Boy,s Model...

[toadstool999]

 I just remembered a couple of other teachers.  Hutchinson,   woodwork teacher. Instead of a cane he'd make you bend over a desk and whack your ass with a big wooden T square. [censored].
There was a fat French teacher called Sterling but everyone called him Boyner. I don't know why.

[oilyrag]

I'm not criticising anyone who has posted their bad memories here, but since 1981, I always thought it was just me and no-one else who hs been traumatised by attending that pathetic excuse for a school. With the internet, along came Friends Reunited, Ratemyteachers.com and now this.  It's really gratifying to feel that I'm not alone.
 
I regularly watched the demolition of the old school in July & August 2010 and I wished I could've had a job as one of the 'dozer drivers.  I would've had one hell of a sadistic pleasure reducing that school to rubble. Everytime I went past that school, I did nothing but curse it - and still do.
 
No son of mine will ever attend that school. That's a promise!
 
I hadn't realised the school had been demolished , living in england I only get across a couple of times a year.From the ferry ,I'd take a traffic short cut, through Fort William and up the Ballysillan Rd, memories used to come flooding back.
In fact where the ferry docked , as school kids we'd look out the top windows and watch the lorries dropping loads of rubble reclaiming ground forming the dock area , making the new Stena wharf.
Staying behind on detention  .bloody marvellous. No money for the bus and a walk along the road just intime to meet up with the St Gabriel hurley team to give you a battering. Then sneaking past the Ardoyne .I also used to catch the school bus at the top of Twaddel Avenue.It was a busy time for me , when compairing the maths homework answers with the others mine were always  different , naturally a frantic rewrite would happen. French homework , well forget about that. Imagine trying to teach a wee lad french who could hardly speak the Queens' english.

[oilyrag]

every teacher had his own sadistic method of dishing out punishment . Fritz had a series of canes of different lengths and he called them mark1 , 2 , 3 ,4 etc. He was polite though , he would ask which mark did you want. Most of them (teachers) were very accurate when swinging the cane. The target area was the creases in the fingers where the skin is close to the bone , or right on the finger tips.After a few wacks in this area writing or holding a pen was impossible and as previously stated this brought on a thumping.
Johnty enjoyed taking a finger full of hair just next to the ear in the sideburn area , and twisting it while raising his arm.It certainly brought you out off your seat.
The lunchtime play ground teacher with the bell , if a fight started as often as not ,he would ring the bell and everyone made like statues.Holding the bell by the clapper he'd swing it using the brass inlaid handle like a truncheon until he'd grabbed the offending scrapers. By the scruff of their collars they'd be dragged up the corridor to McNeiily to dish out certain death. Happy days.

[pentio]

oilyrag

The school has been rebuilt and opened in April 2011.

http://www.bbms.org.uk/gallery/2011/05/opening_of_new_school/

[Farnsbarn]

The teachers i rem were, Andy McMorran, one of the more decent critters, don,t think i was on the rec end of a caning from him, though he had the pleasure of launching a metre rule at my head, i think it haunts him to this day he missed ! Mrs Warnock, french teacher, who,s body, even in 70,s tweed skirt and jumper, made me all of a sudden interested in all things gallic, my pre pubescent dreams coming to an abrupt halt when she married B.B.C,S Gavin Esler, and left the school..to be replaced in the "french huts by the nearest thing to Mr Bean- Mr William Albert Brodie, or WAB. I learnt one thing in his class- as you jump out the huts windows, bend your knees and roll!               Other teachers i rem were Sasquatch, [ mc clenaghan, geog,] Paul Mc Clenaghan, eng, lived round the corner, sometimes gave me lift, drove a citroen 2cv i think? Mr Lunney, anyone for saaacher! Jim Kieth, all i rem is his perm...even now, he,s kevin keegan or doyle from the professionals...don,t even mention Ernie, thats a topic all on it,s own!

   Hi Collywobble,
    I attended the Boys' Model from late 40's to early 50's. The head master was `Bulldog' McNeilly, and I was only sent to see him once. I was wrongly accused by John Smith of stealing something from his desk. When I went in to his office, McNeilly glared at me and asked why I was sent up. When I explained, he said " look me in the eye boy" I again said that I didn't do what I was accused of. He then said "go back to your class and forget all about it". I never forgot that lesson. One of the best teachers I had was Mr. Hutchinson. We started a library, and we had to bring a penny every week, and we managed it ourselves. The first series of books was `Biggles' and we had the whole set at the end of term. Great teacher, strict but fair.
        Regards,
            farnsbarn.

[Lost Login]

During my time in that awful dump, I heard one story that "The Jant" collared a boy and asked him, "Why are you not in your uniform?" Without waiting for an answer, he caned him.
 
The Jant should've waited for an answer. He caned a window cleaner.

[Lost Login]

Oilyrag, you wrote, "Imagine trying to teach a wee lad french who could hardly speak the Queens' english".Well, here's a funny thing. In my first two years in that awful pit, I was taught French by Mildred Seaton. I was good at it and I was one of the top five high scorers in my class. I never once failed a French exam.
 
Three years in, along came an authoritative idiot who decided to conduct a little experiment. Classes A & B could do French but Class C couldn't. So no more French for me.What the hell they were trying to do, I don't know but whoever that idiot was, I would like to shake them by....the throat.  That ridiculous "experiment" of theirs, robbed me of an opportunity and I have NEVER forgiven them! I don't know about you, but a degree in modern languages would've done very nicely, thank you very much.  They never offered an effective alternative and they let me down. So that's one of the many reasons why I've hated that "school" so much.
 
J'aime beacoup le matiere Francais. Je ne suis pas un lapin heureux. C'est un ecole terrible. Mais, je me vengerai ici-bas ou dans l'autre monde.

[Lost Login]

Sachs, I  can remember one occasion when I walked past hm near the dining hall. He had his loudhailer in his hand as he must've been on his way to the playground to shout at people. He had something else on him - the smell of booze. I won't forget that.

[Lost Login]

Another story from the frontlines of the Model circa 1972-73 ish.

During a physics class I was asked to come to the front of the class to help the master with some demonstration or other.
 At that particular second Ernie looked into our class.

(Now as I mentioned before Ernie had me on his hate list because I wanted to play football instead of rugby)

Unannounced he burst into our class like a bear with a sore head and in a second he had me by the throat bent backward over a physics bench mixed in with all the test equipment.
The master jumped in and separated us explaining I had not done anything wrong. I was at the front helping him. It must have seemed like a scene from a pub fight.This was supposed to be a so called respectable school.
Ernie left without a word of apologize probably fuming he had missed his chance.

Now one of the other posters mentioned about seeing bottles of Scotch in his office.

Now I can't help but wonder if.

I wonder what your teacher must've thought of Ernie after that?  But what you endured was scandalous.

[dougie boy]

yes agiesman I remember Willie Trimble part of a great  Model basketball team around 1962/1963

[TS77]

It must've been sometime during 1976 when I saw the effects of just how "punch drunk" Ernie could be. I was in the playground at breaktime when one of my classmates, Tommy Baker, came out of the main building and at first, he was wandering around distressed. Then he headed straight towards me. To look at him, you wouldn't need to be the world's foremost expert in reading body language to see that Tommy was visibly shaken for some reason.  I saw that something was wrong with him and that Tommy seemed to want a shoulder to cry on - so to speak.
 
Before I could ask, "What's wrong?", Tommy said, "I was up in Ernie's office and he punched me!" He was almost in tears as he asked me, "Is there a bruise on my face?"  I looked at the cheekbone area on the left side of his face. "No, it's just a red mark." I didn't tell him how big the red mark was - possibly three inches across, for fear he really would break down.
 
I have to admit, although I didn't know why he'd been in Ern's office, I really did feel sorry for him and I spent the rest of the break with him conversing, football/music/likes & dislikes at school and so on.  He introduced me to a guy called D.P. and the three of us were great mates together up until we went our separate ways in 1979.

This is some shocking stuff coming out here - some light years away from this write-up that's for sure
 
http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/opinion/columnists/lindy-mcdowell/lindy-mcdowell-what-we-can-all-learn-from-legend-ernie-14110976.html

[Lost Login]

What's the Model like today? I'm sure they don't still use the cane, do they?

I've heard that it's a strong football school.  The obsession with rugby is no more.

[kate.o]

This is some shocking stuff coming out here - some light years away from this write-up that's for sure
 
http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/opinion/columnists/lindy-mcdowell/lindy-mcdowell-what-we-can-all-learn-from-legend-ernie-14110976.html

thats a lovely tribute to one who is well thought of.

[toadstool999]

I've heard that it's a strong football school.  The obsession with rugby is no more.

But do they still flog their helpless captives?

[Sachs]

There was one Religious Education master called Joe Morrison. I suppose you could say he geared his lessons to the Fire and Brimestone side of the scriptures.

Anyway one morning my class filtered into the classroom which Joe was about to vacate. I suppose we had made a rowdy entrance in Joe's estimation and he wasn't too well pleased.
He slipped his wristband watch off and along with his spectacles he placed said  items on his desk. Then with the quiet assurance of a hitman he reached below his desk and came up branishing  a 10 inch piece of angle iron and offered anyone who thought he was hard enough "a square go". The class went silent and I think the general opinion among us was that this man doesn't seem to be playing with a full deck.
At the time Monty Python was very popular and if John Cleese had produced such a scene nobody would even have heard of the Ministry of Silly Walks.

Even after all these years I'm chuckling to myself as I type this.