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School for our parents’ generation was considered by many a privilege. Often the farm kids were too busy and needed on the farm  to attend all ten months. With bad weather pioneer families often could not ensure the kids could attend, or at seeding or harvest time. My dad in rural Saskatchewan went to a one room school in the 1920s, rode a horse there and back and took a lunch.  My mother lived in a town in northern Alberta and school was nearby but she did have to go away for higher school grades.

This means that for my cohort school was maybe a drudgery but we realized that our parents had worked hard to enable us to get this leg up into society.

School was compulsory for my cohort  in the 1950s from ages 7 to 15. There were truancy officers to make sure kids did attend and in rural areas in particular inspectors to ensure they got this right to attend and used it.

There were not many kindergartens. My cohort started the journey into the hallowed halls when we were five and six. I went to the basement of King Edward School, a room with tall windows and washrooms down the hall. My sister and I walked about 5 blocks to get there, and went home for lunch.

The Education Act later said that kids must attend from ages 6 to16 years and in 2001 the legal school leaving age was moved to age 17.

In 1885 and 1895 separate and  public school boards had been set up and there was a rush of building grand sandstone schools in the 1910s. King Edward where my cohort attended had been built in 1912. At that time it had 19 classrooms, was a grand 3 storey with 2 cupolas. In 1959 King Edward had undergone several renovations there at 30 avenue and 16 street SW. 

The other school my cohort went to was Viscount Bennett. Viscount Bennett was built at Richmond Road and 24 Street SW in 1959.At the end of the war there were only three Calgary high schools- Crescent Heights, Central and  Western Canada. In 1950 officials discussed buying land at Richmond Road and 24 street SW where there was at the time a horse riding academy. It would be a junior senior high school, for grades 7-12. The 10 acre plot of   land was purchased in 1953 and the school was named after Prime minister R. B. Bennett. The school at first had 16 high school classrooms.  By 1961 there was a 15 room addition with a wood shop, auto shop and library.
The first principal  at Viscount Bennett was Hugh Bryan and he stayed there until 1969, (we were 20 and had graduated) so he was our experience with high school principals. He was a quiet efficient soft -spoken man, assisted by Miss Jagoe who was a strict enforcer.

At its height Viscount had 2100 students.  A person has to register the enormity of this number because for some of  us from small communities and small schools the school was huge and intimidating. It had old wings, new wings, and newer wings. Even in my dreams in my seventies I am sometimes wandering around the school and a bit lost about which stairway to take. Such is the influence of childhood.

Viscount did not have to carry the education weight alone though. In 1963   Ernest Manning High School was built and in 1968 Central Memorial was built in the southwest. These new schools also were quickly renovated and enlarged with a growing surge of kids.  Western back near downtown put in extra gyms and a theatre in 1964.

In 1908 the University of Alberta was built in Edmonton and it was the only institution for decades that could grant degrees. For post secondary  in Calgary there was the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology. Heritage Hall had been built in 1919 on land purchased from the Riley Farm.
Many of my cohort had to ‘go away’ to university, if they wanted to study pharmacy or veterinary medicine or law.  However the University of Alberta at Calgary ( later called University of Calgary) was built in 1966 and many of us were able to go there.  We were among the first grads in 1969 and 1970.

The University of Lethbridge was founded in 1967 and Athabasca University in 1970.
So our cohort had access to what our parents did not have – a university in town.

What was school like for us in the 1950s? Straight rows of wooden desks. There are heritage school preservation sites at McKay school in Edmonton and there is one in Calgary. These display classrooms preserve earlier times. They however often go farther back, to the 1920s

In our era we did not have slates and chalk. We had paper. We had one or two big blackboards at the front of the room or side and the chalk dust was considerable. Over time dustless chalk was invented and the blackboards were of a smoother shinier material that was apparently easier to clean. But many of us had the classroom duty of taking the chalkboard brushes outside to clean them. Some teachers used a yellow chamois to clean the board.
A big innovation was colored chalk. I had a biology high school teacher who revelled in colored chalk and wrote lavishly with it across the board, highlighting words in various colors.

We did not have white boards, smart boards or computers.

We did have pencils, erasers and rulers. The erasers were rubber and sometimes broke off in little bits but they were not the useless synthetic type of later that barely erased marks.
In elementary school we were given fountain pens and a little inkwell. There was even a hole in the desk at the top right for the bottle of ink that we were trusted to use from about grade 4. We were taught cursive writing and to stay on the lines. Penmanship, very highly valued by our parents’ generation, was still taught as a vital skill. But there was more tolerance for diversity. Our parents’ generation had amazing frameable art type of pensmanship, even the  men.  I can’t say mine ever reached that level. Mine was more at the standard of joy if I could read 80% of what I myself had written.

Though the ballpoint pen had been invented in 1938 by Laszlo Biro we had not heard of it and never used it. Only after the war did such pens start to appear in Calgary. Paper Mate made a smear-free pen with quick drying ink. In about 1955 Bic made a cheaper disposable ballpoint pen.

Gone then were the inkwells and the antics that  kids of earlier times had pulled off like dipping pigtails in them.

We did not have backpacks. We carried our books to school in our arms or at our sides or in our bicycle racks.

Our schools were respectful of gender differences as they defined them. The entrances to King Edward Elementary were marked Boys and Girl not just in a printed sign but in sculpted sandstone.  The gym classes were separated and whyle girls took home economics class boys took woodworking and auto classes in the high schools.

There was a clock on the wall in most classrooms, a flag, and often a picture of the Queen.  Many  schools had kids repeat the oath of allegiance every day.  In our schools we did not consistently do that as I recall. However there was a time when teachers might read a passage of the Christian bible aloud. That practice was ended when people of other faiths expressed concern their faiths were being ignored. It became a hazy routine and I recall occasionally waking to attention when the teacher read “Verily I say unto you” and I thought she had said “Beverley”.

The discipline policy of schools in the 1950s was strict. Kids might be rapped on the knuckles by a teacher if they misbehaved, or be sent to the corner to sit there in a chair facing the wall.  Some teachers spanked the kids who misbehaved. These practices were later outlawed as demeaning and physically harmful.   Some teachers did other things. One teacher we had from England would throw chalk at kids who were not listening. None of those is legal now.

The most dramatic was the strap. This leather item was used, by the school principal, often in his office in a very serious setting,  administered on a child who had consistently misbehaved. The strap was later deemed unfair and was banned, but not during the time my cohort attended. It was banned in Toronto in 1971 but Alberta retained it as an option. The Supreme court only banned it for the nation in 2004.

It should be understood in context that mild physical punishment was also the norm in many homes. Many kids got a ‘good spanking’ or as it was called a lickin’ by the parent if they misbehaved. The injury caused was minimal, possibly  reddened skin for a moment but not open cuts. Some parents had unique discipline styles. A few mothers would chastise a toddler with a wooden spoon. Even one advice columnist at the time said kids sometimes need a “lashing with a wet noodle”. This was a humorous piece of advice to not cause harm but to require obedience.   Even one religious leader said kids need a slap on the back from time to time as long as it is low enough and hard enough.

In addition, when a child got in trouble in school, the parent was told this fact, and the parent might also deliver a penalty.  The school and the parents collaborated to the shared goal of a well behaved child . In the later decades, even by the 1970s when I became a school teacher myself, many of those policies had changed. The goal was still a well behaved child but physical punishment was pretty well discouraged if not banned.  This did reduce teacher options considerably. If a child misbehaved the child could be sent to sit in the hallway or kept after school for a detention but such penalties of social ostracism or inconvenience often became ones that backfired too. Kids in the hallway often just walked away.  Kids often said they could not come to detention because they had to get a ride home .  The idea of how to get good ‘class control’ was an issue in the 1950s and 60s also but the means were different. Ideally the control was due to the teacher being dynamic, interesting, very competent and respected by the students.  That was not always how kids felt about their teachers, then or now.

There were few private schools in Calgary in the 1950s and nearly no one was home-schooled.    In 1905 there had been St. Hilda’s school for girls.  In 1919 a private school for boys was set up inside the Central Park Library, named after Lord Strathcona of the Canadian Pacific Railway. Strathcona school for boys relocated later to Riverdale Avenue. In the 1940s it had expanded under headmaster Alfred Howard who was there for 27 years.  Peter Lougheed, who later would become premier, attended there for a time. It had another famous headmaster, Sandy Heard in 1967. He had himself been a student.

A girls’ school named after Governor General  Tweedsmuir was set up in 1959,  The boys’ school and girls’ school amalgamated in 1970 and relocated to a huge campus near Okotoks as Strathcona-Tweedsmuir.   These private schools emphasized character development, sports and public speaking.

Lycee Louis Pasteur offered French instruction starting in 1966 (we were 17 and most of us had left grade 12) .The Calgary Academy for kids with special needs was not built until 1981 and the Webber Academy did not set up till 1997.