I went to a brilliant girls’ school and loved it – but we weren’t taught about hot flushes or ISAs
If I try to remember specific lessons from school, I recall bits and bobs about oxbow lakes and onion-skin weathering. We discussed the Russian revolution for months, possibly longer than it took Lenin to pull off in the first place. Macbeth went on for a bit, and all we seemed to talk about in French was how to find the train station.
I don’t remember being taught about the menopause or how to invest wisely, which is what those lucky girls at Roedean will soon be studying. The new-ish head teacher, Niamh Green, has declared that it’s important for pupils at the East Sussex school to know about issues that would affect them in later life. “While we were well versed in everything from Keats to calculus,” she wrote of her own schooling in an educational magazine, “our younger selves knew nothing of smart investing and pensions, or what the perimenopause is, or the importance of weight training for better bone density.”
Now, while a certain member of my family is sick of hearing about the menopause and says too much fuss is being made of it, I like the sound of Ms Green very much. I went to a brilliant girls’ school and loved almost every second of it – apart from the time I had to spend in the science block and running cross country – but we certainly weren’t taught about hot flushes or ISAs.
In fact, when it came to fertility and women’s bodies, I don’t remember being taught much. We learned how babies were technically made in biology lessons, but then had such stringent sex education that we became terrified of it. These classes included a preposterous video of a cartoon creature called Johnny Condom who sang a ditty which included the catchy line: “I’m only made of rubber, so don’t be too surprised when I say that I could save your life – try me on for size.” (It’s still on YouTube if you fancy a laugh and don’t mind typing “Johnny Condom” into your search engine.) The belief for an awfully long time was that we only had to make eye contact with a boy to risk becoming pregnant and the pervasive, faintly Magdalene Laundry idea was that becoming pregnant would be the ruin of us. Although it might have got me out of cross country.
A school friend I spoke to this week, who struggled to get pregnant in her 30s, says she didn’t know until she and her husband were trying that there were only a few days in the month when pregnancy was likely. We certainly didn’t learn that. When I went through egg freezing three years ago and recorded a podcast about the process, I realised how little we’d been taught about waning fertility and hormone levels. For many women of my generation, the lesson was, “Don’t get pregnant, don’t get pregnant. OK, now you can get pregnant, but it might be too late.”
So I am all for more honest education about our bodies and what we may face down the line and for lessons about money. When I conducted one of my unofficial polls on this question a few days ago, asking my Instagram followers what lessons they wished they’d learned at school, almost every single person replied screaming “TAX!” Particularly those who were self-employed. Could it be that this country is struggling a bit with the old coffers because so many of us left school with a detailed understanding of erosion and absolutely no understanding of how to read a pay slip?
Among my followers, there was an almost overwhelming clamour for greater financial education. Not just tax. But lessons on mortgages, on how credit cards work, on budgeting and on setting up a business. It may be, of course, that 16- or 17-year-olds don’t much want to be lectured about the importance of putting away a chunk of cash every month when the concept of having money to save feels extremely remote. I dreamt of Buffalo trainers and hair straighteners when I was 17; fat chance of me squirrelling anything away. But at least the lesson would have been delivered. Something might have sunk in. Given that we’re all living longer and going to be a growing burden on the state over the next few decades, the odd lecture about financial literacy, as suggested by Ms Green, seems an eminently sensible idea.
There are other skills I might have appreciated learning. We had DT (design and technology) lessons at school, but in our first term we spent an inordinately long time creating laminated keyrings “inspired by Miró or Kandinsky”. I don’t wish to grumble about going to the sort of posh private school where they encourage their pupils to express themselves by making plastic tat inspired by the pioneers of modern abstract art. But it might have been more useful to learn how to use an electric drill because last weekend I had to ask a man I’d recently enjoyed a third date with to put up my new coat rack. Basic plumbing would have been terrific too, especially how to fix a loo.
A friend who went to Stowe, a public school in Buckinghamshire, says they were taught how to iron a shirt, press their trousers and polish their shoes, although he adds that the pretext for this was “in case you’re away from your wife on a business trip”, which slightly lets the side down. Still, a return to more old-fashioned home economics might be beneficial, these days.
And what about more emotional education for more turbulent times where one person says something on Twitter and another person immediately screams that they’re an ignorant moron? Again, we practised debating at school but it wasn’t terribly nuanced. Did we believe fox hunting was good or bad? Was the Royal family good or bad? And the death sentence: not such a bad thing after all? Perhaps one of the wisest suggestions came from my friend Sophie, who proposed lessons on “How to argue well with the people you love”. Wouldn’t that be handy?
