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Just as the school’s formative years were under the influence of a headmaster who was a man of his time, so too, the challenge of the Fifties and early Sixties was met by a headmaster who was tailor-made for the technological age. Ambrose Rocca had come a long way from teaching the basic appreciation of music to the pupils of the Thirties. He had a firm grasp of the essentials needed in a technical school. The 1944 Education Act had created this type of school with its bias towards those subjects of a technical nature. But on the subject of religious teaching the headmaster was adamant, five periods of fifty minutes each was given over to religious instruction each week, for he firmly believed that education in a Catholic school must include religion.
It is fortunate that the opinions and ideas of Mr Rocca were put down in print in the 1950s and so enabling readers to ponder over in the quiet of an evening, or to have his views serve as a basis for discussion with others. This is what he wrote:
“What then is the scope of the technical school? The first essential is that it must recruit children of more than average ability. There is a widespread misconception that technical subjects are for some mysterious and inexplicable reason only suited to the backward or duller child. Nothing could be further from the truth. The aim of the school remains at all stages the acquisition of a broad general education in which the humanities must have a very large part indeed. Recruitment is at the age of eleven, though the possibility exists of accepting children up to the age of thirteen or fourteen if they show evidence of being late developers.”
Mr Rocca was a fervent admirer of the “Spens Report”, Secondary Education with Special Reference to Grammar Schools and Technical High Schools (1938). This report was in advance of its time, and many of its recommendations were to come to pass in the post-war era. The headmaster was not loath to expound on his theories in respect of technical education. He went on to write:
Mr Ambrose Joseph Rocca
“Applied Science impinges on our lives every hour and every minute and we are told that this is only the beginning of a technological age, and that a second and even more amazing industrial revolution is at hand. We are fed, clothed, transported, warmed and generally sustained by the developments in modern technology. Surrounded by this technological plenitude, we must have some curiosity as to how it works. To be educated and well informed in this age implies knowledge of at least the more elementary technical processes. Any education that ignores this is failing to provide an adequate preparation for life and whatever our views on the purpose of education, we have to live in an industrial community and we must understand how this community lives.”
Of St Gregory’s as a technical school, Mr Rocca had this to say:
“Every teacher is aware of the fact that, no matter what his own special subject may be, he is also a teacher of English. Throughout the five years of the course, five periods a week are devoted to the subject. So far as English Language is concerned, we have an advantage in the Technical School in that the children are constantly doing practical tasks about which they are expected to write. This is particularly true in the junior forms where the basic work in self-expression is laid. Literature is of vital importance as it provides, after religion, the handiest medium for the child to make contact with a mind greater than his own and when this has been successfully accomplished, we can truly say that his education has begun. Some Shakespeare is studied every year, but the approach differs from that which has become traditionally established under the tyranny of the English Literature examination. The plays of Shakespeare were intended for acting on the stage, so we take this as our starting point and get the children on to the stage as frequently as possible. Some selection is necessary but all the children get something from Shakespeare that is lasting and the senior boys can be profoundly influenced. The modern theatre too has its masterpieces and these are not neglected. T.S. Eliot’s Murder in the Cathedral and Gogol’s The Government Inspector are just two of several plays that have been studied and produced by senior boys. Some of Molière in translation is delightful for schoolboys but whatever is chosen, it is essential that the study and interpretation of character through acting the part takes precedence. I dwell upon this topic of drama and literature because in a Technical School flourishes societies for drama, debates, chess, sport and, in fact, any interest that will offer the pupils wider horizons are of the utmost importance.
“Music offers us the most ancient and delightful of techniques. In these days when so much of public taste is deplorably low the subject can do a great deal to develop a more discriminating enjoyment. All boys have two and sometimes three lessons each week in the junior school. The aim is to produce a high standard of choral singing that will be enjoyed by the boys taking part. In the hands of a qualified and capable teacher most beautiful singing will result. Boys who are gifted with a naturally good ear for music have the opportunity to continue the theoretical study of the subject up to the level of General Certificate. The less gifted children, when they attain the senior school, have one lesson per week in which they make the acquaintance of symphonic form and opera. With a good radiogram, this becomes a lesson that is anticipated with delight.
“For men and women to play their part in the modern state and to accept the responsibilities that political emancipation has placed upon the shoulders of the individual, some knowledge of History and Geography is indispensable. History in particular is a difficult subject to present to immature minds. Sir Richard Livingstone has vividly described the horrors he felt when he saw a young fourteen-year-old being asked to write about the Treaty of Utrecht and the Pragmatic Sanction [of 1713]. The essential point is that we must select those personalities in the historical gallery that can be studied by the young with some understanding. The great social reformers and the important movements that have affected our own times are obvious choices. Much must, of course, be omitted, but it is necessary that the story should be brought up to our own times and used to illuminate the problems of the present day. As Lord James of Rusholme [High Master of Manchester Grammar School] has well said, we must give the children sufficient historical background so that in later life they may cast their vote with intelligence.
“A subject to which I personally am attaching increasing importance for its cultural value is that of Design. In the junior forms all boys have regular lessons in Art and in the senior forms we are dovetailing on to this syllabus a further course in the principles of design. The course starts with graded exercises in composition, applying the elements and principles of design to simple geometrical and natural forms. Progressively harder exercises introduce control of colour and texture and the range of motifs is widened to include those based on manufactured articles. These designs are then applied to all forms of advertising techniques; posters, magazines, travel brochures, etc. Decorative composition is introduced suitable for application to fabrics and furnishing materials. The principles of design are applied to criticise actual manufactured articles from the point of view of fitness of purpose, fitness of materials, and fitness of technique. In the final year a course of Representational Drawing is added. The purpose of all this is not to provide trainees for the advertising industry but rather develop powers of discrimination so that the ugly will be seen for what it is. I feel such training is particularly necessary in these days when we see so much around us that is second-rate and tawdry.
“You will recall that the Spens Report strongly recommended that a foreign language should be taught to those who were capable of benefiting from it. In practice this includes more than three-quarters of the children in the school. All forms commence French in their first year and continue with the subject for three years. By this time, it is clear that a minority of children would gain nothing from any further study of the language so they are allowed to take some other subject in its place. The ‘A’ stream is well able to tackle a second language and in many Technical Schools is now provided for and German or Spanish is added in the second year of the junior school. The aim is to equip children with sufficient knowledge of the language so that in their final year they can read straight-forward passages with fluency and talk about everyday matters in simple sentences.
“There is much else in the school that is of tremendous value in liberalising education. The teacher, through his own interests and enthusiasms, exerts a powerful influence upon those he teaches. This question of the qualities and qualifications of those who teach in our Technical Schools is of over-riding importance. The first essential is that the teacher, irrespective of his specialist qualifications, must be a person of wide cultural interests. There is a grave danger here if, in staffing our schools, we are content to accept teachers who are intellectually limited to their speciality. No matter how brilliant they may be as technicians, their influence will be sadly limited if they are nothing more. A school is a living organism and not a collection of departments. The technical and non-technical must merge over a wide field of the social life of the school so that the children do not divide their school life into two distinct parts which are kept rigidly separate in their minds and between which there is no real relationship. This danger could be overcome if some of the technical specialists also taught some non-technical subjects for part of the time. I have seen remarkably good results when a highly qualified chemist who specialised in sixth form work, also took some junior forms for music – a subject in which he was a talented and highly enthusiastic amateur. Teachers must be encouraged to enthuse over their hobbies and interests. Where children are concerned, such enthusiasm is highly infectious and always beneficial. If this inter-relationship can be harmoniously achieved, we realise the truth that Professor A.N. Whitehead expressed so lucidly and which is quoted in the Appendix to the Spens Report: ‘The antithesis between technical and a liberal education is fallacious. There can be no adequate technical education which is not liberal, and no liberal education that is not technical: that is, no education that does not impart both technique and intellectual vision. In simpler language, education should turn out the pupil with something he knows well and something he can do well.’
“This, I submit, is the purpose of a Technical School.”
A group of old boys and staff outside the presbytery of St Aloysius’ Church, 1960
The Old Gregorian Association had just celebrated Mass. Among the staff pictured are Mr R. Dearman, (far left, front row) Mr A.L. Smith, Mr E. Corney, Mr Fred Andrew and Mr A.J. Rocca. Mr Leslie Lever, MP, is centre, about third row back.
For many years, the association organised two Masses: one celebrating the feast of St Gregory the Great, offered at St Aloysius’ Church, Ardwick, and the other for the repose of the souls of deceased Gregorians at St Mary’s Church, Mulberry Street, near Albert Square. The latter took place on the last Friday in November, the ‘month of the holy souls’.
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