However, the GA works on many levels, and only a tiny fraction of a percentage of the GA's members and volunteers will ever become President, so from time to time we feature other GA folks.
This particular blog entry is about Jim Nicholls.
Jim was a teacher at Lewes Grammar School.
I like this description which will be familiar to those who are into this style of teaching, which has come back in vogue after 70 years...
Jim will be remembered by countless Old Lewesians for his geography lessons in Room 2, most of which were taken up by a "test" consisting of twenty questions on the previously set homework ("read Chapter XIII") the answers to which had to be written on a minuscule scrap of paper (there was a war on and paper was in short supply) to be marked by the boy in the next seat. When the test was finished and the marks gathered in he would announce the next chapter to be read for homework. Lessons in those days were a mere 40 minutes long so there was precious little time for real teaching. Money for old rope, really.
This was an interesting addition too
Roy Metcalfe writes ...
[Jim] was a founding committee member of the Brighton and District Branch of the Geographical Association when it was formed in 1952, serving for many years on committee and its Chairman from 1953 to 1955 and 1965-66. He hadn't been active in the branch for some years, but he came along to a celebration of the Association's centenary in 1994 held at the University of Sussex. I have a photograph of the occasion where he appeared with the Association's President of the year, the founding Chairman of the branch, one of our first students and myself as founding Secretary.
As at school, he is remembered in the local G.A. Branch as being concerned that we should run field excursions and he led our first one in 1953 on, appropriately, "The site of Lewes in its physical and historical setting". I shall miss our occasional chats and he was indeed, as your OL correspondent writes, 'Gentleman Jim'.
I came across his biography when researching another President.
References
http://www.old-lewesians.org.uk/biogs/nicholls.htm
I came across his biography when researching another President.
References
http://www.old-lewesians.org.uk/biogs/nicholls.htm
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