Port St Johns Primary School - trying to get an education

“The school appears to have been established in 1903.”

(Vaughan Holmes)

Give an apple to the teachers …. who were they?

It is interesting to trace the line of teachers who were entrusted with guiding the minds of the youngsters of the town.  Teachers have always had a difficult job:  it is not easy to keep children interested in school when life outside of school seems so much more appealing. 

Teaching the youth of Port St Johns must have been that much more challenging.  Why sit in school when the thick forests, golden beaches and enticing fishing spots provide such temptations?

            One must salute the line of teachers who attempted to feed the minds of generations of Port St Johns children.  The old cliché still stands: 

 “If you can read this, thank a teacher” 

A rough list of teachers at the school:

Miss Annie Picken (pre World War I)

Miss Syd Rogers  (“Podgie”) (Std 2 to Std 5) at least 1945 to approximately 1962 

Mrs Steenkamp (the jailor’s wife)  possibly pre 1946

Mrs Malan (Sub A, Sub B, Std 1)  approximately late 1940's

Mrs Kay Hinks  (Sub A, Sub B, Std 1) approximately 1950 to 1956

Mr Hoffman (Std 2 to 5)  approximately 1963 to 1973 

Miss Wina Vlock (Sub A, Sub B, Std 1) approximately 1953 to 1974

Mrs Anne Sloan (Sub A, Sub B, Std 1) 1974 to ?

Mr Len Routley (Std 2 to Std 5) 1974 to  ?

Tiger Flats Primary School:

"There was a primary school at Tiger Flats way back in the 1940’s and earlier.  It was a prefab-type building on short poles or stilts.  I can still see that building in my mind’s eye.  It was standing vacant and was pulled down shortly after I started at the school in town (1946).  I remember my mother {Harriet Daniel} talking about a lady who was a teacher at the Tiger Flats school.  She was a friend of my mother’s, named Miss Gladys Spring.  She later took up a teaching post at Cofimvaba.  I remember going on a holiday to Queenstown and Cofimvaba with my parents and we visited her when she was boarding in a room in the Cofimvaba Hotel.  I was still very young, so this would have been sometime before 1950." (Howard Daniel) 

Port St Johns Primary School: 

 “My grandmother, Annie Picken, taught at the Port St Johns Primary School in the years before the First World War.  My grandfather, Norman Holmes, then an articled clerk with John C Blakeway and Leppan in Umtata, had a 500cc Indian motorcycle and he used to make the trip from Umtata to Port St Johns to visit her.  She told me that she boarded in Port St Johns with a German-speaking Transkeian family - she never told me the name - and they were having a picnic on the banks of the river when news arrived that the war had broken out and the picnic was immediately over and after that the atmosphere in the house was somewhat tense...” (Vaughan Holmes)

“Wages, the caretaker, was working at the school when I was there from 1946.  He had a house on the grounds.  He had mielies that he grew in the school grounds. I don’t know when the school was built. My first schoolbag was an army backpack that had belonged to my Uncle Cecil who had just come back from the War.  It was a haversack type of thing, army colours."  (Howard Daniel)

“The school was a two-roomed building shared by all the classes right from Sub A to Standard 5.  My brothers, Reg and Keith Daniel, say that their first teacher was Mrs Malan, who taught them until Standard 2 and Miss Rogers who took them the rest of the way. Miss Rogers was a fearsome disciplinarian who did not believe in sparing the rod, and they were suitably terrified of her.  Reg went on to Umtata High School as a boarder while Keith went from Standard 6. Reg finished his high school career at Umtata while Keith went to a technical college in East London, after Standard 7, to further his education.”   (Dudley Daniel) 

"I started school when I was over 7 years old.  My mother  taught me all I had to know for my first couple of school years at home because she considered me too young to ride to school on my bicycle before then. That was in 1950. 
 The principal of the school was Miss Rogers who taught the higher standards, (we were all so scared of her), then there was Mrs Malan whose husband was a farmer for the intermediates, and before I reached Std V we had a young teacher, Mrs Kay Hinkes who came in for a short time. We loved her, she was a young woman with two small children and she lived with her elderly father – never knew what happened to a husband – I remember her taking us for sewing lessons and during the lesson she would teach us songs to sing whilst we worked – I remember “Waltzing Matilda” was a favourite. She wasn’t very popular with Miss Rogers because of that. She didn’t stay for very long.  I remember a farewell to her being held in the Town Hall, I think I must have been in about Std 4 then and I was very sad at her leaving.  I think it must have been then that Miss Vlok started teaching the babies, as we called them.” (Pearl Daniel Keys Tarboton)

“When I first went to school there, there wasn’t the prefabricated building. The teacher in Sub A, Sub B and Std 1 was a Mrs Hinks and then in Std 2 we went into the normal structure building.  Mrs Hinks was a slim woman with a child -  there wasn’t a husband - and I must say, I thought she was something to look at!  That’s one of the reasons why my father sent me to boarding school in Umtata.  I went to Umtata at the end of Std 4, I could’ve stayed another year at Port St Johns but I wanted to play more sport, so that’s what happened.” (Desmond Daniel)

“Teachers during the years I was at the school (1950, Sub B, to 1955) were Mrs Malan and Miss Rodgers.  I don’t remember wearing a school uniform, and cannot remember whether the school was divided into house groups.  I remember that cricket and netball were played at the school.”  (Frans du Preez)

“I started at the school in 1953 and was taught by Miss Wina Vlok.  Miss Rogers was the teacher for the older kids and she was also the head teacher.  Miss Vlok’s brother was Jay Vlok. My dad, Cecil, was a skipper for the skiboat that belonged to Jay Vlok.  The boat was built in Jo’burg.  He used to come to Port St Johns for holidays and eventually retired there and lived in the double-story timber house across the river near the bridge.  He used to go out deep-sea fishing.  Something else about the school was that at one time the school building was too small and they taught us in the Town Hall for a while.  Then they put up the new pre-fab building next to the old original building.”  (Linday Daniel)

“I can remember getting a lift back to boarding school on a Monday morning with Miss Vlok when she was still working as a draughtswoman with the Bunga in Umtata.  That would have been in 1952.  I think she started teaching at the school in Port St Johns the following year.”  (Howard Daniel)

“I did attend the primary school, our principal was Miss Sid Rodgers, an absolute tiger, and the junior section teacher was Miss Wina Vlok an absolute honey.  We had great fun at the little school, soccer and cricket was coached by Padre Lean the local Anglican Priest.  I started school in 1955 at the convent in Umtata, boys could only go to std 2, then went to PSJ 1959 to 1962, and Miss Rodgers was still there then, from there I went to UHS in Umtata, my first year as a skivvy for Ivor Daniel.”  (St John Macdonald)

"I was there '59, '60 and '61 then went to boarding school in Std 2 so was only taught by wonderful Miss Vlok all in one classroom. We wore a uniform: Bottle green tunic with a white shirt. Miss Rogers rings a bell but not too sure. " (Cheryl Wallis Wooldridge)

"I left PSJ for UHS IN 1970 - I remember Toffee (Hoffman).  I think he got the name Toffee because it rhymes with Hoffie.  He was really strict on spelling and maths tests - I got caned so many times for failing, however I am eternally grateful for the excellent grounding!"  (Craig Macdonald)

“I started with Miss Wina Vlok in Sub A {1963}   Mr Hoffman was my teacher from St 2 {1966}.  He was so strict.”  (Louis Smit)

“Sub A teacher was Miss Vlok, whose sister’s daughter was married to my cousin, Terry Bouwer.  Then there was Anne Sloane, (whose older daughters were dating my older brothers).  Mr Hoffman was the other teacher.  I was so sh*t scared of him and received many canings from him.  He drove a reddish car and Miss Vlok drove a black VW which we could hear coming from far. Then after Mr Hoffman left there was Len … can’t remember his surname.  We had a caretaker at the school* who was just as scary as Mr Hoffman, but I can’t remember his name.”  (Pierre Malan, attended the school from 1971)
{*Wages the Caretaker was still at the school in the mid 1970's. He had started working there sometime before 1946}

SCHOOL MEMORIES

An embarrassing moment:

"I will tell you about an embarrassing event but would urge you not to use names as I don't know where he is in the world today.  We had a podgy boy in our class, I will call him GM, and we were called up to Miss Roger's table (standing in a semi-circle around the platform) to do reading.  We had hardly started when GM asked to leave the room.  She abruptly declined saying we will finish reading first.  He made another desperate appeal and as she ignored him he let loose and wet the floor, turned tail and ran out the room.  The cleaner with his bucket and mop was duly summoned.  Shame it was quite an ordeal, although we kids sniggered about it."  (Pearl Daniel Keys Tarboton)

Ghosts, graves and tungululu bushes: 
"We sometimes used to sneak down to the CMR cemetery in the bushes behind the school during break-time.  Going in groups for courage, and pretending not to be frightened by the snakes and the ghosts, we would creep around the bushes between the old headstones of the long-dead soldiers.  The only things that attacked us during these adventures were the 'tungululu' bushes.  We couldn't hear the school bell from the cemetery and we would rush back late into the classroom, dirty and covered in burrs, to face a very angry Miss Rogers."  (Howard Daniel)

MY SCHOOL LOVES AND HATES

School Hates

I clearly was besotted with the bell and so wanted to ring it but never got the chance.

I lived in fear of all the teachers.

I was so scared of the graveyard behind the school.

I was always scared to use the toilets in case of snakes as they were so open air!

I got run over way too many times by that bulldog called Janie*.

I literally was petrified of the times tables games.

I will never forget Jerris** being tied to her desk with a big long orange rope. This left me mentally scarred in case it happened to me.

School Loves

Loved (believe it or not) the big tree next to the bell as it had funny roots that we always played in.

Loved eating a whole tomato for school lunch.

Loved doing the Hokey Pokey dance.

Quite fascinated by the brass tap on the water tank between the two classrooms.

Enjoyed playing behind the big classroom, not sure what we did there.

(Debbie Daniel Heubner)

{*Janie - a friendly bulldog who used to visit the school at playtime and run energetically around, bumping into children in her exuberance

** Jerris Date had walked to the bin at the front of the classroom to sharpen her pencil once too often}

School Loves 

"During the 1970's when I reached the 'Big Class' we would watch films once a week.  I think the films were shown on Wednesdays after lunch.  I don't recall that the younger pupils from the 'Little Class' came to the movies.  They may have gone home by that time.  If memory serves me correctly, the little ones left school earlier to go home than we did once we reached the soaring heights of the Big Class.  The films were, in retrospect, just documentaries - politically correct for the time - but they were a welcome break from the usual schoolwork.

There were black blinds that would be drawn across the large sash windows that ran along the bush side of the school and a long rod with a sturdy brass hook at the top was used to pull the blinds down.  The job of pulling down the blinds was usually offered to one of the boys.

  An important job was given to one of the girls - 'lights duty'.  This role entailed being given the privilege to stand on the chair against the wall near the light switch close to the door.  On being given the signal by the teacher who was operating the projector, 'Lights Duty Person' would stand on the chair and switch off the lights, plunging the classroom into darkness for the duration of the film. Surreptitious giggling would ensue. 'Lights Duty Person' would sit on the chair during the film, only to jump up again onto the chair to switch the lights back on once the film ended." (Natalie Daniel Erasmus) 

Long Division:  
Miss Rogers was really strict, quite a tiger.  I remember that I used to spend half of every school day standing in front of the blackboard.  I don’t know why I even had a desk!  I had to go and work there so that she could keep an eye on us, especially doing sums … long division … I can still remember doing long division.  Eventually, the penny dropped and I came right with it.  I remember doing long division at Uncle Willie’s house and sitting at the table in the kitchen with my cousins Reg and Keith and our fathers, all learning to do long division.  Our fathers weren’t much help. I think they were also learning to do long division!"  (Howard Daniel)

School Highlights:

“I think the highlight of the school’s history was when we won that that wildlife competition and the whole school went to the Kruger Park.  I had already gone to Selborne by that time.”  (Pierre Malan)

School Lunch:

"Break-time lunch was usually peanut butter and syrup or jam sandwich in a brown paper packet.” (Pearl  Daniel Keys Tarboton)  "Mom would pack Marmite on brown bread sandwiches and a banana for our school lunches." (Howard Daniel)

 

Gazing out of the school windows …

“Looking out of those massive windows on the bush side, you would almost every day see buck and monkeys, and the bird life was great. 

The younger kids would play under the trees near the bicycle shed and the older kids were on the netball field.  I know Colin* and Stuart** were my close friends, but it is a strange thing: my memories are not so much about the friends but about the place itself.  I think that growing up in a place of such adventure and beauty would do that to you.”

(Pierre Malan)

{* Colin McLean  **Stuart Harrison}