Rosemary McCloskey

I went to St Columban’s Primary School in Glenview Street. My first teacher was Miss Margaret McCaughan from Ballycastle. She was a lovely lady and very kind to us. We were fifty six children in the class, as a lot of children had been born in the years following the end of the second- world war.

I progressed through this school but was not very happy there. I hated the regimentation of school and I suppose the discipline was tough, when compared with school of the present day. They did not take any prisoners, but doled out punishment, merited or not, with a cane. If one failed to get spellings or tables right, there was a slap. If one’s writing was not all it should be or one blotted one’s copy book, one was likewise rewarded and of course if one was caught talking or being in any way mischievous in class that merited another whack. It was pointless to complain about this at home, for the answer always was that the teacher did  not smack you for nothing, and often my parents would have followed up the corporal punishment of school with further sanctions,  so it was better not to talk about what happened in the school and to suffer the pain silently.