South Yorkshire Times September 8, 1951
Back from America
Mexboro’ Grammar School Master’s Impressions
After a year spent teaching mathematics in an American High School, while an American teacher took his place in England, Mr William S. Brace, Mexborough Grammar School master, was back at his normal work this week. He arrived in Mexborough on Friday, and started work on Tuesday. His “exchange,” Mr. Donald L. McIntosh, of Denver, Colorado, is also home again.
Mr. Brace, has been teaching in America under the internatioral exchange of teachers system. He has been staying, with his wife, at the home of Mr. McIntosh’s family in Denver, and teaching at the South Denver High School.
250 Lectures
Mr and Mrs Brace had a busy time in America. They were presented to President Truman, Mr Brace had several articles published in papers and magazines, and they delivered about 250 lectures on England. From June 10th, until leaving for England they toured by, car covering 9000 miles, touching 20 different states, and visiting Canada.
They stayed for a time with two former Mexborough people Mr. and Mrs. Hedley Hepworth, now living in Chicago. The Hepworths and the Braces, in fact, lived next door to each other in Park Road, Mexborough, before the former went to America and the parents of Mr. and Mrs. Hedley Hepworth still reside in Park Road, Mr. and Mrs. Brace are shortly moving to Adwick House, Princess Road.
American living, says Mr Brace, is high. The wages are higher there, but the cost of living is higher. The bare necessities of life are expensive, while what we term luxuries are very cheap. For instance, a loaf of bread would cost is. 9d. in America, nearly four times as much as in England.
Wild Ideas
Everywhere they went, Mr and Mrs Brace met with “wonderful hospitality and great friendliness ” They found the Americans were always interested in Britain. They were chiefly anxious to know about the National Health Service (“they haven’t one and they have rather wild ideas about ours “), and the political situation. “They want to know whether the country is going Socialist or Communist,” Mr. Brace said “and they did not seem to realise actually how much of the country was still outside nationalisation.”
But teaching was Mr Brace’s main job, besides being an unofficial British ambassador. He taught pupils manly between 16 and 18, and greatly enjoyed teaching in a school where there was no uniform and girls wore glamorous frocks and boys wore jeans and T-shirts.
“There is a difference between school concerts in England and America. “There, the school concert is a first-class variety show, with dance lines and all the rest of it.”
Teaching and Life
There is no great difference in the teaching methods between the two countries, Mr. Brace points out, but there is a difference in course organisation. “Instead of pursuing academic knowledge, as in England, they are more interested in education for life. They are keen on making what they teach relevant to the life pupils are leading or will lead. In consequence the academic standard is not so high but there are compensating advantages in that pupils have a greater political and economic awareness.”
That system could only be carried out in English schools, however, if there was a radical change in the examination system. Internal examinations could be arranged differently, but there would be difficulties with the national General Education Certificate.
“English schoolchildren, Americans believe, are paragons of virtue, and they also think that discipline is far better than in American schools. I am inclined to think that while relations between teachers and pupils are more free and easy than in Britain, there is very little difference in discipline.”
Mr Brace will have an article on his American trip published in this month’s “Times Educational Supplement.”
The Other Side
Mr McIntosh, now back in his Denver home, wrote in a farewell message in the Grammar School magazine: “I have certainly had the opportunity of observing and appreciating a way of life quite new, and in many ways strange to me, and I believe I have learned much of value. Conversely, I’ve tried to be an American ambassador of goodwill, and my feelings will, I hope not be laid to the American nation as a whole.
My forms may not have learned as much mathematics as they ought, but the teaching of mathematics was not the major task imposed upon me as an exchange teacher. If I have succeeded in arousing interest of those pupils whom I met in the American way of life and cast of thought, to my time over here will not, from my point of view, and be wasted. For I do not wish to take away more than has been in my power to give.”