Education and the Guelder Rose

click photo to enlarge
When I look back over my own education - both the formal and the autodidactic - I'm very clear that the things I value most were learned in primary school: that is to say between the ages of 5 and 11 years. During that period I learned to love to find out things for myself. I also first discovered the limits of formal education, from which I went on to know that it is useful for laying down a foundation of knowledge, and that higher education is especially good for securing employment but is hopeless for growing you as a person (it has a tendency to turn out clones who parrot method and content). I also discovered - though I wasn't able to explain it until many years later - the truth that Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) articulated in "Walden": "What is a course of history, or philosophy, or poetry, no matter how well selected, or the best society, or the most admirable routine of life, compared with the discipline of looking always at what is to be seen?"

In the primary school I attended we followed the usual curriculum of the time - mathematics, English, history, geography, religious studies, music, art and physical education. However, in place of science we had "nature study", and as eleven year olds we also had "current events". It was the nature study that gripped me more than any other subject. Often this involved walking up one of the narrow lanes out of our market town into the hills whilst we listened to a commentary from, and engaged in a dialogue with, our teacher about the plants and animals, as well as the man-made features (barns, drystone walls, the town pound, a reservoir, medieval terracing, etc), that we encountered. In those years the importance and pleasure of looking at, thinking about and appreciating everything around me was laid down: it is something that has enriched the rest of my life immeasurably.

It was on one of those walks that, along with herb robert, cow parsley, stonecrop, red campion, wood anemone, and the other flowers of the Yorkshire Dales, I heard the name Guelder Rose. Unlike the rest of the flowers whose names I learnt, this one didn't stick with me. It wasn't one that I could pin on a plant when I saw it, perhaps because it wasn't as common as the others. However, the other day I discovered it was the English name for Viburnum opulus, a tree that grows in my garden, and with that discovery the memories of those primary school "nature rambles" came flooding back. Today's image incorporates a device I've used before - placing an in focus bloom on one side of the frame and a more distant, out of focus flower head on the other.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 35mm macro (70mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f4.5
Shutter Speed: 1/400
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Harvest festival flowers

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The Harvest Festival is a tradition that continues in most English primary (age 5-11) schools. It is essentially a church service redrawn for the school setting. In a typical Harvest Festival children present songs, poems, drama, readings and prayers on the theme of giving thanks for the harvest, and also on the associated season of autumn. Many schools ask parents to donate packaged and fresh food that is arranged as a display during the service. This food is then either collected by charities for distribution to those in need, given to elderly people living in the vicinity of the school, or distributed in some other way. It is a moment in the year when pupils, staff and parents pause to give thanks for all that they have, and share some of it with others.

In some ways this is quite anachronistic because the harvest, except for those in rural schools, is now quite a remote experience for most children. Churches carry on the tradition, and every year at this time decorate the nave, chancel, aisles, font and pulpit with flowers, wheat, berries, and collections of food for distribution. It is seen as an essential part of the church's annual cycle of worship and thanksgiving. In these days of failing banks and faltering economies brought on by "I want more" and "I want it now" attitudes, the theme of gratitude for what we have that pervades the Harvest Festival is a refreshing corrective to this modern mindset.

I noticed this vase of flowers and scattered rose hips on a stone bench in the porch of St Peter & St Paul, Osbournby, Lincolnshire, as I entered the church. The October sun was piercing the interior through the doorway and side windows, the shafts of light illuminating a dark corner, that the golden sunflowers and blue vase made even brighter. Someone had created this colourful arrangement as their contribution to the harvest decoration of the church, and it made a fine opening statement for the display that was inside.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 21mm (42mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/40
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -1.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Primary and secondary colours

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A tradition of English schooling is that, from the age of 11 children are taught in ability groups, but are also placed in "Houses". Typically, on entry to their particular form of secondary education, they are assigned to one of (usually) four houses in which they remain until the end of compulsory education. The houses are not selective, the aim being to have an approximate balance of boys and girls and abilities. These cohorts come into their own during sports day and other competitive events, form periods, and occasions when there is a requirement to subdivide pupils into mixed groups. It's interesting that a tradition that arose in public (i.e. private) schools where pupils did (and do) live in actual houses, should have been so warmly embraced by state schools.

I was first placed in a "house" in the junior years (age 7-11, Years 3-6 in modern parlance) of my primary education. It was called Penyghent House, and accompanied the three other houses of Ingleborough, Whernside, and Pendle - the "Three Peaks" of Yorkshire, and the nearby Lancashire summit, all of which were visible from where my Yorkshire school was located. For better recognition each house was linked to a colour - red, green, yellow and, in the case of Penyghent, blue. When I moved to secondary school, as luck would have it, I remained a blue, but was assigned to West House. You can guess the other houses and colours! It may be my school experience of these four colours as a group that leads me to use them still in that combination. Or perhaps wider society uses them whe there is a requirement for four colours. Whatever the reason, it wasn't until I'd rotated and tinted this photograph of a couple of pine cones four times that I realised I'd chosen those four colours once again. Though I hadn't placed them in the sequence that I always recall them i.e. red, blue, green and yellow!

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 35mm macro (70mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1.6 sec
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.7 EV
Image Stabilisation: Off