THAT'LL Teach 'Em, the new Channel 4 series in which modern teenagers are sent back to a 1950s-style school, has brought memories of her own schooldays flooding back for one York woman.

Barbara Pettitt, now a 66-year-old grandmother-of-five who lives in the Navigation Road area of York, went to Fishergate Primary School from 1941-1948; and then moved to the "big" Fishergate Secondary School, upstairs in the same building, between 1948-1952.

Those were days when children were brought up to be much more respectful of authority than seems to be the case now; when teachers were looked up to and discipline was strict.

Which is not to say 1940s and 1950s children were all goody two-shoes. Barbara has memories of mischievous boys flicking bits of ink-soaked blotting paper at each other and shoving books down their trousers when they were to be caned.

But at least children were allowed to be children in those days, she says, instead of all desperately trying to grow up as quickly as possible.

"There seems to be no innocence any more," she says. "Children don't seem to have time to be children. You have five year olds who want to be 15 year olds, dressing up like old women and wearing tattoos. I do feel sorry for them, because the pace of life is just so fast these days. We enjoyed our childhood for longer."

In Barbara's day, children were taught in classes of 49, sitting behind regimented wooden desks with hard wooden seats. Each desk had an inkwell and the children wrote by dipping their pens into the ink. This accounted for ink-stained fingers aplenty, as well as those little ink pellets fired by some of the naughtier boys.

There was mischief, but it was all of the innocent variety. Talking and sniggering at the back of the class, occasionally dozing off in the middle of a lesson and, in the teenage years, boys sneaking off behind the bike sheds to kiss the girls.

"We did get out of hand sometimes," says Barbara. "But it was innocent, not violent. We didn't assault teachers or swear."

Discipline was strict, nevertheless - and some of the teachers had a short fuse. "Some used to throw chalk or even the blackboard rubber at you if you wouldn't stop talking," she says.

She was a great talker herself and regularly had to suffer the indignity of being sent to stand outside the classroom.

"If someone like the head passed, he would ask you what you had done wrong," she says. It was a cause of much embarrassment, she recalled, but little fear; her head master at primary school was a "lovely man".

Persistent offenders who were sent out of class three times did face a stiffer punishment: either the cane or else the shame of being slippered in front of the whole class.

"There was one boy, if he knew he was in for a caning, he used to put books in his pants, so it didn't hurt," says Barbara. Caning across the hands was common, too. "He had hands like concrete."

Barbara best remembers the austere days after the war when children at Fishergate primary and secondary school didn't wear uniforms. Children at the grammar school did have to wear blazers and caps, Barbara recalls. "But we all managed to look very smart in whatever our parents could afford."

Barbara tended to wear her elder sister's hand-me-downs, the skirts turned inside out to get the best use out of them. She was big for her age and because of her large feet used to get extra school coupons to help with buying shoes.

Lessons concentrated on the basics, with the "three Rs" - reading, writing and arithmetic - to the forefront. They were the most important part of her school education and were vital to give children a chance to find a job once they left school. There was a lot of emphasis in particular on algebra, geometry, mental arithmetic and spelling. "If you didn't get your spelling right, you got a telling off and had to go to a special class," says Barbara.

She admits to having been shocked at seeing how poor the modern teenagers taking part in That'll Teach 'Em were at basic arithmetic.

The TV programme showed how a group of 16 year olds who are all expected to get As and Bs in their maths GCSEs couldn't even cope with an 11-plus maths paper from the 1950s. More than half of the That'll Teach 'Em teenagers failed the test.

"I did think that with modern teaching methods and computer aids, the standard of their education was surprising, and not very good," says Barbara.

Other lessons Barbara recalls include history, geography, science, religious education and music. The girls also studied domestic science - which included cooking, knitting and sewing - while the boys did woodwork.

One thing she didn't experience was school dinners. She lived in Cemetery Road, round the corner from the school, so went home for dinner. The diet of spam fritters, mashed swede, spotted dick and lumpy custard on which the spoiled young modern teenagers find themselves having to survive in That'll Teach 'Em sounds right, she admits.

From what her friends told her, she says, staples at Fishergate in the post-war 40s and 50s included turnip and potatoes "and whatever sausage meat was available", plus, for pudding, sago, tapioca and rice pudding.

Food was still rationed, she points out. But Barbara wasn't too disappointed at missing out on the school dinners. "The children who had school dinners used to say the cabbage smelled and was overcooked," she says. "And I never wanted to go for school dinner, because it did smell."

Updated: 11:00 Monday, August 11, 2003