As a contemporary of David Bowie at Bromley technical high school, I read Hanif Kureishi’s article with interest (Review, 12 August). Possibly it was a “shithole” in Kureishi’s time, 10 years after Bowie, but it wasn’t in ours; not a great school, but more than adequate judged by the standards of the time.
The claim that all the teachers were incompetent with the exception of the art master is stupid. Some were hopeless, some OK and a few inspirational – pretty normal in those days. As for the implication that it was a sink school for the working and lower-middle classes is inaccurate, it was a bastion of suburban bourgeoisie when Bowie was there.
Kureishi’s traducing of Bowie’s secondary education does a disservice to a model that allowed children who had not gained entry to a grammar school at 11 to progress to a university education if they so desired. Many from our cohort did. The categorisation of “technical high school” indicated the school offered A-level education in the liberal arts in addition to science and technology offered by the original technical schools.
Howard Scholey
Edinburgh
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