This Post was prompted by my receipt of images and several bits of information from one of my Hutton family friends.
The information concerns part of a lengthy article in the Sunday Times dated 27/10/1968. That issue was apparently full of an examination of current Sixth Formers, “their tastes, their obsessions, and their parents’ most urgent preoccupations”.
Our particular interest is in the double page spread addressing eleven of Hatfield School’s July 1966 Upper 6th Formers some 2+ years after their leaving school.
Those of us who knew any of the 11 school leavers apparently interviewed for the ST article, may even now be affronted by the less-than-positive messages the ST reporter seems to strive to convey, including the possible selection of negative and possibly out-of-context passages, and in at least one case a blatant untruth.
We’re fortunate also to have a short appraisal of the HS pages by Bernard Mills, a senior English teacher at HS, which he put into the Editorial of the ‘Contact’ magazine, written for HS pupils and parents. Bernard was distinctly underwhelmed by the balance and style of the reporting.
The extract from the ST article uses as its basis, a photo cropped from a very small part of the panoramic-format photo taken of the whole of the 6th form pupils in Spring 1966 – the full photo can be seen in the Post ‘Hatfield School 6th form Photos’ on the OurHatfield website, at https://www.ourhatfield.org.uk/content/topics/schools_education/schools_of_yesterday/hatfield-school/hatfield-school-6th-form-photos.
The reporter has apparently chosen a central section of that photo and contacted eleven of the pupils in it for information on their recollections before leaving, and their experiences since, to create the HS part of the overall article.
To make its print readable on these pages, the double-page spread is presented here in two halves, which unfortunately complicates tracking the lines linking the extra panels to the central photo.
T
It would be interesting now to hear opinions from any of those 11 ex-6th-formers we could contact: Mike Batty, Colin Briers, Simon Squires, Ian Perry, David Smith, Trevor Baker, Peter Blenkinsop, Mary Hutton, Jennifer Dunkley, Gaynor Lawrence, Ken Staunton – can you help ?
Sunday Times Colour Supplement spread, 27/10/68
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