Recently, I had a visit from a man who was my best friend at primary school.
As he recalled — and who am I to argue — all the bigger boys in our class formed a gang, and the three smaller ones that were left formed their own gang.
We had no interest whatsoever in whether the girls in our class formed gangs — they seemed to be irrelevant, although we both recalled that some curiosity about girls started to stir in the later years of primary school.
Gangs had none of the connotations of today’s understanding of gangs.
We just kicked around, explored the local bush to our heart’s content and enjoyed each other’s company.
We couldn’t recall being told when to come home from our explorations or any real parental supervision.
Life seemed to be a perpetual summer.
I was, according to my friend, the weedy and lippy one who constantly taunted the bigger boys in the other gang and was able to run the fastest to escape retribution.
My friend has had a remarkable life living in New Zealand, Australia, Africa, Eastern Europe and England.
His adventures and experiences have been simply outstanding.
His life would fill a book, and hopefully one day will do just that.
But for a couple of hours during his visit we had the opportunity to reflect on those formative years we spent together in a primary school and tried to understand exactly what it was that was instilled in us.
As we chatted, we realised that we both had a strong interest in science, physics and cosmology, literature and biography, biology and the formation of life, and had many more areas that we both either appreciated or understood.
And we were both still learning.
At the end, we decided that it was through the love of reading that enabled us or prepared us for what was to follow in our lives.
Even though for us it has been well over 70 years since those days in the old school yard, the lessons or maybe it was the way of thinking instilled in those early few years, served us well.
Our teachers seemed to know just how to open our eyes for us to learn.
And we both have not stopped reading or learning.
As my friend pointed out there are few of our school mates who have not achieved in one form or another. Some in business, some in the arts.
History is important in that it can inform our futures.
While this period of history only extends one generation, I think it taught me that those early days of education of the 1950s and ’60s had the right mix.
Maybe it is time for us collectively to learn something from not all that long ago.
