Places for Learning

• 

Details

Written July 2020

We walked to school in the 1940s, books and a lunch in a satchel on the back. The parallel-medium, combining English and Afrikaans speakers, Newton Park Primary School, was just a block away. I have memories of teachers; among them, Miss MacKay , who taught us to sing the ditty: I washed my hands thIs morning so very clean and white ... (I should tell the PM that) and Miss Marais (who told my parents I’d do better if I stopped day-dreaming - I doubt it worked.)The school badge was South Africa’s national emblem, the protea, but as far as I recall, without a motto.

A few years later we moved to Grahamstown, where I attended Graeme College before returning to Newton Park. We lived next door to Mr Vernal, one of the early headmasters. Perhaps that fuelled my interest in its history. After all I was in Vernal House. The college badge combined extracts from the coat of arms of the town’s founder, Colonel John Graham, a descendant of the Graeme clan, and the Cape’s first commander, Jan van Riebeek. Virtute et Opera was the motto. Courage and toil are still qualities well worth cultivating in young men. I needed some courage when I scrummed down there as a front row prop; also when ‘Bully’ decided to take me on. But my gallant sister in the school next door intervened with: ‘Leave my brother alone!’ That was it.

My secondary school years were at Port Elizabeth’s semi-private Grey High School. It was named after Sir George Grey, and adopted his family crest of three balls joined and three bars in parallel. Here the motto was Tria Juncta in Uno - three joined in one, we were told, emphasising the importance of body, mind and spirit, and a holistic approach to life. I frequently developed that in my own teaching in later years. When invited to address the school on our return to South Africa in 1994 I said I had discovered a fourth important dimension, that of ‘community’. My years in Zambia, and more recently, India, had taught me the importance of learning how to live together and about getting on with people. Quite honestly I don’t think they took much notice of what I said. Never mind!

1959 and the University of Cape Town, that had grown from the South African College School, whose badge it adopted. This incorporates four images: an anchor, open book with the words Spes Bona inscribed, a crown and a lighted lamp above all. We thought little of their relevance then. Now I reflect on the value of each, and of the importance of ‘good hope’ in these days when despair could easily prevail.

I was a student when the medical school decided it needed a badge. We were presented with the proposal, combing (again) the three van Riebeek rings with two serpents entwined round a staff topped by wings. We were asked to vote in acceptance. Prof Hymie Gordon, who knew more about medical history than we did, was passionately against the proposal. ‘It should be the single snake of Asclepius,’ he argued, ‘Not the rod of Hermes, the god of communication.’ We students preferred the appearance of the proposal, so that was it. Come to think of it now, we spend a lot of our time in medicine communicating news that we hope is good, but that isn’t always the case. I thought of Prof Gordon when we visited the sanctuary of Asclepius in Epidaurus in Greece a few years later, being told how the snakes were used for anything from allowing them to lick wounds to locking them up with people suspected of being mentally ill. Lockdown was their treatment for mental illness! Now it may end up being listed as a cause.

Next, on to London’s Royal College of Physicians. Its coat of arms has a hand coming from above, as though by divine authority and clasping another, probably feeling the radial pulse. That after all, was the first clinical skill to which I was introduced in 1962. And below them, a pomegranate, classical symbol of fertility. I’m not quite sure where that fits into being a physician. Anyhow I had the good fortune to become a member, though I’ve never worn their badge.

My formal medical education ended at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in 1968. Their logo includes a palm tree, but also brother and sister Greek gods driving a chariot - Apollo, god of music, prophecy and medicine. I like that combination. His sister, Artemis, goddess of hunting, chastity and comforting women in childbirth. Well, maybe. The rod of Asclepius and the snake are there too. No snakes here - just plenty of parasites. I needed to know a bit about mosquitoes and tsetse flies, and a few others, and how to keep them at bay.

Denmark Hill and its college, now named after William Booth gave us some Salvation Army training. These days it has its own logo. We used the denominational crest. I won’t go into the details of its complex symbols that seem to have fallen out of favour, giving way for the more popular and easily recognisable red shield. But we’ve worn the crest almost without thinking for decades. Margaret did not like it, and much preferred a simple cross on her lapel. I’m with her on that one.

I’ll leave it there for now. I may pick up others later: Chikankata hospital, The Leprosy Mission, Dementia Friends and others, not to mention the family crest.

Meanwhile take a look at photos of the badges and logos of those educational institutions that have contributed so much to shaping who I am. 
 
I am a fortunate man!


July 2020