These Entries are from 3/5 girls who joined 6th form in 1970, The section titled: '5 among so many'.
'I did not feel brave when I told people I was going to Canford: they stared at me as if my days were numbered, though all approved heartily. "Such a good idea to integrate the sexes at a sensible age"—I could see them evaluating my motives. When I arrived at Canford I decided I was exceedingly brave. However after a fortnight I stopped consuming my fingers when under stress and I began to enjoy myself. If you are a girl and you have an inferiority complex, go to a boys school ;you would feel noticed even if you were invisible! Individuality is most pleasing to one's ego and fortunately we are no longer treated like animated icicles. Rugger is a strange fetish and the geometrical gyrations of the corps on Wednesdays still amuse me. After being scrutinized like livestock (or Candi -dates for personal harems) we seem to have found a certain amount of non-identity. I have made good friends and, I suppose, learnt something of the opposite sex individually and “end masse”. I have few illusions about their views on us. On a list for a concert, we came under the sub-heading “females" and that term sums up our apparent role. It seems to be a splendid thing to educate women, but their job is still, in male eyes, to act as a production and domestic act as educated wives can be displayed as curiosities. I am relieved not to be doing the two-year “A" level course at Canford but it is noble of the boys to suffer our invasion, but perhaps familiarity will breed contempt. HONOR GAUTBY
To be a girl at Canford is exactly as I had expected. Otherwise, it would have been somewhat unpleasant. Instead, it was hysterical. I doubt whether any of us had ever imagined that we would have made a huge impression on the establishment, being so few, but there was a definite tendency for everyone to ignore us. If anyone is interested in studying the enormous lengths the male will go to preserve his standing in his little society, she should come to Canford. It is commonly accepted that this race is run by women; it was obviously concocted by men so that they could get on with things in peace. It is the vanity of the boys at Canford which is so funny; and at first I think half of them were terrified of us, or of each other—how they would be teased if they spoke to us. So, we walked around as if we were lepers, accompanied by silence and sometimes a brave boy. All the younger boys either giggled and sneered or looked away and fled. The seniors were polite, friendly, very friendly, or far too blasé to bother to notice. In some cases, they were genuinely disinterested, but the general impression was—"it’ll ruin me to be seen with one of them: I’m supposed to have something better at home". At onstage, if one was seen talking to a boy, within a few hours it would be half way round the school that they were “going out”. The masters were scared and anxious. I hope they are happier now. Perhaps it was unfair of us to break the peace of their monastic routine. How were they to address us and who would stand and open the door for whom? They must have been worried that we would lead their unsuspecting proteges astray. Button major crises seem to have Button please may we stay in a rooming the middle of everything? We like our window seat. Don't stick us in abut surrounded by barbed wire down by the river. OUT OF BOUNDS TO ALL BOYS. How could we make friends easily then, which is difficult friends easily MANDY FAULKNER
It’s bad enough changing schools, let alone going from a girls’ school, where everyone is brought up to be, or at least pretends to be “Nice Young Ladies”, toa boys’ school, where the ratio of boys to girls is 90-1. After the first week all of us were exhausted with the strain of putting in an appearance every day amongst almost completely strange faces; learning not to mind people staring at us as if they had never seen a girl before; and with the difficulty of finding our way to different lessons in five-minute was interesting to see the different ways different boys received us into the school. Some were immediately friendly and helped us to settle in, others dared not come near us for fear of the com-mints that people would make. Life at Canford is much more relaxed than any of us had been used to at previous girls’ schools. Those in author-it at Canford seem, in general, to have much more humane outlook towards life than we have experienced in an all-female community. One thing is definite, and that is that it is worth making the effort and joining Canford as one of five girls among four hundred and fifty boys. NICOLA STEBBING
Post your own comment