Subject: Fwd: Pontardawe Grammar School
Date: Thu, 21 Aug 2008 04:49:29 EDT
Thanks once again to Kerry! This is very important material for the film, and he could interview here on the afternoon of 1st September – the first day of term.
Dear Myron, Please find below the latest page of Crystal Spheres.      Myron found the start of his Grammar School education a tough experience, because he had to catch up with the other pupils in the subjects which were not taught at the village school.  The Grammar School regime was a formidable one, with many written examinations per term, during the three term year.  The contingent from the remote village of Craigcefnparc had to arrive at the Grammar School very early after traveling in a very overcrowded school bus.  So it was by no means a pleasant experience, more like a regime that had to be got through at all costs.  In the first term Myron was unaware of the end of term examinations, so did not prepare and did not do well, finishing up 13th in a form of 35 pupils.  Pupils found the most pleasant aspect of this first term was the teaching of Sir Thomas Mallory’s Le Morte d’Arthur by Miss Maude Daniels, sister of Sir Goronwy Daniels, the diplomat and Principal at Aberystwyth who some years later was to give Myron his D. Sc. degree.  Soon the pupils from Craigcefnparc adjusted to the more anglicized environment of the Grammar School, and to the many teachers and strange middle class attitudes.  Myron took a liking to chemistry as a subject very early on, and to arithmetic, geometry and algebra, but not to woodwork, where he would frequently plane a block of wood down to atomic levels in an effort to get it square.  There was also the compulsory game of rugby, which came as something of a shock to some of the pupils at Craigcefnparc, having come from a soccer background and involved a mile trudge down to the school’s rugby ground, and a mile back again once a week.  In the second term Myron came to realize that at the end of each term there were fifteen written examinations and started to make better preparation for them.  So a regime of study now became part of Myron’s daily work and would continue right up to the age of 21 when he would graduate as the top first of his class.  So towards the end of the second term in 1962 Myron had knuckled under to the work needed to secure a successful science career and would be burning the midnight oil back home in his father’s smallholding as exams approached. Myron saw no point in not working, especially as he appreciated his parents were doing their best to help him in a world about which they knew nothing, that of the middle classes of Britain encapsulated in the Grammar School.  None of the middle class affectations rubbed off on Myron and he remains at heart to this day a village boy and ironically enough a Gentleman, a meritocrat.  Myron’s greatest pleasure was to go for a walk on the moorland after having pleased his parents by doing well each term.  Myron could see that they were bewildered and somewhat angered by that 13th place in the first term. No one had told Myron that there would be examinations and so he vowed not to be caught napping again in his studies.  In the second term Myron moved up 5th position and then 2nd in the third term and at that point he found that the world of mathematics, science and literature began to open to him and this has been his world ever since.       Myron began to master the rudiments of algebra and geometry around the ages of 11 or 12 and developed a liking for chemistry over physics, simply because the physics classroom was a dark corner of the School above the woodwork room.  In chemistry one could be entertained at will by throwing sodium into boiling water, whereas physics at that time was a boring world of pulleys and specific heat, with many formulae to learn.  It would take many years before Myron would develop a fascination and understanding for the structure of physics. The Grammar School offered choices of subject such as Latin or woodwork, French or Welsh.  So his O level subjects were gradually reduced to nine, six arts and three sciences.  At around the age of 11 or 12 Myron found that he could memorize things easily, so his routine of passing examinations was based on the wholesale memorizing of notes.  The mathematics examinations were the toughest, because no amount of memorizing could solve problems and history tended to be the easiest, where whole passages of time would be securely locked up in Myron’s mind before the exam.  Myron would work to midnight or beyond back at home after school at exam time to memorize the facts and then regurgitate to paper at a frantic pace during the examination so that his brain could be emptied out ready for the next subject. Myron used this method right up to the age of 21, when he was at last allowed the freedom to think during his studies for his Ph. D. Eventually Myron achieved the greatest pleasure of his whole academic life, when he finally reached number one in the form and the whole class burst out in spontaneous and heartfelt applause.  Thereafter Myron retained the coveted number one spot to the end of ordinary level at the Grammar School, at age 16, about a dozen consecutive terms of about 15 examinations per term.  Myron’s parents were obviously pleased with this, so Myron was pleased in turn.  All the time Myron kept in mind that the alternative to an academic career was down the coal mine, or at some boring factory job – and this was enough motivation to keep Myron on track at school.       Despite his academic success there, the Grammar School remained a foreign regime, so at the end of each term Myron liked nothing better than going out for a game of football with the village boys, from whom he had been estranged by the eleven plus system.  The language of the Grammar school was mixed Welsh and English, but all teaching took place in English. Eric Davies the red haired and flamboyant Welsh teacher was rather angry when Myron dropped Welsh in favor of French.  Instead Myron took the French option, which he later regretted but later made up for this by the process of self teaching and Myron continues to strive to improve his grasp of Welsh and strict metre poetry in Welsh to this very day.  Myron’s favorite item of literature was George Eliot’s “Silas Marner” which was taught by Miss Mary Anne Evans.  However Myron would be in his late teens before his great interest in literature, especially the twentieth century poets, really began to evolve, and it would take many readings of Dylan Thomas before Myron could fully appreciate his work and its rich density of metaphor and image.  Myron would also come to greatly enjoy and appreciate the work of other great poets and especially those of Yeats, Eliot, Auden, and R. S. Thomas.       Through his great efforts and positive approach to his studies Myron eventually won the Grammar School prize for best O level results in 1966 and then prepared to embark on two years of advanced level study in the sixth form.  Myron was made a Prefect of the School and studied chemistry, physics and pure and applied mathematics.  There was a little more freedom at ‘A’ level, but the discipline was still tough.  Myron used the same learning method at A level, of memorizing from notes, but decided to do the applied mathematics course in one year instead of the two allowed by the system.  A lot more analytical sk
ill was required at ‘A’ level, but pupils were given more freedom and were no longer required to do compulsory rugby.  Myron had not been keen to partake in compulsory sports, but eventually the self-discipline of athletics began to appear and became Myron’s method of training to keep fit and to counterbalance the intellectual demands of academic study. Myron was self-disciplined enough already at school and worked very hard, and never smoked or drank, unlike some of his contemporaries, who were heavy drinkers by the age of about fourteen.  Myron managed to get a B grade in pure and applied mathematics at the end of the first year of advanced study.  His O level grades were: Chemistry 1, Physics 1, Mathematics 1, English literature 1, Latin 1, French 1, History 1, English Language 2, and Art 3. The top grade is 1. Myron attributes the slip in English language to an imaginative essay which was obviously too much for the examiner and in Art due to an imaginative abstract watercolour.  Imagination in an examination was evidently frowned on. In the second year of ‘A’ level Myron decided to take Pure Mathematics on his own, just as an exercise, because the school did not teach it.      Myron found the last year of the Grammar School very disconcerting because of his usual reluctance to a change of environment.  Some of his sixth form class, notably Mary Hopkins the folk singer, left for distant London, while others were talking about moving to Chelsea and so on.  Most of this was just talk, in reality most people really felt: “What’s wrong with the Swansea Valley?  The grass is no greener in Chelsea”.  Myron felt pressurized by the headmaster, Silwyn Lewis, to go to Cambridge and was interviewed, most reluctantly, at one of the Cambridge Colleges.  However Myron’s second UCCAS choice of Aberystwyth was his real choice because he had been on holiday there in the fifties and so it felt more like home than a college in distant England.  Silwyn Lewis got infuriated at Myron for making the choice of Aberystwyth, and showed Myron the door from his office, but Myron had a regard for the Welsh language and culture at his heart and this meant Aberystwyth was the only real choice.  So as the end of the seven years of the grammar school drew on, Myron began to feel a mixture of nervousness and determination, a determination to do well and a typical reluctance to move on.  Myron knew that he was going to lose good friends, and indeed never met them again after leaving the school.  Finally Myron obtained an A grade in physics (the highest grade), a B in chemistry, a B in pure and applied mathematics, and a D in self taught pure mathematics without any input from teachers. So he achieved he acquired nine ‘O’ level and four ‘A’ level certificates.  These grades were easily enough to get into UCW Aberystwyth as an undergraduate.                         Pontardawe Grammar School provided Myron with a fine education as it had done for many years to many children from this Swansea Valley town and its environs. The great world renowned actress Sian Philips was born in May 1934 in Bettws and was brought up as a Welsh speaker and attended Pontardawe Grammar School in her formative years. She made her radio debut at the age of only eleven and is famous for her portrayal of the evil Livia in ‘I Claudius’ and Queen Cassiopeia in ‘Clash of the Titans.’ Sian has had a glorious career in film and television and married Peter O’Toole (famed for his role in the film ‘Lawrence of Arabia’), with whom she had two daughters Kerry
