Tales from Argentina – The Headmistress

Mum died four years ago today.   She was 84 and like most people she was grateful for the good times and endured the hard, and she had plenty of both.   I think of her every day – I don’t need anniversaries – and today particularly I’ve been reviewing my lighter memories of her.  This is one of them.

I hope to recount more stories about her in the future on this blog, and about other subjects too.  Sometimes they’ve been told to me, or I’ve remembered them from younger days; and there will be others which I have found on Spanish language websites under the general heading of what I think of as Tales from Argentina.  So it’s fair to say that I’ll generally be re-telling someone else’s story in my own words, with acknowledgments at the end where applicable.  Not in this case though: this is from my own memory.

My mother was headmistress of the bilingual private school I attended between 1967 and 1971, St Andrews Scots School for Girls, Buenos Aires. As with most bilingual schools in Argentina, the day was divided squarely in half – in the morning all subjects were covered in the Spanish language, leading to a final baccalaureate in a dozen subjects; in the afternoon the studies in English led to O’levels.


To attempt to deliver a truly bilingual education the split in languages was enforced as strictly as possible. Woe betide anyone caught by any of the teachers, or – worse – by the Dragon herself, speaking Spanish in the afternoon. Order marks and conduct marks would be dished out like sweets.

Mum on the right, middle row

Me on the left, front row.

(The only one with non-skinny legs!)

(Sandy has pointed out in a comment that we're the only ones

not smiling... I'd never noticed!!)

Mum occupied this post for some 20 years or so, and unusually for Argentina, being fully qualified in both languages she headed both the morning and afternoon sessions.  When duties allowed she therefore haunted the corridors, keeping an eye on discipline and bringing someone up short for speaking Spanish when they shouldn’t, not having their long hair tied back properly or – gasp – wearing makeup.

Many of the schoolchildren who passed through the gates on her watch told me after her  death how this approach to discipline had helped them retain their knowledge of English; they remembered her ethics and her enforcement of respect towards their teachers and each other, and were at pains to tell me that they had passed these principles on to their own children.  I knew what they meant, and was comforted.

But Mum wasn’t averse to using unusual methods to achieve what she wanted, and on one occasion she used graphology – the study of handwriting. 

This quote from Wikipedia is how graphology is viewed today:

“Graphology has been controversial for more than a century. Although supporters point to the anecdotal evidence of thousands of positive testimonials as a reason to use it for personality evaluation, most empirical studies fail to show the validity claimed by its supporters.”

I don’t doubt that at the very least some characteristics must be detectable - my sister studied graphology at an evening class for a time and submitted samples of my left and right-handed handwriting, which look very different ...  (right hand top, left hand bottom)

...but the teacher saw through this straight away and announced this was the same person who had written it. 

The case in question was different.  The senior school was going through a phase of pilfering; pupils’ more interesting belongings were disappearing from their padlocked lockers in the mornings, and no amount of hectoring by the Head at morning assembly made the slightest difference.  As the irate parents beating a path to the headmistress’s door became a steady trickle, it prompted her to take action. 

Tía Susana was an aunt by marriage, a kindly, very wise old lady who had an unnervingly shrewd way of looking you up and down when you went to visit her.  It was done in a nice way, but was nevertheless a sharp appraisal.  She had studied graphology as a young woman, and had often been called upon to analyse handwriting.  On this occasion she offered to perform the service for free, so a project was set up whereby the 80 or so senior pupils were asked to write a couple of paragraphs about their views on the new dining-room.  They were not told why they were doing this (an important detail, according to Tía Susana) and to preserve anonymity they were given numbers, Mum being the only person who could match them up with the names.

Tía Susana produced a brief thumbnail sketch of a few words about each pupil – all positive - but highlighted on a separate list for Mum’s eyes only those who possibly had a latent instinct which could lead to such misdemeanours as pilfering.  Mum then handed out to each participant the slips of paper with their individual thumbnail sketches, explaining that she had been trying out a new idea.  There was much animated discussion at break-time on how accurate the graphologist had been, and I myself was pleased that she had said I was musical and that I had a well-developed instinct for communicating in the right way with a variety of people…

Of the 80 pupils, Mum was left with a shortlist of 6 names, from which she knew she could eliminate three because they were English–only speakers who did not attend school in the morning.  The remaining three were summoned one by one to her office for a lengthy chat.  She never told me what transpired at these meetings, but one of the three tearfully owned up.  Of wealthy parents, the child felt very left out because they gave her no pocket money, so she preferred to help herself (and no doubt there were other issues in the background we didn’t know about).  She did not know how to pick padlocks, but waited until someone had not put it back on properly.  She would snap the lock securely shut when she had taken what she wanted, so the pupil never knew that she had unwittingly assisted the thief.

A lucky strike?  Maybe this is just the “positive testimonial” referred to by Wikipedia above, or maybe there’s something to graphology.  It still remains to be proven either way.

This picture was with my mothers photographs,

and it says in my handwriting on the back

"This was after the limerick!"

-oOo-

Photo Finish:
from Lonicera's non-digital archives

Chiva and Valencia in winter

The log fire at my parents' home

An orange grove at Christmas time

Valencia clock tower - one of many

Toy windmills on the sea front

A shop front - you could buy pictures,

shawls and mantillas

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-oOo-