History lesson

LINDA Chapman was part of the quiet gang at school. But there's quiet and then there's quiet.

She and her three best friends, Jackie, Susan and Catherine, used to do little more than sit in class at Derwent Secondary Modern School, giggling at some of the bolder boys' antics.

But that didn't save them, along with the rest of the class, from getting put in detention for locking the student music teacher in a store cupboard one day.

That was back in the early 1970s. "I don't remember how long we left him in there," Linda, from Heworth, says. "Maybe an hour-and-a-half? We got detention for it, but we can laugh about it now."

Her class used to play other pranks on the hapless student teacher, such as sticking chewing gum to his seat and watching his expression when he found out what he'd been sitting on.

So what was it about this poor young man - did the class just not like him? Nothing like that, she says. "We just knew we could get away with it because he wasn't a normal teacher."

Derwent Secondary Modern was off Hull Road, in York - near where Derwent Junior School still is today. It closed in 1985, just over ten years after Linda left in 1974, aged 15.

She was Linda Sheriff then, which prompted teasing comments and the odd rendition of Bob Marley's I Shot The Sheriff as she walked by. "But I didn't have a nickname," she says. "They just called me names because of Sheriff."

Linda has never understood why the school closed, she admits. She was always happy there, and thought it was a good school. She hasn't been back since. "It's all housing now," she says. "That would really shake me up. I'd be thinking Oh, God, this used to be my school.' It's a shame."

Now it lives on in her memories, and those of her classmates.

The head teacher in her day was Mr Tudor, Linda says. "He was lovely, but he kept us all in order." Apart from locking music teachers in store cupboards, of course.

The cane was the instrument of punishment. So did she herself ever get six of the best? "I did not," she says. "I was one of the nice ones."

Derwent Secondary Modern pupils were taught in mixed sex classes in the Seventies, but boys and girls were sometimes separated. The boys would do woodwork, for example, while the girls learned domestic science.

"It basically prepared you for being a mum," Linda says. "Which I am now, a mother of three, all grown up."

She learned to cook in domestic science - square meals of meat and two veg. There was also a mini flat' in the school, where DS students had to pretend to live. "We'd have to make our own meals, and they'd teach us how to budget for the week and that sort of thing."

Skills which have stood her in good stead since. "I think they should bring it back," Linda says. "And let the boys do it too."

The 1970s were more innocent times than today. At 15, Linda didn't have a boyfriend, and didn't know much about the "birds and the bees".

They did have one sex education lesson, she recalls, in a religious education class of all places.

"They showed us a little cine film of a calf being born, and asked us to talk about it," she says. "And that was our sex education lesson."

She and her friends were giggling so much with embarrassment she can't remember much about the film. But despite still being at the giggly stage when it came to boys, she did have one secret crush. She won't name names. "But he had blond, curly hair," she says.

She is well over him now, she says firmly, and she is married to John, with whom she has three grown children, and husband and wife run their own childminding business together. But she would still say hello to that long-ago object of her affections if she passed him in the street.

She might just get the chance next year. She's hoping to stage a school reunion for members of her class who graduated from Derwent Secondary Modern in 1974. They will all be 50 next summer, she says - so it seems like a good time to catch up.

There was a reunion a couple of years ago, but it was organised by one of the boys from her class, and not many girls turned up.

She hopes hers will be different. She hasn't arranged a venue yet - that will depend on how many people are interested - but it will be in July or August next year. And it will be a proper do, she promises.

* If you would be interested in taking part in the Derwent Secondary Modern School Class of 74 reunion, contact Linda Chapman, née Linda Sheriff, on 01904 426682. Alternatively, email her on lindachapman000@hotmail.com

* Do you have memories or photos of your schooldays in York in the 1960s/70s or 80s that you would like to share? Or are you planning a school reunion? If so, contact Charlotte Percival or Stephen Lewis at The Press on 01904 653051
* Don't miss our nostalgia supplement, Yesterday York, free in Monday's The Press.