Back to the Future in Search of Doris Bass

I’m early but the staffroom is already blue with smoke and full of strangers who know each other. A row of hard back chairs beneath the window and a long table cluttered with books and papers and ashtrays. This is the old staffroom next door to the head’s office before renovations moved the room up a floor and tripled the space. To be as unobtrusive as possible and trying not to draw attention to myself I sit in the first empty chair. It’s one of the few upholstered chairs – wooden arms, plain, sage-green cloth going shiny where most worn. Institutional, not uncomfortable and just inside the door.

The first day, my first real teaching position. Dick Sheppard School, Tulse Hill, London.

“That’s Miss Bass’s chair,” I am told. Not unfriendly, just factual, informative. I shoot myself up and take a seat by the window and busy myself head down with studying my timetable, too nervous to cross the room for a cup of tea.

The legendary Miss Bass, maths teacher, maker of the school timetable (no maths classes last period on Friday.)

Doris Bass – well-cut, tweed suits in shades of brown. A small square-faced gold watch and above it a white cotton hanky tucked in the sleeve. A hand-bag lodged under her arm stuffed with life’s essentials. I don’t think she drove or owned a car but was instead delivered to school by a driver who would pick her up at the end of the day. And always, it seemed, a fag on the go. And always included trips to the toilet and teaching. 

As a teacher she was apparently demanding, commanding, fearsome and creative. And memorable. Many thanks to former Dick Sheppard students Delroy Headman and Jenny Gordon who started, and maintain, an active Dick Sheppard School Facebook page where many former students have shared their memories. 

One of the few good things about Facebook is that it provides a platform for people to gather, connect and reminisce and tell stories. Miss Bass – who was at the school from its opening in 1955 until her retirement in 1974 – is one of the teachers whose name triggers the memory of those she taught. There are anecdotes describing her idiosyncrasies, the perpetual cloud of smoke, the trips abroad she chaperoned, “Girls, girls! Single file. Keep to the left!” 

One of those Facebook comments mentions a brother. Doris Bass actually had two brothers. Her father Walter Edward Bass was a soldier with the Royal West Kent regiment who retired in 1908 after 21 years service that included two in South Africa where he earned several Boer War medals.

He left the army as Colour Sergeant and timekeeper – a job that I am guessing meant calculating the pay roll. He re-enlisted as a private when WW1 began. By 1939 he was a chartered accountant. His first wife died soon after the birth of her only child – Walter Edward Edgar Bass – in 1895. The father married again in 1903. Doris was born in 1905 and her brother Herbert Raymond in 1909.

On the 3rd of August 1914 Walter Edward Edgar Bass enlisted in the army and joined the Royal Garrison Artillery.  Bombardier Bass MM died in April 1917 from wounds sustained at Vimy Ridge. He was 22 years old. 

The story was that teachers did not wear academic gowns even on speech and prize-giving day out of respect for Miss Bass who had no degree.

Degree or not, she was needle-sharp and could be relied upon to sum up a situation or an argument with wit and insight. And when it came to mathematics – well she had written the books – 35 of them.

Her first maths textbook with W.R Gatehouse in 1953 was Arithmetic for Primary Schools  This suggest to me that she was first a primary school teacher who perhaps was hired into secondary school – where an academic degree was the norm – because of the recognition earned by that series and by her teaching and scholarly reputation. Pure speculation on my part as I have been unable to track her career trajectory.

The Doris Bass series “Mathematics” designed for secondary school was well reviewed and went into several editions. Reviewers wrote of “progressive approaches” “lively prose” and “enhanced material” and called them visually appealing. She had a series that focussed on preparation for the “O level” exam.

The later “Action Mathematics” series written with her Dick Sheppard colleague Ann Farnham ran to 16 editions between 1971 and 1988. The books were well named as I think of Miss Bass as a proponent of intellectual activity and doing real stuff with math. And, as I recall, the books called for visualization and investigation rather than skill, drill and kill routines.

I have no idea whether this photo of using dance as a means to teach binary operations is one of her classes but it would be her style. And just look at that London parkland setting!

She suffered no fools. Spoke her mind – usually with a cigarette glued to her lip. She seemed fearless and had no problem speaking her truth to power.

“I told Jessie.” Cigarette – wagging up and down with the words, ash drifting down onto her jacket, pronouncing from her chair, letting us know that she has shared some trenchant staff opinion or piece of information with the headmistress. That’s Miss Edwards to the rest of us not in the hierarchy.  Miss Edwards whose office was next door and who would knock before making a rare visit to the staffroom. She was one of those admirable and enviable old-timers who could quell a restless assembly hall of hundreds of girls with a look and whose very presence conveyed dignity and a stern calm. To me she was impossibly proper but she certainly earned my respect. Miss J.E.M. Edwards who was honored by the Queen in the New Years List for 1975 for her services to education.

Miss Jessie Elizabeth Mary EDWARDS, lately Headmistress, Dick Sheppard School, Tulse Hill, London To be Ordinary Commander of the Civil Division of the said Most Excellent Order of the British Empire. (CBE)

Saving Face

It was Miss Edwards who taught me a very important lesson about teaching: Saving face is really important.

A short passage followed by a series of questions that tested various levels of understanding all of which had to be answered in writing and in complete sentences. And then to be handed in and marked by me. In other words – a deadly time-consuming exercise in futility.

It didn’t help that we were in one of the classrooms with large windows that faced onto the road where the distractions were many.

The 2B bus trundled up the hill with gear grinding regularity and it was always somehow an urgent matter to know who was standing at the bus stop and who was getting off. There was a local character known to the girls as “Mad Peggy” who would sometimes make a knicker-flashing appearance. And toward the end of the day, boys from the school up the road would start to gather – always a matter requiring careful scrutiny and extended discussion. 

Let’s just say that on this afternoon the class had had enough. Girls were out of their seats and it was noisy. Things got pretty wild at times. 

The door opens and there is Miss Edwards. She has clearly heard the racket or perhaps was summoned by a colleague to come and help a hapless teacher whose class was out of control. 

She stood in the doorway. The girls stopped in mid-yelling, froze in place then scurried back to their desks, instantly chastened.

“Ah! Miss Holford,” she said. “I’m so sorry to interrupt. I see you have a drama class.”  And she left.

She knew. I knew. And the class knew. And somehow we were complicit together but nobody was in trouble or publicly made to feel bad. They were a little ashamed by having gone too far and could see that I could be in trouble if they continued their antics. And now, somehow, we were in alliance and had the opportunity for a fresh start. It was a breakthrough moment.  Soon afterwards I remember having one of those thrilling all too rare times in teaching when you just know that the connection has been made and that something truly important had happened. Times when you think: “I can do this. This has meaning. This is the best job in the world.”

Back to Miss Bass

Doris Bass was always Miss Bass to me and her habit of calling the rest of her colleagues by the surname only was not taken as dismissive or rude. It was just her way. In fact when she addressed me as “Holford” I was pleased that she knew my name.

Miss Bass was past retirement age when I arrived at Dick Sheppard in 1970. The actual year of her retirement 1973-74 was the year of the fuel crisis and the winter of planned blackouts, three-day week and electricity cuts. 

I don’t remember being too bothered by the need to buy candles and somehow the lack of electric light and heat was not too onerous. I was young. It was all another adventure in being grown-up. You knew when the blackouts were happening and planned accordingly.

I remember my friend Najma Iqbal – who also taught maths – commenting that it was just awful and not right that Miss Bass had to sit by her gas oven to keep warm at night. She was right of course. But then the people of that generation had lived through much worse. In 1939, Doris Bass – who grew up in East Dulwich – was with South London evacuee children in Yeovil, Somerset. 

Now and Then

What started me down this train of thought was a recent visit to a school in New York City where I had the chance to see a quick glimpse of a number of rather impressive math classes. What made them impressive was the level of focus and active engagement. In each room you could hear student voices as they worked in pairs or explained a topic to the class. Students were doing different thing in different ways and gave every appearance of enjoying what they were doing. My favorite was the room where everyone was so deep at work (in a variety of modes) that it seemed they didn’t even notice they had visitors. 

Attention Must be Paid

To use the words of  Arthur Miller who in Death of a Salesman had one of his characters say: Attention, attention must be paid to such a person. Teachers like Doris Bass and Jessie Edwards made a difference. Dick Sheppard school had many such admirable people and I am grateful to have worked with them.

As they were ending their careers I was beginning mine. I am so lucky we overlapped for a few years at least. 

If you have memories of Miss Bass or if you can add to (or correct) this account please use the comment section below.

And now for a few memory tweaking photographs: