By 
AS a flock of children in wellies, shorts, dresses and flat caps danced through the leaves of Seskinore Forest, the older generation followed behind, reflecting on their own schooldays… when discipline was strict, lessons were simple, and every morning began with the sound of a bell.
The event was part of McClintock Primary’s 125th anniversary celebrations, aimed at showing today’s pupils how education in the digital age differs from the schooling of their grandparents and great-grandparents. And there were no better teachers than those who had lived through it.
Outside the old schoolhouse, a heavy brass bell was lifted down and rung once more, to the delight of 97-year-old Jim Riddell, a former pupil who started school there in 1936.
“Right back to class!” he laughed, remembering the same sound nearly 90 years ago.
“I was born in 1928 and I was here during the war years. Soldiers used to come through for training in Omagh, and we’d be allowed out to watch them marching past. There was a great singer in our class, and one section of soldiers would join in with him as they marched by.”
“One of my favourite things about school was winter,” Jim added. “The ground would get so slippery you could slide on it. Just past the chapel gates we could slide the length of three telegraph poles. Some winters were so hard we could slide for 300 metres on our honkers.”
Jim also recalled the look of schools in those days.
“All the schools were painted coffin brown,” he said. “But the Lord Mayor of Seskinore, who was high up in public education, pushed to have them changed. It’s nothing like today, where the children have so much colour around them and are encouraged to be creative. It’s all very different now.”
Jim also remembered taking on extra duties as a pupil.
“I was a classroom assistant back in the day,” he said. “The schoolmaster had a stroke and couldn’t lift his right arm, so I had to do all the writing on the board – so we didn’t learn very much!” he laughed.
While corporal punishment is now remembered only as a bit of old-fashioned humour for pupils re-enacting the past, for Jim’s generation it was an everyday reality – though not one he recalls with resentment.
“The woman teacher who taught the younger children was very kind,” he said. “The master, on the other hand, was quite happy to use the cane.
“Oh, I got slaps all right… but not too bad. I could never complain. Few escaped the cane. It used to hang up on the cupboard door, long and wide.”
