Education and Expectations
Did the schools aim high for their pupils?
St. Helier was a working-class estate and, in general, the schools seem to have expected that their pupils would follow in their parents' footsteps. Quite a number of our interviewees have spoken of achieving grammar school places and some children from St. Helier achieved great things in their professional lives, but manual work seems to have been the expectation for most pupils. Although this worked well for many who went on to experience job satisfaction and success in their chosen work, was potential in other fields sometimes wasted?
In 1935, the Sutton and District Advisory Committee for Juvenile Employment was set up. It endorsed a system of interviews by the head teacher of the school with the child, its parents and a representative of the Committee present to give advice about suitable employment. A newspaper report from 1936 headlined the 'acute shortage of girls for domestic work'. In this area, there were plenty of other choices for girls and it was felt that the prospect of working alone in a small 'labour-saving' house was not tempting.*
War, of course, caused much disruption - shattering the apprenticeship system and pushing people into war work, often with little choice of what they should do.
*Wallington and Carshalton Times, 12 March 1936
Factory visits
As we came nearer to leaving we were all taken at various times to the factory estate down between Morden and Wimbledon. The first place that we went round to before looking for employment was Lines toy factory. It was a huge toy factory and, bearing in mind this was the days before battery toys and electric toys, they used to make everything. (Fred Yule)
Something you could do
It wasn't expected that you would do anything useful in life.
I went to The Willows. I was just in the basic class there. I forget what they called it now. Because you weren't academic it was considered that you needed to learn to wash and iron and cook. Later on, after I'd left that group, they were taught to look after babies and things like that because it wasn't expected that you would do anything useful in life. But they did teach you typing and shorthand because they obviously thought if you weren't academic that was something you could do. (Rosemary Turner)