt over his shoulder, just under his gown, to ”keep it warm”.

Paddy. That wonderful (old to me) science teacher, who got us to hold hands in a circle while he passed an electric current through us. He was a great stimulus for my interests in science.

Big Jim, the quietly spoken maths teacher, who had a stroke while I was there.

Fifi, the French teacher who kicked her leg out sideways as she tried to whack the belt down on our hands. We rolled on the floor screaming in pretend agony, with a grinning classroom watching on in delight.

The annual play was HMS Pinafore. One of the highlights of my life! I was Dick Deadeye. I could not sing, but I can smell the Leichner grease makeup to this day.

The sadness of the English teacher who lent me his earring (novel in those days for a bloke) for my Dick Deadeye part. He had stomach cancer and I recall sending the ring back to him with my best wishes for a speedy recovery. He died, but he has not been forgotten.

Mr McKeown was in a class of his own! I recall the vitriol and malevolent tirade towards one guy in the class. He had skipped school for the day, but had appeared that day on television after an interview of people in Hamilton . He was asked what he thought about the Budget, in between puffs on his cigarette!. Well, Qballs got stuck into him the next day in class about his TV comments on the finer points of the Budget. I remember him saying that if the guy was lucky, he might even get a job as a lavatory attendant! We lapped it all up.

I was teaching myself electronics in the background and I made a little transistor module that was both a metronome and an oscillator. I had a cyclic squeal and whooee. I had it in my briefcase during class and set it playing. The teacher thought the lightbulb was going to explode. At the end of the period we all had terrible headaches! Never again.

So Brandon took me as a hapless kid, belted the crap out of me, and made me enjoy learning. I was slow, far from clever, but a steady plodder. Like so many others at that school, I left with 6 x ”O” levels, ready to move on to Dalziel High.
Well done Wee Jack Radcliffe and your piano.



That start led me on to do a degree in Pure Physics and Mathemetics, later to become a chartered professional Civil Engineer. There were many others who enjoyed similar success, some of whom became world renowned university professors.

At age 75, in 2023, I think the Brandon High School experiment still holds many wonderful examples of what good education and a strict educational regime can do for the many ordinary kids like me.

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