We've all heard the critics' refrain. Schools today don't pay enough attention to the basics of literacy and numeracy. The curriculum has been dumbed down and there's not enough emphasis on real learning. Not like the good old days when schools concentrated on the 3 Rs and students left school with a solid grounding in geography and history as well. Every generation, it seems, looks back on its own school days and compares them unfavourably with current practices in schools. In the 1940s, for instance, people were inclined to blame society's ills on the "soft pedagogy" of the schools of the day. To get back to the 3 Rs and the rigorously disciplined schools that critics advocate you have to travel all the way back to the late 19th century. Frank Combs, an NZEI president (1928, 1936) was a pupil then. In the late 1940s he broadcast a series of radio talks "Schools of Sixty Years Ago", recalling what it was like to be a pupil in the 1890s. His recollections of his school days from primers to standard six are remarkable not only for their detail but also for their lack of nostalgia. Frank Combs was an accomplished writer, and his broadcasts have the easy listening style of Alistair Cooke's. Fortunately the talks have been preserved in Radio New Zealand's Sound Archives. You can listen to them here by clicking on the title. Each talk is around 10 minutes long.

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1. Primers
2. Standard One
3. Standard Two
4. Standard Three
5. Standard Four
6. Standard Five
7. Standard Six