Syd Binning – Interview
24.08.2001

I became interested in Braehead I suppose in the early days of my teaching career because I began teaching after national service at Lochgelly Secondary School which is where the Lochgelly Centre is now built after the Secondary was knocked down.

It was about to be knocked down when I was looking for another job and Braehead was advertised. I had read Mackenzie's book 'A Question of Living', and I had seen a program on television a Friday night and the title of the program escapes me now but maybe it was 'Scope'. I had seen some work on Mackenzie and I was interested so Lochgelly Secondary was about to close and the job was advertised in Braehead so I thought to my self that I would have a go at that. I had been up to then the principal teacher of English and allied subjects in Lochgelly Secondary which was really a junior secondary in the old terms. The allied subject were geography and history neither of which I had a qualification in. I was asked to attend an interview by RF. Mackenzie prior to any formal interview. I remember travelling down by bus, I did not own a car in those days, from Lochgelly to Buckhaven, thinking this is a great adventure. Travelling through the Wemyss area and thinking this is new, good territory, good and fresh, the sea on my right hand side. I got down to Braehead and was made very welcome by Bob Mackenzie. I went in the side door, my wife waited outside for me and I got a row for that later from Bob Mackenzie who said that I should have brought her in.

I went up to Mackenzie's office and did not feel that I was in a school at all to begin with. Everything seemed to be happening around about me, people were moving around, which I had not been used to in Lochgelly. The walls were well decorated, there was activity, there was noise, it was a big space and I was slightly alarmed at this. I thought this was a big step for me. I was much more alarmed when Mackenzie phoned my head master in Lochgelly and said that fellow Binning is ok, we will take him without interview. I really walked into the position of principal teacher of English at Braehead without a formal interview. I accepted the position in 1964. So I began in August 1964 teaching English as the Principal Teacher of English. The allied part of my previous job had now gone, thank god. There I was in charge of a small English department. My predecessor was a man named McGregor, he moved down to the Borders to a headship I think. So there I was faced with this English department which wasn't terribly well staffed. In those days in the 60's there was a teacher shortage and virtually you could pick someone of the street and if they could speak clearly and had some sort of piece of paper behind them, then you could say would you like to come in and work with us. Especially in English that does not have a broad base of factual knowledge that can be easily defined as it could be in mathematics or physics for example. So that is how I came to be in Braehead in 1964.

I had heard and read about Mackenzie's theories and thought of myself as a liberal teacher anyway and by luck did not need an interview. In fact there was no competition as most folk were very wary of the place. In my innocence, I hadn't been made aware of.

When Braehead was about to close I was sent up to Buckhaven High to meet our counterparts and I met a gentleman who made me quite welcome after a fashion then said 'there is nothing that you can teach me, I have experience in primary, secondary and tertiary education'. I think he believed I would not know what 'tertiary' meant. He was the principal teacher of English and I would have had to work under him as assistant principal teacher of English. I did not fancy that so I got myself into Buckhaven Primary as an assistant head which was a good move as comprehensive education was not going to be what Mackenzie thought it ought to be and the Buckhaven High situation was a torment for teachers who left Braehead and went up there. Some of them took to it quite quickly by desiring to wear the gown and appear very formal. Some of us drifted away from that situation.

Hearing of Mackenzie's death, I was in Buckhaven Primary working when a bus driver shouted to me across the street as I parked my car 'hi Syd, did you hear that Bob is dead?' I did not know what he was talking about and said 'I am sorry I don't know you, who is dead?' he said again 'Bob's dead! Bob Mackenzie's dead! He said I am a former pupil. I thought that was a great tribute to this man, as there are very few rectors in the Scottish Education system that would have a former pupil shout across the road to a former teacher. 'The boss's gone'. That is the kind of tribute that Mackenzie brought from people.

There was a time when the Primary Heads in the area were interviewed in relation to pupils coming along to Braehead. One of them said to me 'I wouldn't send a dog to that school of yours!' Which I thought was a terrible comment from an educated man and a great travesty of the truth. We were doing great things for the kids at that time.

It was not in the right situation to be welcomed by the community, because the community still wanted a formal and Scottish 3 r's education that suited people. They did not have a belief that Braehead's freedom encouraged young people to have the work ethic. The discipline side was unique because the control of children in Braehead was different from control of children in other mainstream schools.

Funny memories / stories?
I remember when a group of children were crossing from the main building across to the gym in regard to the annual concert that Kirsty Adams organised. The children were dressed in medieval costumes as monks and nuns etc,. apparently they sent fear through the primary school children who were going back to school at that moment.

There were all sorts of things upsetting the community. They were above their station by singing medieval songs and music and by frightening the primary school children.

I remember the times spent on the beach with canoes and such like.

Were you at the school when RF. left? At the school when it closed?
Bob had left and Hamish Roger was the boss and running the school. It must have been 68/69 when Mackenzie left and Hamish Roger became Head with Bill Rintoul as his deputy. Hamish was a wonderful counterpart to Bob Mackenzie. Bob had the gift of language and persuasion but Hamish to had it and they made a great team. Bill Rintoul was much more matter of fact, down to earth but still made a good deputy head.

I always felt there was not unanimity within the school which was one of the difficulties that Bob Mackenzie had to face. He had people who he attracted to be there and I suppose I was one of a kind. He had even more extrovert people than me that he attracted and they were not necessarily made welcome by their colleagues. About a third of the staff were very conventional and were not sure that Bob's ideas were practical and sensible. Another third who maybe were uncertificated and wandered in and took the money and said this is OK, I am coping and did not care very much. By this I mean they did not care because they did not have a philosophy. Then the last third did have a philosophy and felt that Mackenzie was right. We therefore had a group that had no philosophy, a group that thought he was wrong and a group who thought that he was right. There was probably a good tension in the school that was maybe not a bad thing. I think he ignored the group who were against him. He trampled on them and he did not quite understand that some people did not accept his views. That in the end was his undoing especially when he went to Summerhill in Aberdeen.

There is an incident in my life that says something about my relationship with Bob. I have three children, the last was born in Buckhaven and was born in the middle of the night and therefore I was up with my wife as the child was born at home. I went back to school the next morning a bit late about 10 am in the morning. I was a little late because of the birth and that was OK as Bob would not have queried where I had been. But on my return I came upon a problem. Jim Ferguson and Robin Harper were two teachers with the responsibility of producing and editing the school paper 'The Braehead News'. Which was a very significant paper at that time as it allowed children to do this kind of work. We at that time had a child editor called Spook Anderson and I remember he had gingery hair. Spook was quite a lad and worked under the direction of Jim Ferguson and Robin Harper. And when I went into school after the birth of my daughter I was met by Spook and Robin Harper who were saying that you will have to do something. I asked what was wrong and they again said I would have to do something because we are no doing it. Mackenzie said, they called him Mackenzie for when pupils or staff got upset with him they did not call him Bob or sir they called him Mackenzie. They said Mackenzie has said that he is not going to let the publish the paper as it is. The paper was due out that day. The front cover was set up and designed by Spook Anderson on a subject that was significant to him. Mackenzie who at that time was fighting to get resources for Inverlair and was trying to get funding and publicity. Mackenzie was saying to the Braehead news team that the front page had to cover the Inverlair project. And Spook said I am not putting that on the front page. Mackenzie said you are putting it on the front page. And Robin Harper had been brought in. I was at this time tired and irritable and happy and all these things at the one time and they got on my nerves that much that I agreed to go and see Mackenzie. When Bob was angry he used to bang the desk with his fist. And Bob said I am telling you I want it this way and banged the table. I am afraid I said to him 'you could stick your paper up yer arse'. And I left the office and went to the art room, which is where people who are in trouble would go for solace and support. There was usually coffee on the go. A few pupils painting the rest had been sent to the beach to paint and draw, it was a nice sensible way to educate children. It was a kind of sanatorium for injured teachers. I told Hamish Roger what I had said and calmed down over a cup of coffee. Hamish said well he is the boss. So I went back and said to him 'Mr. Mackenzie I am sorry for the way that I expressed myself earlier by telling you to stick the paper up yer arse etc., I said that I was standing by what I said and that if you want these children to grow up and take responsibility he should think again. He said come on sit down, I know that you have just had a daughter born and he got out a whiskey, which he very rarely got out and said lets have a drink of whiskey. That was the kind of man he was. He was told to stick something up his arse and the next minute he sat down and had a drink with you. I don't remember what happened to Spook's page, probably Mackenzie won the day. That was the only time I fell out with him and that was done because I was pressurised by members of staff and pupils to go and stand up to him. You could not stand up to him when he wanted something, he would over rule you, which was fair enough, he, was the boss.

Were you right to challenge that decision?
If he saw something as more important than other things he insisted on doing it his way. If I was him, I would have tried to talk Scoop around by saying that there was some compromise that could be made. Mackenzie just went about it the wrong way and antagonised people before I got in that morning. I suspect that he won that battle.

Jim Ferguson had a small office in which he worked with the pupils on the Braehead news. He produced the paper in a very professional way with a pipe in one hand a pencil in the other, with a gestetner. Children were seconded to work with him, sometimes children who had been in trouble. They were taken out of the situation and given to Jim to work with. He was brilliant with them, he was bluff, hearty and new of the ways of the world. He understood how children could get into difficulties and was great with them. Robin Harper became associated with the production of the paper as well, he was a social studies teacher and was a great supporter of Bob Mackenzie as was Jim Ferguson.

Stan Young was an English teacher who was Polish and he set up a watch on the Forth from the Technical building tower, which overlooked the Firth of Forth. Where pupils would take weather reading at regular intervals and note down the shipping on the Forth, especially going to and from the Methil Docks.

I became interested in photography as well while at the school because the science department were photography orientated. Gerry Morgan from the science department got me interested in photography.

Children were playing chess, which I found astonishing. Hamish Brown had children sitting in corners playing chess. Often people would come to visit from colleges of education to visit Braehead in my time and look at the artwork. The artwork especially attracted a lot of attention from visitors as well as the outward-bound activities. Visitors were astonished to see children playing chess in a lunch time, while other played football, others were fighting or smoking in corners.

Their room looked like a painters studio, the art room looked like an art room. Authority figures including directors of education thought this was a disgrace. They felt the art room should be a clean surgical place and should be tidied up at night.

The art room teaching was always informal and personalised. It was a great place.

The Belting issue?
There was a friction in the air to agree that was not so visible as it was when he went to Summerhill in Aberdeen. I think there was a big revolt in Summerhill.

As I remember it there was a limited use of corporal punishment at Braehead, much more limited that there would be in other secondary schools of that period. Going back to this division in the staff, you still had uncertificated staff who were in there and were unsure or were not allowed to punish the children by belting. There was not a lot of punishment in what I would call the liberal areas of the school. Modern studies, art and English and to a degree in mathematics. The punishments that tended to be administered tended to be in the technical department, more than anywhere else. There was no confusion within the staff about who was right and who was wrong, people went their own ways. The technical department would say that if you are working with tools there is no place for nonsense. There is a danger in this area therefore we will put them in their place. They tended to be working mainly with boys all the time. I think the girls would be in home craft or home economics. Girls were less susceptible to physical punishment. Mackenzie had a system going where there was some sort of control brought out via the school council where the young people had the authority to set standards and rules and to bring justice to their peers. There were meeting held and pronouncements made, staff I think sat in on meetings.

The discipline in the school was relaxed. Occasionally we had uncertificated teachers who could not cope and children would take advantage of them. I can remember some young women teachers coming in and saying that some of the third and fourth year boys were becoming more troublesome than the younger boys.

Bob did try before I came to the school to abolish corporal punishment and I remember that the education authority had said that he did not have the authority to tell teachers how to run their classes. It did go no but it was not extreme. I am sure the art department would have never punished anybody. The English department very rarely and occasionally I did it again when young women teachers would come with an issue of an unruly boy. I was under pressure as the principal teacher to administer corporal punishment mainly because a member of staff was not coping and saying that you must do something about this. You had better do something sensible because I can't take any more of this. I had to be seen to be doing something although it may have been to my distaste.

Funny memories or stories?
I can't define any incident. Life was serious but there was a lot of laughter. It was a place where we were committed, we were not playing games. I was surrounded by teachers who did not see this job as only a 9-4 job. We had fun.

The art room was the focus of my life, not only because my room was next door to it and I would have coffee there. At the end of term there was a teacher in the Art department produced a curry and probably took him a number of days to produce this that. The smell coming through the school, chickens being plucked, he was prevailed upon to produce this curry at the end of term. A proper curry from the east. This was going on at the same time as Mackenzie patrolled the place and he turned a blind eye to this and approving of it
 
I remember times where we had odd things that we had to do. Bob Mackenzie would occasionally make us do a lecture if we were significant members of staff. There was meeting say once a month in the home craft department where you were challenged occasionally to deliver some sort of education message to the staff. I found this frightening. When it came to my turn he said something like 'I want you to talk about films'. It was at that time my job to organise film shows and films were used as an educational tool. They were shown on a Tuesday morning from what I can remember in the gym. That was a strain on all the staff, as the gym became a cinema for a couple of hundred children each time. But a lot of children in this dark gym looking at films that were designed for children and it was my job to order these films and make sure they were delivered for the Tuesday. The Children's Film Foundation we used quite a lot to order films, it was a great thing in those days. A British institution producing films for youngsters, long before television. So I remember incidents in the gym hall where children were dragged out, laughing, crying or screaming by angry members of staff. I was challenged to produce this lecture to say that film was good for the teachers and the children. Mike Duncan who was the school cartoonist and a savage wit drew a cartoon which he presented to me afterwards of me with sweat running down my brow and an anxious expression on my face.

Mackenzie always had a classical morning where he chose the music for assembly. Mackenzie would welcome the school each morning and occasionally the principal teachers had to get up and take it in turn. We did not like doing that. It was a public occasion where you could be hung for saying the wrong word by Mackenzie or you could be laughed at by your colleagues or the children just would not listen.

There was opportunity for humour.

Lasting memory of Braehead?
I think the concerts arranged by Kirsty Adams, the musical experiences that she gave young people that I would not have tried to do. She had the confidence, the skill and the ability to bring out from them a quality of experience that lesser people would have thought that they did not have it in them. She produced people singing madrigals and concerts with a purpose behind them. Interwoven with this was the art department that produced scenery and children being given stage management jobs that gave them all confidence. I think that that kind of activity was the best.

We had in the English department a man called David Schonveld who came to work in Braehead from Cambridge University. David was worshiped by Mackenzie who liked people who sought him out. David wrote to him and said that he had read about the school and would like to come over and work in the school. David was like Mackenzie and was ahead of his time. He was English and I don't think he was totally accepted by some of the Scottish staff at first. He was very well educated and very confident. He rejected the conventional system of a classroom. He converted his classroom into a stage. He did this by going down to the beach and dragging up driftwood and other flotsam. He hammered all this together to make his classroom a stage. He turned it into a theatrical area where he could work with pupils through drama and poetry and again some classical stuff that some of us would have been nervous about attempting to do with Fife bairns. David Schonveld was one of the highlights of my time there. His way of working was to give children the freedom to express themselves and to produce writing and so on. Not in the same way as the Braehead news that was a factual and purposeful paper. His was the creative side of the English department. The English department flourished in different ways. Jim Ferguson and David Scheonveld were on the wings of producing the quality work.

I never went out into the hills myself or went canoeing or anything like that but I did respect what was being done. The technical departments gliding was another innovative thing that I thought was magnificent. We were talking about control and discipline earlier and these children that were in control of safety and control of a glider were doing what they were told and took it very seriously by David Scott and Doug Clark. Ken McLeod took pupils fishing as well. Brought a control and discipline that was better.

What would be your memory of RF. Mackenzie?
A man who spoke with a northern droll, a man who spoke slowly and a man who was thoughtful. I at times did not feel relaxed with him but that was me more than him. I was for his ideas but I didn't feel that I could relax with him as I could say relax with Hamish Roger. I think Bob was so serious in my view that I found it difficult to be at one with him. Where I could laugh and joke with Bill Rintoul, Hamish Roger or various other colleagues in school. With Mackenzie I had that old Scottish sense of respect that he was the boss and he was a very clever man. I never felt completely at ease with him. But that was my failure not his. Others however did, the truly creative side did feel at ease with him. I never felt confident in saying Bob, I never did. I was on his side although I'm not always sure he new that.

I was looking at text before Mackenzie's book came out when I was in Lochgelly. I was reading text to do with my subject English which were much less formal than what I had been introduced to during my training. I would not have had the confidence to do what I had done at Braehead or in primary education without Mackenzie and his philosophies. Which were highlighting that the person was more important than the subject. The idea is children are educated and not taught. Therefore we should be teaching children to be the best that they can be.

How would RF. react to today's education system?
I drifted away from Buckhaven and eventually came back as head teacher of Buckhaven Primary, the same school who's head had said that 'he would not send his dug to that school'. I have now retired but still go back and teach when needed and I find that I am quite relaxed in what I do. Staff had commented that one of my best qualities is that children relate to me. I think this comes from the confidence that I got by working in Braehead and that children are children and that you must give them the respect that they deserve. If you do that you will get rewards from them. I think my career has been spent on protecting children from teachers. I have been criticised in my primary career for being on the side of the children and not on the side of the staff. My views have been tolerated by my colleagues far more than Mackenzie's ever were. Society has changed and primary education has changed

When Mackenzie's theories were being tried there was a change in Primary Education happening with the publication of a document in 1965 'The Primary Referendum' that looked at changing how we worked with children. Now there is a drift away from that again with government policies. Control and discipline has changed, but that has nothing to do with schools that has to do with instant communication by TV, the internet, by people being able to share their views far more easily.

Anything else to add?
It was a great time in my life. There were two educational experiences in my life that I enjoyed one was when I did national service. Although I did do as much as possible to try and not do national service. Incidentally I should say that I drifted into teaching when I went from Cowdenbeath to do a degree at university because the rector said to me 'what do you intend to do?' My father had a pluming business and he asked did I want to become a plumber? No, I don't want to be a plumber. This rector said we haven't had a lawyer from the school for many years, so would you like to be a lawyer? My dad thought it was a good idea so in the 1950's I set out to be a lawyer. I discovered after doing my MA that I would have to article my self to a solicitor. That meant that you had to pay to be part of a solicitor's office. I did not fancy all this so I decided not to follow through, so what was I going to do. National service was looming on the horizon, I knew it was going to end soon so I thought I'd go to Murray House in Edinburgh and train to be a teacher, which is not what I set out to do. I took a year at Murray House and got my diploma at the end of this and moved into teaching. I had to attend national service after this and this was a great teaching experience as it was a bit like Braehead. It was an experience to teach people who were motivated. At Braehead I found that people there were motivated, the children did want to learn. Even the ones that were not very good at examinations, we found qualities and character in them that stood them in good stead for later life.

Thanks to Syd for his views and memories on the Braehead era. (Jim)

Read Syd's interview for the Braehead News