Three Teachers

"The student can be taught, not only what to learn, but also how to learn it." Dickinson W Richards

Dr Roy Humble (1944-1948), now living in Canada, has very kindly donated a superb collection of classic medical books to the Biology department at Merchiston. The collection (the Classics of Medicine Library) includes original works by the great medical pioneers, Pasteur, Cushing and Harvey, and has been much appreciated by the Sixth form students and the biology staff. It is a most generous donation and is to be housed in a glass-fronted cabinet in the biology department. Dr Humble sent some thoughts about his time at Merchiston during recent correspondence regarding the donation:

Four years at Merchiston gave me an appreciation of many things. Although I had mixed feelings about some aspects of the experience at the time, these have gradually fallen into their proper perspective, leaving only the understanding of the excellent preparation that the school provided for the realities of life. By any standard the education was a privileged one, but by the same token it remains a privilege to have been there.

Although in terms of their ability to control a classroom of high-spirited boys, a few of the occupants of the 1944 Common Room left something to be desired, we were exposed to some outstanding teaching. Three of the senior masters made a lasting impression on my own life. I tried to gather some thoughts about them in a letter to the school magazine, and after a further two decades have only found it necessary to alter a few words:

All of us were shaped to one degree or another by the everyday life of the school, as well as by its traditions and history, though at the time we took most of it for granted. Over and over in the intervening years, however, I have come to realise the debt I owe to three individual teachers – F A Rhodes, H R Charter and A H Humphries. What these three individuals taught, and more importantly the manner in which they taught, has never really left me.

Going back in memory to Mr Rhodes’ Physics lab of 1944, when there were no special teaching aids, no calculators or computers, “Tommy Farr” as we remember him from his repetitive use of his initials (FAR) and the name of a boxing idol of that era, presented his subject in a most commonsense, practical manner. He contributed much to many other aspects of life at Merchiston, including cricket and the Cadet Corps. I can think of no teacher I have met since whose methods were based on sounder principles.

To “Charlie” Charter, I owe the instillation of an interest and understanding of organic Chemistry. Although I have never been directly involved with Chemistry, the simple lessons he taught continued to be of value in my everyday work. Other things, too, are not forgotten, like the Chess Club and the thankless umpiring duties with the Third and Fourth Cricket Elevens, the latter a graveyard for the less-than gifted! Irrascible Charlie may have been at times, but also gratefully remembered.

What can one say finally about Humph? To me he was, and is, Merchiston. There is little need to talk about Mathematics, one could not have had a better Maths teacher. It was Humph as a person who remains especially unforgettable - his humour, his kindness and fairness in every aspect of life, much of which must have been handed on to literally hundreds and hundreds of boys. It would need a book to even begin to mention the coutless other contributions he made to Merchiston, but as we all remember him we can only be grateful for the fates that led us there. Another Merchiston legend, Ian Balfour-Paul, teacher and orraman at the school for over half a century, commented on the extraordinary diversity of Humph’s interests and knowledge, and described him as a figure symbolic of Everyman. I can find no better way to finish than to use the words he himself used as he ended an appreciation of Charlie Charter in the Merchistonian of January 1965:

“Looking back at the years, a hundred little episodes and stories recur to remind us of the old faces that will not return, but they are all buried in the heart of Merchiston, which will flourish in the future as in the past, and be a full reward for the lives of such as Charter (and Rhodes and Humphries) who gave so much devotion to develop generations of schoolboys with the will and how to live for the benefit of others.”