Third Remove

[tosomja.livejournal.com]

This is a follow up from something in the previous thread about Autumn Term, but I thought it might be clearer in its own topic.  What exactly was the role of Third Remove and then Middle Remove?  Were they classes that pupils were in for a short period of time in order to get special coaching and then move up, or were they in any way like the bottom stream in a comprehensive school, where some people stayed all the way through school?  There doesn't seem to be a Lower Fifth Remove so what happened then? Did you have to leave school if you weren't up to the A or B  forms by that point?  In fact we never hear about a Second or First Remove either (although we don't hear much about 'the juniors' anyway so that maybe is not surprising).   Was anyone at a school, or knows of a school, which had Remove classes (and why were they called Removes?!).
It's interesting too that Third Remove is considered too delicate for netball, or indeed anything very interesting - that implies either that it was a 'catch up' class for those who had had one of those mysterious long term illnesses girls seemed to get in the early 20th century (or at least in early 20th century children's books) or that it was for those who actually had physical ailments which stopped them being able to do the full amount of school work (although who knows what that might be?).  Nowadays you might think that the bottom stream in a school would be encouraged to do things like netball and drama in the hope that they would develop their non-academic talents!
Anyway, this has always puzzled me since I was a child reading AF and I'd love to hear what others think/know. 

Comments

Enid Blyton and forms

[smellingbottle.livejournal.com]

I have to say, I've always assumed Enid Blyton was making no attempt whatsoever to be plausible in terms of when she moved people about between forms, but was availing of novelistic licence. I mean, don't Darrell Rivers and the O'Sullivan twins both start in the first form, but are surrounded by girls, also first formers, who nonetheless appear not to be new to the school? Then they all move up to second form at the same time...

Re: Enid Blyton and forms

[ankaret.livejournal.com]

And they're fourteen at the start, but then go through at least six years of education; and the Sixth can't be intended as a finishing education, because they then go on to university, mostly at St. Andrews for some reason.

Re: Enid Blyton and forms

[thekumquat.livejournal.com]

Being fourteen makes sense for transferring to boarding school after a prep school - I wonder if Blyton was pressured to refer to forms as First to Sixth in order to make more sense to her readers, most of whom would be transferring to secondary school after the 11+ ?

I figured Darrell and the O'Sullivans both started a term late, except the twins then spend 3 terms in the first form, so that doesn't actually work either.

Re: Enid Blyton and forms

[tosomja.livejournal.com]

I think Enid Blyton wasn't concerned at all with chronology - I remember once as a child adding up how old the Famous Five would be if they had 3 adventures a year (one each school holiday as they were all at boarding school) and they should have been approaching their 20s by the end, yet they hardly seem to age at all. They were stuck in a sort of timeless zone. She probably would have done the same thing to Darrell if it hadn't been for the way that schools have a natural chronology and so children have to grow up. I also remember reading once in a biography of Blyton that she wrote her books amazingly fast and didn't proof read, and nor, really, did anyone else. There were examples like the cook in the Famous Five series who is called various names through the series e.g. Joan, Joanne, Joanna (this is from memory so I'm not sure) and also cats which change gender almost from page to page.

Re: Enid Blyton and forms

[thekumquat.livejournal.com]

I started reading the Famous Five when I was six or so, and soon was demanding to have similar amount of freedom to the Five (Anne was ten, Dick and George eleven, and Julian 12 or 13, and they could go off cycling anywhere and even go on camping holidays for weeks on end!)

My parents just told me they weren't realistic. I then realised the Five never went to the loo either, and figured for once my parents might have a point. :(
I'm assuming parents didn't let eleven-year-olds go off on holiday by themselves, even in the 1950s...

Re: Enid Blyton and forms

[(Anonymous)]

I think Darrell is younger than the twins, but Malory Towers has at least one form split over 2 years - unless Lower and Upper Fourth are A and B forms.

Re: Enid Blyton and forms

[thekumquat.livejournal.com]

They had Lower and Upper Sixth, which seemed like ordinary sixth form - was never sure about the Fourths, but only Upper Fourth seemed to be taking School Cert, which suggests two years.

Blyton really isn't worth overanalysing. The Chalet School is even worse for chronology because EBD keeps referring to people's ages, names, relationships etc and still gets most of them wrong - at least EB doesn't pretend to care. AF's 'authorial time' was quite a good solution for someone wanting outside-school detail but without the effort of being a historian.

Re: Enid Blyton and forms

[coughingbear]

Not sure it's appropriate to suggest anyone's 'overanalysing' - after all, plenty of people would think this whole community was about overanalysing Antonia Forest! Lots of us enjoy trying to work out an internal explanation for things, even if we know the author just made a mistake or didn't care.

Not that I am enough of a Blyton expert to attempt it in this case, though I'd note that one could easily be preparing for School Certificate in both Lower and Upper Fourths, each lasting a year - just as I worked towards O-levels in both fourth and fifth year at secondary school.

Re: Enid Blyton and forms

[thekumquat.livejournal.com]

Sorry, I wasn't implying you or anyone was overanalysing Blyton, just that there isn't generally enough substance there to come to conclusions about detail, unlike other school story authors (part of that is the age of audience the books are aimed at - it's not that being simpler is a bad thing!)

Re: Enid Blyton and forms

[colne-dsr.livejournal.com]

Jennings was a series of books with quite a strict chronology but no ageing. Jennings is 10 in the first book, and goes through terms in order Winter-Spring-Summer-Winter-Spring-Summer ad infinitum, one book per term. He has his 11th birthday early in the series, but never any more.