What were your favorite subjects in high school?

In previous stories I have talked about the educational system in place in Britain in the 1950s with the eleven plus exam being taken at the age of eleven by all kids in the town that would determine what sort of secondary school you attended. I passed and went to the local grammar school, a form of school that had its roots back in the 1500s, perhaps even earlier. My own school, Wolverhampton Grammar School was founded in 1512 by Sir Stephen Jenyns, a master of the ancient guild of Merchant Taylors, who was also Lord Mayor of London in the year of Henry VIII's coronation.

Jenyns was born in Wolverhampton. From it's earliest days the emphasis was on academic subjects, the study of language, mathematics and the sciences. This was still in place when I went there in 1952 and this led to the school developing streaming. After the first year of general education the children were streamed depending upon what special aptitudes the students showed.

Certain subjects were taught to the whole class like English, though this was split between English Language and English Literature, the same with French. The emphasis in the Language lessons were very much on language construction, tenses of verbs, conjugation and so on. All very theoretical and very boring. Latin was also taught to the whole class as was General Mathematics and History.

The streaming meant that for some classes you went off to different rooms and teachers. I was put into the sciences stream so that I took Physics and Chemistry as a specialty, other streams included Ancient Greek and Mathematics at a much higher level including Algebra and so on. There was a another stream that grouped Geography and Art. By the tiem you got into the senior years you were further streamed so at this point I switched to what was called Modern Languages but basically was just three subjects grouped together for the schools convenience.

That grouping included English that I quite enjoyed, French that I did not like because there was almost no interest in the spoken word but it did include a lot of obscure French Literature, and finally History with a special emphasis on English Medieval History that I really did enjoy very much. However at this point, when I was 17 years old, I decided to quit school and not go on to University as I would have to spend another year or so studying subjects that left me cold.

If I had been able to choose my own subjects I would have selected History and English and Geography - I was forced to drop Geography when I was 12 to make space for "more important subjects" so even now I feel a bit cheated. I