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| Other Schools: The Annexe http://www.the-cbb.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=7169 |
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| Author: | ChubbyMonkey [ Thu Jan 07, 2010 7:00 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Other Schools: The Annexe |
While the Annexe is not, strictly speaking, a separate school, its great distance from the main school as well as the seemingly different way it is run lend to it a differentness to the main school. The Annexe is a new venture, set up on the Sonnalpe for those pupils who are likely to benefit from the healthier air. Notable pupils include Amy Stevens and Robin, both of whom are pupils before the opening of the Annexe and so join it in its very first term. Although there is little about the Annexe in the books, the reader gets a sense of a different routine within, thanks to the even greater emphasis placed on health there. What do you think of the Annexe? Is it really a separate school, or simply an extension of the main branch? Was it wise of Madge to choose Grizel and Juliet as mistresses - and do they do a good job? Would you have liked to have attended the Annexe and why? Discuss these and any other issues about the Annexe that you wish to raise below. Idea by Sunglass. |
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| Author: | Mrs Redboots [ Thu Jan 07, 2010 7:22 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Other Schools: The Annexe |
I have thought a lot about the Annexe recently, as I wrote a drabble about it at the end of last year. The most difficult thing, arguably, would have been that people like Amy and, perhaps especially, the Robin, would have known Grizel and Juliet as schoolgirls - they've only been left five minutes, Grizel particularly, when they come back to run it. For new children that wouldn't be a problem, but in my drabble I found that Amy, particularly, struggled with it. After all, she, Juliet and Grizel were the longest-standing Chalet Girls, even the Robin didn't come until the following term! I also think EBD sometimes forgets that these are delicate children, rather than nursery babies - in EXPLOITS she does tend to treat them as though they were very little older than Peggy and Rix, rather than 9-12 year olds. |
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| Author: | Cel [ Thu Jan 07, 2010 7:57 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Other Schools: The Annexe |
The Annexe can at times seem a bit like overkill, given how much emphasis there already is on health at the school proper. Even these robust schoolgirls, about whom there are no particular worries, get put to bed with hot milk if they so much as get caught in a rain shower; they keep early nights and are frequently sent to lie down in the middle of a hot day - it's hard to see how the Annexe pupils could be any more protected without it becoming some sort of mini-hospital rather than a school. Was Amy, for example, really so delicate that she couldn't cope with life at the Tiernsee? It seems rather hard on her (and others) to be yanked away from the happy life they led down there in order to be treated as semi-invalids next door to the San. As for the staff, Juliet seems like an ideal choice for the Head, but although it's convenient to the plot to bring Grizel back as a teacher at the Annexe, she's not an obvious choice as a teacher of delicate - and generally quite young - girls. I could imagine her legendary impatience and sarcasm causing trouble... |
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| Author: | Cosimo's Jackal [ Thu Jan 07, 2010 8:09 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Other Schools: The Annexe |
Cel wrote: It's hard to see how the Annexe pupils could be any more protected without it becoming some sort of mini-hospital rather than a school. ... That's what I always think - I end up imagining there being a nap after every single lesson and a full medical every morning, special invalid diets and a matron for every five girls, or something! But as you say, it's hard to reconcile that kind of gentle, even coddling atmosphere with Grizel's famous impatience, which I would have said would cause a lot of tears before bedtime. (Plus in Exploits, I think, Grizel is spending an entire day, presumably once a week, walking all the way to Spartz from the Sonnalpe for a music lesson, which meant she was gone from dawn till after dark, which wouldn't be much help to Juliet!) I also never quite see how it works as a mini-school, especially when the only two members of staff we hear about are a music teacher and a maths teacher - Juliet presumably teaches other subjects too, but does Grizel? It can't ever have had more than a very small number of pupils at one time, so it can't have had many mistresses, but it still needed to offer the girls an all-round education, and I would have said the Sonnalpe was too remote for many visiting teachers of particular subjects...? I realise I've never given it much thought, because it seems really to have been invented for Robin's sake, and to keep Juliet and Grizel around, rather than because it makes a great deal of logical sense to give a school already famous for monitoring the health of its delicate pupils an annexe which does a more extreme version of the same thing... |
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| Author: | Mel [ Thu Jan 07, 2010 8:12 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Other Schools: The Annexe |
It does seem a bit excessive to have those delicate girls herded together like that. I wonder how they managed for lessons? Juliet could only teach Maths, perhaps something else. The last thing they really need is a Music teacher, as there would surely be residents on the Sonnalpe who could teach basic piano. I can't see Madge having much time either. What on earth did poor Stacie do? Jem tells Jo that they had thought of sending her there too, which is madness. Surely if her health was worrying them, she could have left school? |
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| Author: | Nightwing [ Thu Jan 07, 2010 8:33 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Other Schools: The Annexe |
Cosimo's Jackal wrote: ...because it seems really to have been invented for Robin's sake, and to keep Juliet and Grizel around I was just thinking about that! I liked what we saw of Juliet and Grizel in Camp, since it definitely showed the start of Grizel's dissatisfaction and both of them struggling to become teachers rather than pupils. But then almost immediately EBD has Juliet become engaged - so I wonder what her long-term plans for the Annexe were, and what would have happened had it not been for the war? It seems unlikely that Grizel would have taken Juliet's role as Head of the Annexe, but perhaps EBD had planned for her to find happiness through her work, or to marry her off earlier? |
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| Author: | JB [ Thu Jan 07, 2010 9:28 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Other Schools: The Annexe |
I don’t think I’d have liked to be a pupil. I imagine it would have been dull and claustrophobic. There’s such a fuss made when the healthiest CS pupils get their feet wet that the Annexe staff must have been obsessed with anything that could have affected the health of their pupils. I wonder about Grizel as a teacher. It’s only a year since she was at school herself and she’d been studying music during that time. Nothing that we see of her as a pupil makes me think she’d be a good teacher. After years of experience, she’s still known as a bad-tempered member of staff and that’s at odds with the care that would have been needed for the more delicate girls. I am, though, glad it gave EBD an excuse to bring Juliet and Grizel back into the series, although I’m also sad that we see so little of them. |
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| Author: | emma t [ Thu Jan 07, 2010 9:49 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Other Schools: The Annexe |
I have always liked the idea of the annexe; while the delicate pupils could not keep up with the ways of the original school; in a way they could still feel as though they were apart of the Chalet School even if they were not in the proper school. Although at the same time, it is a seperate school. It has to be; it cannot run completly on the same lines of the of the main school; how can it? The girls will need different handling especially if they are going to come down with some illness or other. The doctors are on hand to see to them at the Sanatorium. Though they do also have an imput on the Chalet itself in the issues of health and so on. It also has it's own head; so again this says alot about it being a part school from the Chalet. Each house at the Chalet School as it's heads, but this is an over all head mistress. Juliet was always a good choice;she did a wonderful job there and the girls loved her previously as a Head Girl and Prefect. Grizel was maybe not a wise move. Her character was always a hard one; even though the school helped to soften her over the years she spent there. She was lacking in that understanding I thought; and I wonder how she managed up at the Annexe when someone was distraught or ill. I remember Joey asking Madge how Juliet and Grizel are getting on, and Madge replied that they were doing very well. I cannot recall which book, though! |
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| Author: | Alison H [ Thu Jan 07, 2010 11:56 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Other Schools: The Annexe |
I'd like to've seen more of the Annexe in action. The finishing branch of the school, when it opens, gets a whole book devoted to it before vanishing on to the sidelines, but the only times we get to see the Annexe are when Joey goes to visit Robin there. I feel sorry for Amy, who is removed from the main school to go to the Annexe, then sent back to the main school, then sent back to the Annexe because she gets a cold! & what did they do with Stacie, who was much older than any of the other pupils and academically advanced for her age in many subjects anyway? I'd like to know what would've happened to the Annexe had it not had to be merged with the main school because of the Anschluss. There doesn't seem to be much point to it, really. Juliet was never going to stay there long, Grizel could just've been given a job at the main school, and nothing much seems to be achieved by moving Robin and the other pupils there. |
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| Author: | JB [ Fri Jan 08, 2010 9:51 am ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Other Schools: The Annexe |
I wonder if EBD created the Annexe because she knew Joey would be leaving school soon and it would provide something which she could be involved once she left school (even though in the end she didn't)? Just a thought which occurred as I was catching up on this thread. |
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| Author: | Sarah_G-G [ Fri Jan 08, 2010 12:10 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Other Schools: The Annexe |
I think I sort of like the idea of the Annexe but have difficulties seeing how it would work exactly. It half seem like a sort of nursery for younger children who are maybe a bit young to be at a proper boarding school with girls who are 18 and then, as others have said, half seems like a hospital. I'm glad that Stacie never ended up there because I don't see how that would have worked at all to be honest, because there's just no way that a very academic 14 or 15 (?) year old could work in a class with 8 year olds. It is an interesting idea and I like the thought that maybe there was a plan to bring Juliet and Grizel in to teach at first, then Joey could come in later as the school grew. Also at that point the combination of the three of them would probably work much better, as I assume that Juliet would teach maths and basic science subjects (I think she says at some point that they won't offer science but I always assumed she meant they wouldn't do proper chemistry experiments rather than ignoring all science completely), Joey would do languages and history, Madge would presumably still help out with English lit, and Grizel could do music and sport. I know that still leaves a few gaps but if the children are under 12 then I'm sure between them they could manage enough to introduce them to the rest. Grizel isn't an ideal choice as a teacher in many ways but maybe she is a good choice for someone to set up a new part of the school with Juliet. She and Juliet know how to work together, she's very logical and good at planning and also very strong-willed and determined. I'm not sure that makes her an ideal teacher, but it probably makes a good person to rely on when setting up a new venture. I agree with others who say it would have been nice to have seen more of the Annexe in action. As it is, we really only get a picture of little, slightly delicate, girls who miss their big sisters and long to get to the school proper. I do love the few scenes where the two schools join together for the Christmas play thought! |
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| Author: | ammonite [ Fri Jan 08, 2010 2:40 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Other Schools: The Annexe |
Doesn't it at the start of the book where the Annexe introduced say that the main chalet school teachers would go up and teach the subjects when necessary. I must say I would hate to have been sent there and just treated like a baby. I must say I am surprised more of them didn't rebel. The way EBD has set it up it seems an extension of the junior school rather than the main school but a head does seem to be needed and Juliet i think would be good. As for Grizel I don't think she was right but maybe Madge was just trying to find a job for her, so she didn't have to go back home. Also Robin and Amy were both there when she was playing mad pranks and possibly for that reason wouldn't her authority be difficult. Juliet at least was seen to be helping out with Amy etc. during her time there. |
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| Author: | Billie [ Fri Jan 08, 2010 4:18 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Other Schools: The Annexe |
I think once EBD had set up the Annexe for the Robin, she didn't really know what to do with it. We never get to see inside its doors, to my memory, certainly never see it at work. It brings back Juliet and Grizel, who it is good to see again, but I can't picture it as an institution, or even as a branch of the Chalet School, at all. |
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| Author: | Cosimo's Jackal [ Fri Jan 08, 2010 4:31 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Other Schools: The Annexe |
Billie wrote: We never get to see inside its doors, to my memory, certainly never see it at work. The only time we go inside that I can think of is at halfterm in Exploits, and it's only so Robin can fall into Joey's arms sobbing with joy! |
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| Author: | ChubbyMonkey [ Fri Jan 08, 2010 6:43 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Other Schools: The Annexe |
I like the idea of the Annexe, but more as a genteel introduction before the main school for younger girls who might need Dr Jem to keep a watchful eye and proscribe milk occasionally. Plus it would be at the top of the mountain with all the amazing views! Perhaps I'm just being too forgiving, but I think that this could have been good for Grizel. Of course at first she would find it hard to control her temper and still exert her authority, but at the same time I think that teaching Juniors could really help to bring out her softer side and teach her patience. Plus it would be much easier to control them than some of the Middles who must also have had memories of her wilder exploits! |
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| Author: | Mel [ Fri Jan 08, 2010 8:13 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Other Schools: The Annexe |
I think it was great for Grizel and an act of kindness on Madge's part as they don't really need a music mistress. She wouldn't have a lot to do giving individual piano lessons to some of the girls. The alternative for Grizel would be living at home with her distant father and obnoxious step-mother. I wonder why Juliet didn't actually take her degree: she was in London for only two years. Was it thought that that was all she would need in the way of education for younger girls? |
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| Author: | JB [ Sat Jan 09, 2010 1:24 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Other Schools: The Annexe |
Mel wrote: I wonder why Juliet didn't actually take her degree: she was in London for only two years. Was it thought that that was all she would need in the way of education for younger girls? I'm pretty sure this was an EBD-ism and that as far as she was concerned Juliet did have a degree. |
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| Author: | Sarah_L [ Sat Jan 09, 2010 11:42 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Other Schools: The Annexe |
Didn't some degrees/teacher training courses at university only take two years back then? |
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| Author: | sealpuppy [ Sun Jan 10, 2010 12:14 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Other Schools: The Annexe |
Teacher training courses were only 2 years until about 1960 when they added another year but Juliet got a degree, didn't she? I think though, that there was some scheme where you could do part of your degree course at home/school: EJO has Miriam doing her 'Inter BA' based at school, after she's matriculated ie done the equivalent of A levels. (London University used - still might - to offer external degrees: my husband's first degree was a London B.Sc.Hons (engineering)but he studied at a local college).So Juliet could have done something like that? (Or, more likely, it's an EBD ism!) Think there were even shorter courses for infants teachers earlier on, and of course a lot of private schools didn't ask for qualifications anyway. In a lot of ways it would have been easier for Madge & Jem just to hire a governess for Robin but that would have been lonely, so I think the Annexe is a kind of substitute for that idea. As for teaching, this is early 1930s isn't it, when upper middle class girls often still had to struggle to get anything in the way of an academic education. Even at that date there seems to have been a feeling that all a girl needed was to be able to behave nicely in society, sing, speak prettily, sew, dance, and arrange flowers, etc, so a governess-based education sufficed. (A lot of girls/women brought up like that only 'escaped' when the war gave them responsible jobs). Although the ethos of the main CS is far more ambitious academically, maybe they wrote off the poor 'delicate' kids? However, I agree that it's a ploy to get Juliet back and keep Grizel out of mischief - and carrying on my train of thought, it's an awful pity Grizel didn't get into the women's services where she could have grown up and had the tantrums sorted out. |
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| Author: | JB [ Sun Jan 10, 2010 12:33 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Other Schools: The Annexe |
sealpuppy wrote: Teacher training courses were only 2 years until about 1960 when they added another year but Juliet got a degree, didn't she? She was studying for a maths degree at the Royal Holloway. IIRC, before she started the course, it was said to be a four year course.  I've come across other mentions (poss in EBD) of girls studying for part of their degree at school. |
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| Author: | Rosie [ Sun Jan 10, 2010 2:21 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Other Schools: The Annexe |
I'm going with it being an EBDism, myself. I reckon she wanted Juliet back then, and sort of forgot how long she was meant to be away! Have a feeling that the High School in Evelyn Finds Herself teaches first-year medicine to their top class, but am not sure... |
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| Author: | Thursday Next [ Sun Jan 10, 2010 2:44 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Other Schools: The Annexe |
Rosie wrote: Have a feeling that the High School in Evelyn Finds Herself teaches first-year medicine to their top class, but am not sure... Not sure what is involved in medical qualifications now but at the time when my brother trained in the late 60s students who had passed physics, chemistry and biology at A level were considered to already have their first MB and started training at second MB level. Those who went into medicine without these three subjects at A level had to do a year studying for their first MB at university so presumably the High School was teaching those three subjects to their top class. |
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| Author: | Rosie [ Sun Jan 10, 2010 5:53 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Other Schools: The Annexe |
That could well be it. Now I no longer have a rabbit running round my feet I'll go see if I can find it... Right at the end, after she's got a scholarship to Girton: Quote: Evelyn had decided to take up Medicine, and settled down to get "First Medical" out of the way in July, before going to Cambridge. Hmm, sounds somewhat like a time-filler, having got the scholarship exam out of the way, actually! |
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| Author: | Artemis [ Mon Jan 11, 2010 10:59 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Other Schools: The Annexe |
I've always assumed that Madge did some teaching at the annexe, and also that going there was more like being homeschooled than going to an ordinary school - less formality about the lessons, more of the softer domestic subjects, and shorter hours. The classes would be very small too- how many children end up going there; it can't be more than about twenty. With that number and at that age and level, Juliet and Grizel could probably cope with most subjects between them: for example languages would be OK with both of them trilingual. The standard might not have been as high as a qualified teacher could deliver, but that wasn't the priority, was it? Most of the pupils must be very young too, since Robin is one of the older girls and isn't she also made a prefect? I don't think they have anyone over twelve. I've always thought EBD didn't know what to do with JUliet - whether to marry her and let her be happy or keep her single as a teacher and imply that she was so damaged by her unwantedness in the past that she wouldn't be able to be a wife and mother. |
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| Author: | Alison H [ Mon Jan 11, 2010 11:41 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Other Schools: The Annexe |
Welcome to the CBB, Artemis  .Madge did some teaching at the main school when it moved up to the Sonnalpe in Exile, so, as you say, I'd assume that she did some teaching at the Annexe too, once Sybil was past the baby stage. This is totally OT, but I've always thought that seeing as Juliet'd had such a rough childhood she deserved someone a lot better than a wimp who dumped her because his snobby sister told him to  . It's a shame that she vanished off the scene, and strange given that she was so close to Joey and Madge. I know her niece turns up at the school but I don't think her daughter - aren't we told in one of the war books that she's got a daughter? - does.I wonder if Jo might've ended up teaching there for a while had things not had to change because of the Anschluss. EBD'd obviously decided by the time Jo left school that she was going to pair her up with Jack, but maybe if things'd been different we'd've seen Jo teaching there for a few terms after New/United before they got together. |
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| Author: | Nightwing [ Mon Jan 11, 2010 11:48 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Other Schools: The Annexe |
Alison H wrote: I wonder if Jo might've ended up teaching there for a while had things not had to change because of the Anschluss. EBD'd obviously decided by the time Jo left school that she was going to pair her up with Jack, but maybe if things'd been different we'd've seen Jo teaching there for a few terms after New/United before they got together. I agree - in fact, it would be nice to have seen an alternative to Jo Returns where she gets stuck at the Annexe, rather than at the school proper! I always thought Jo did pretty well at coaching, even if she was less successful at taking larger classes - she might have done well at the smaller-sized Annexe. I agree with you about Donal, by the way! He seemed nice enough, but how weak-willed must he have been to listen to his sister like that - and then he had the cheek to emotionally blackmail Jo into helping him get her back!
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| Author: | Cosimo's Jackal [ Tue Jan 12, 2010 7:46 am ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Other Schools: The Annexe |
Alison H wrote: I've always thought that seeing as Juliet'd had such a rough childhood she deserved someone a lot better than a wimp who dumped her because his snobby sister told him to . Donal is a weak-kneed disaster, for me -- led by the nose by his snob sister, and all that guff about the family name being such a source of pride that it would apparently pollute it to continue his relationship with Juliet. (Probably my favourite Joey line in the entire series is her retort to that sentiment!) But I have often thought that precisely the reason Juliet fixates so on him - and his sister, whose change of heart seems to hurt her almost as much - so entirely is because of her early experience of rejection by her parents. Kay and Donal's joint rejection must have reminded her painfully of that all over again, and it must have felt as if she was someone who had some terrible lack that made her 'rejectable' - and of course, it would have made her very susceptible to his renewed overtures, when Joey talks him round, because she had no second chance with her parents, and this would have felt like a chance to reverse the earlier rejection. But my theory is that it's only because he rejected her initially before relenting that Juliet married him at all. Unfortunately he got her just where she was vulnerable... |
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| Author: | Mrs Redboots [ Tue Jan 12, 2010 8:36 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Other Schools: The Annexe |
I think there were 22 girls at the Annexe in its first term, all under 12 except for a couple of French girls who'd never been to school before - we aren't told how old they are, though. Madge says in "And Jo" that she's going to teach at the Annexe during its first term, at any rate, and Jo moans that if she's going to teach anywhere it ought to be at the main school, and Madge tells her not to be so stupid (or words to that effect), she couldn't abandon Jem and David for weeks on end! I still wonder who took prayers for the Catholic girls there, though - both Juliet and Grizel are Protestant and you can't really expect a passing doctor to do the honours every day. In my drabble they got Gisela Mensch in to take prayers and also to teach needlework, but whether that's actually what happened or not, we aren't told! |
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| Author: | Josette [ Wed Jan 13, 2010 1:50 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Other Schools: The Annexe |
IIRC, Madge originally says Gertrud was going to teach at the Annexe as well as Juliet and Grizel - that would solve the problem, except I don't think it actually ever happened! |
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| Author: | LizzieC [ Sun Jan 17, 2010 2:42 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Other Schools: The Annexe |
I know I'm a little late to this discussion, but my pet theory about Grizel and the Annexe is that she didn't have the narrow remit of "music teacher" there, but perhaps took on the teaching of up to half the subjects, maybe even a little careful PT, and flourished outside of the confines of a job she clearly hated later on. With the extra responsibility and being more of a jack of all trades, I like to think that Grizel at the Annexe was much more the girl we see towards the end of Head Girl, than the angry, somewhat bitter woman we see during the war/British years. |
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