13 April 2001

photo of Mr Hawkins

Hi jim, it's "Harry Hawkins" who as well as being a maths teacher, ran the twice weekly "Harry's Army" - the pre-CCF square bashers.   Not as brilliant as "Cozy" for maths but he got people to A-level in the end.   Aka  "Harra" because of his accent!
 
peter smith

3 comments:

  1. Damn! Peter got in before me.   'Harry' was equally well known to my generation ('55-63). The last time I saw him was many years ago - the 80s, I think - when he was queueing to go into the 'Antiques Roadshow', which was visiting Winchester. (It was at that modern hotel by the Cathedral.) I was too shy to speak to him.   I suppose the missing number on the blackboard must be 4/3, to make the LHS into the square of (x+4/3).   The picture must have been carefully posed. There isn't a trace of chalk dust on Harry's jacket. As I recall, he was famous for getting covered in the stuff in the course of a lesson.

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  2. Harry had a bit of a temper on him. I remember one lesson when a pupil at the back annoyed him, he raced down the aisle to the pupil, picked him up by his lapels and bellowed at him. I don't know how the pupil felt but it frightened us to death,   jim wishart, list manager,

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  3. Fine picture of Harry.   My class was actually the last one that Harry ever took - a private study class in the final lesson before the end of term service in July '67. He was a very fine Maths teacher, a massive improvement on certain PE teachers who also taught Maths as an afterthought! (or was I thicker when younger?)   Certain 'Harry' expressions remain in the memory:-   'That minus that, that plus that' - when factorising something like (x2-y2)   'Square the first, twice the product, square the last' - when calculating (a+b)2   'Tom's old aunt sat on her coat and hat' - mnemonic for tangent =opposite over adjacent (TOA) etc   Oh. yes and he once took a swipe at Colin Ivory and knocked his glasses back to row Z!    

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