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| 1 Sep 2023 | |
| Written by Cassandra Kirkpatrick | |
| Alumni |
Saturday detention would be met with shock by both students and parents today, but it was a common form of discipline at NGS in the 1960s, according to former student Libby Maskey.
Libby graduated in 1972 and admits she loved to have fun and didn’t always follow the school rules. “The School rules were very strict,” she said. “If you got three order marks in a week, you got a Wednesday afternoon detention, and if you didn’t turn up on a Wednesday afternoon, you got a Saturday detention.” This would involve coming to school in full uniform and writing out passages from the Bible.
Libby remembers girls getting suspended for ‘minor crimes’, with one student receiving a suspension for giving a packet of biscuits to the boarders. To this day Libby remains furious about receiving a full week’s suspension for challenging a teacher’s instruction – with some colourful language. She had switched English classes and was told by the teacher to write her name in a new copy of a novel they were studying. Libby refused because she already had a copy of the book at home and didn’t want to mark the new one, but the teacher insisted. “I said if you think I’m going to put my name in that bloody book, you’ve got another thing coming.” She went straight to the Principal’s office and given her suspension.
Despite the tough discipline, Libby has fond memories of NGS and catches up with many of her former classmates regularly at Bar Beach. “There were only about 160 of us in the whole school and we all got to know each other – we were a really close community,” she says/ Libby went on to a successful career as a hairdresser, running her own business in Merewether for many years.
Detention: Recollections From an Earlier Time
Recollections of Rosalind Archer Shearer (nee Casstleden), day student, 1940s.
“Most [detentions] were ‘kept-ins’ for not doing homework but we also received ‘marks’ for offences such as talking in prep… All these demerits also involved staying behind after school for 20 minutes, either doing the homework you should’ve done or the most ghastly multiplication sums the teachers could think up. In the days of imperial measurement, these were a real trial.”
Excerpt from: From the Spirit, A History of Newcastle Grammar School, p91.