My message:
I'm visiting the UK later this month and would like to visit the old school. Can anyone email me with its recent history, whether it's still operating as a school; if not, who I'd need to contact to visit, etc.
My message:
Two websites that may be useful:
www.192.com for searching for friends in the UK
www.ipswich.gov.uk/tourism/accom/default.htm for those looking for accomodation for the Milennium Gathering
My suggestion or advice:
Getting a bit confusing, but it's certainly attracting a whole lot of attention.
My message:
I'm not able to check the WHOBA site regularly, and it's only now that I've read and caught up with the various messages of the past couple of months. I was particularly interested in the exchanges involving John Volpe, Mike Parsons and Ola Afuwape. [See Ola's message below]
It would be a great pity if WH Old Boys started insulting each others' generations at the school. I suppose I'm classed among the "older" intake. I would have been very surprised if the 1970s intakes and later were not a completely different bunch of characters. We each reflected our times.
Woolvo did not select boys according to particular talents, unlike some of the Public Schools. We shouldn't delude ourselves that any of us were special for having been admitted to WH. But the school was special - for what it did to many of us who went through its system. A great many of us were relative no-hopers when we went in. Many of us came out of it better equipped for life than we would have been if we'd attended many of the other state schools, or the private schools. I'm a classic example of that (though I won't bore you with my personal details).
That WH changed in character in the 1970s and 1980s could not have been prevented. It was the natural order of things, including the fact that London's and Britain's ethnic minority populations - by that time - were growing. Most of the expensive, fee-paying schools underwent precisely the same change, and they also began to have drugs-related problems and petty crime. Woolvo was no different.
But it's also natural that people, as they get older, resent change - of any kind. And some see change as a bad thing, and tend to compare unfavourably the new order with the one they had been accustomed to.
When I joined Woolvo in 1956, as a 12-year old short-arsed sprog who'd never before lived in England, I thought it was sheer hell. I couldn't understand why older boys enjoyed bullying, and why some of the Masters were so sadistic. When I became an older boy I too threw my weight about. But after I had left, and had spent a few years in the real world, I began to understand. Just like the army, Woolvo took all those directionless boys, shook them out, and made (most of them) survivors.
I sent my daughter to private schools. They charged the earth, and provided teachers who cared nothing about the young people in their care other than wanting to make them into personalities who didn't exist in the real world. My daughter did not do well. Then when she was 16 I put her in a state sixth form college. Two years later she's a confident, capable and academically succesful young woman.
Moral? Woolvo, 30 years ago, as a state institution, was producing people that today's private schools are incapable of dreaming about. Forget the Etons and the Harrows. What one hears about them is myth. Old Etonians and Old Harrovians are what they are (some of them) because of the old boys' network. Old Woolverstonians who did okay did it by themselves, whether they graduated in the sixties or the eighties.
Jim Atkinson
Dear John,
I doubt if you would have remember me, but my brother Tony Afuwape (Johnstonite) was in your year (in-take 1980). I was the younger of the three at that time (remember Yemi my elder brother).
Anyway, I read your reply to Volpe who somehow feels that the demise of the school was due to the so-called "inner city in-take of that era". I assume the stories of which he acquired his facts where straight from the archives of the tabloid papers e.g. "The Sun" also mixed in with a bit of Razzmatazz from Jerry Springer. Now lets forget all the nostalgic bullshit and stress certain simple facts.
1. Many of the late 70s and 80s in-take have excelled in their chosen professions either academically, socially or within the environments they pursue.
2. Those who did not give a shit were many of the teachers who seemed offended that the school was now reflecting the real world encompassing all ethnic groups, social backgrounds and those students from a wide educational broad spectrum. Such snobbery also can be said of the Grammar school era who now say that we brought down the reputation of the school.
Who set up the school and why?
Was it not for children from London and the forces?
Was it not the aim for them to experience a life, culture and an opportunity that would not of been offered to them in post-war London?
Those who can remember the circumstances that led their parents or guardians to send them to Woolvo in the early days can also remember the real ethos on what the school was founded on. Hence the term "Poor Man's Eton". Not some fucking elitist shite propaganda which seems to fill some of the grammar school lot who believe that they were the only ones who should be remembered or did any thing worth mentioning. It is this attitude that prevented those such as Volpe in attending illustrious schools such as Eton, Millfields and the like? Ironic. Or is it Moronic?
3. The inner city Woolvo lot still played rugby right up to the closure of the school and believe it or not did maintain the school's reputation. Speaking to people from other prominent boarding schools our reputation during that era had exceeded even our own expectations. We were known as the school of guys from London of all ethnic backgrounds who could "Gas the opposition off the Park", and to give credit were credit is due Martin Offiah himself was a product of this era.
4. What did any of the former grammar school boys do to help those who were supposedly less fortunate than themselves in the "Crisis Years"? Did they come give talks or try and open doors for the younger generation? Did they even try to extend the network/alumni to us? All they did was criticise and sneer during the 1990 reunion. Complaining about the number of "ethnics that were at the school".
If they want a debate then one could be easily arranged whereby "The Hoodlum Generation" can voice their side in an eloquent fashion.
God bless you John, for your sentiments will be appreciated by many and hopefully the "Volpes" of Woolvo can un-block their arses and start thinking rationally, rather than thinking that they were legends in their "own minds".
Anyway John its good that you are doing well in the forces and I hope you a safe and fruitful time. Enjoy! Remember you were part of Woolverstone Hall. No more no less and without the bull!
Ola Afuwape